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IIci analog to digital help

Author	Topic
n3philim Starting Member USA 6 Posts	Posted - 13 Sep 2002 : 19:52:29 Hello, I'm a physics student in dire need of help. My teacher handed me a IIci, a SpringBoard, two SupportBoards, and a 1288 serial card and three or four IndustryPacks, and told me to program. (All the parts are from a defunct company called GreenSpring.) I need serious help! Like what sort of program should I use? I have Hypercard 2.1 on the comp, but I'm worried about its ability to take in the data. I don't have any experinece coding in anything other than HTML and CSS. Any help you guys can give me would be awesome. Thank you all in advance. -n3philim
ehurtley New Member USA 63 Posts	Posted - 13 Sep 2002 : 20:08:32 Okay, maybe I'm a little off-base here, but what kind of teacher hands random computer parts to a random student and says "start programming"?? I'm assuming that you made yourself out to be a programmer? If not, then just tell him that you don't know how to program, and be done with it. If you volunteered, then I'd suggest finding a programming language (HyperCard is a scripting language, not a programming language) like Pascal, C, or even BASIC. If you want to impress a science guy, learn COBOL or FORTRAN. I have no idea about that hardware, though. You'd need to get drivers and/or programming data on them. Proud Liberator of over 25 Macintoshes!
n3philim Starting Member USA 6 Posts	Posted - 13 Sep 2002 : 20:17:35 ^_^;; I sorta kinda volunteered. It was the only way I got to work on a Mac. I kill PCs, so I had to take the only option. Besides, my teacher said he'd get me whatever resources I need to learn to program. I'm an artist who wants to prove that she's more than just someone who knows how to use pencils and pens and paper constructively to make art. I want to learn to program. I just don't know where to start.
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 13 Sep 2002 : 21:24:48 quote: I'm an artist who wants to prove that she's more than just someone who knows how to use pencils and pens and paper constructively to make art. I want to learn to program. I just don't know where to start. Sounds like you're going head first into the programming and the i/o hardware end of things all at once. I enjoy this site and use it for background on all kinds of technical terms: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/The-Jargon-Lexicon.html Use it and find others online and in your textbooks to learn the basic vocabulary you'll need to get a start. It always helped me to work from one definition to another until they all started to make sense, dunno if it'll help you, but learning enough to ask an intelligible technical question and understand the answer can't hurt, it sure helped me over the years! Good luck, and welcome to the 68kMLA! jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
n3philim Starting Member USA 6 Posts	Posted - 13 Sep 2002 : 22:00:30 I've known about the Lexicon for a long time. I use it to pursue my career as a Discordian offshoot cult leader. I've been reading all the manuals that came with the NuBus boards, most of it makes my head hurt. And it doesn't really define what the heck all of the Industry Packs do, or give me any idea as to were to begin fiddling. Thanks for the welcome. I've known about you guys for a long time, but me and my Performa of Doom never really had any reason to come here, its all the fault of the IIci. Maclover5 is probably overjoyed that I've finally joined, he's been nagging me about coming here for the last two or three years. But I doubt any of you will be able to deduce how he knows me, and from whence he discovered my old psychotic rant logs.
maclover5 LC Doctor/Hot Rodder Australia 5830 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 02:34:59 quote: I've known about the Lexicon for a long time. I use it to pursue my career as a Discordian offshoot cult leader. I've been reading all the manuals that came with the NuBus boards, most of it makes my head hurt. And it doesn't really define what the heck all of the Industry Packs do, or give me any idea as to were to begin fiddling. Thanks for the welcome. I've known about you guys for a long time, but me and my Performa of Doom never really had any reason to come here, its all the fault of the IIci. Maclover5 is probably overjoyed that I've finally joined, he's been nagging me about coming here for the last two or three years. But I doubt any of you will be able to deduce how he knows me, and from whence he discovered my old psychotic rant logs. HAR!™ I never thought i was that bad... But yeah, its great to see you've joined the barracks! -------------------------- "I keep my friends close, but I keep my enemies closer" - Unkown Warrior maclover5 68k Macintosh Liberation Army Number of 68ks Liberated: 6
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 09:47:20 quote: IIci SpringBoard SupportBoards 1288 serial card IndustryPacks (All the parts are from a defunct company called GreenSpring Glad you know about the Lexicon and to actualy RTFM! That and the fact that you volunteered, means you're probably not in over your head to me and I'll bet your teacher has more than a bit of respect for your potential too. Sounds like too many cards for a IIci unless most are daughtercards or external packs that hook up to an interface card. If you want some feedback I'd suggest that you: •determine and list the "Industry" that GreenSpring's products supported. •a listing of the specs on all the connectors on the cards/packs /devices. •a diagram of how they interconnect physically with the I/O ports and expansion connectors of the Mac. •summarize the TechTool information on how the I/O of the cards are handled in the slot manager, ports, drivers etc. reports. I guess I'm suggesting that you block diagram what you want to do according to how it will look physically and annotate it with all the technical details in order to come up with a strategy from that angle, but mostly I'm just babbling in ASCII again! jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
n3philim Starting Member USA 6 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 12:47:50 I have all the books for the infernal IndustryPacks, the books blather on weird terms that make the head hurt. Why did I have to get leftovers from the inferometer team at LIGO Washington.... I'd be better off with simpler things to deal with, like things that don't reference AppleLink sites. @_@
cinemafia Guerrilla Recon Leader USA 2965 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 13:48:53 You sound like my kinda people! I started with pencils and pens and have just started getting a real grasp on HTML and CSS (after spending 5 years being "schooled" and playing around in it). I'd like to learn to program, too, but I never got beyond Hypercard, either! I'll try to find some good sources for ya... Oh and great machine, by the way! My IIci is definitely my favorite mac, next to my Quadra 840av, of course. I just have to finish it's transformation... 666th poster and 666th thread-creator Mod of the Mac II series Forums Total 68K Macs liberated: 7 My Site: http://cine.sytes.net My Hotline Server: 840av.sytes.net Edited by - cinemafia on 14 Sep 2002 13:51:04
n3philim Starting Member USA 6 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 13:53:47 Thank you. Its so nice to be accepted at a forum and not chased out with burning pointy things. ^_-
Kami Junior Member Canada 132 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 14:57:36 Sorry to jump in and take this a little OT but would a programming language like Real Basic (www.realbasic.com) be a good place to start learning? Or, would jumping in with Pascal or C (and toughing it out) be better for a beginner? Thanks Kami
maclover5 LC Doctor/Hot Rodder Australia 5830 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 15:36:24 quote: Thank you. Its so nice to be accepted at a forum and not chased out with burning pointy things. ^_- Of course not! Getting flamed within 5 seconds of your arrival is what other communities are for! But yeah. Run TechTool (Maybe TattleTech might do it, even), and try and get all that info that jt mentioned. Btw, for those who are unaware, I believe that GreenSpring made stuff for the music industry, seeing as though this forum's title mentions analog to digital conversion. -------------------------- "I keep my friends close, but I keep my enemies closer" - Unkown Warrior maclover5 68k Macintosh Liberation Army Number of 68ks Liberated: 6
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 16:00:34 quote: Sorry to jump in and take this a little OT but would a programming language like Real Basic (www.realbasic.com) be a good place to start learning? Or, would jumping in with Pascal or C (and toughing it out) be better for a beginner? I'm in the art end of things too and I enjoyed standard microbasic as my introductory computer experience and I bought future basic after having done the Mac thing for a while, but just scratched the surface of it in introducing my son to programming, but I thought it had enough potential that I bought the first rev of Visual Basic 1.0 when I was involved in a development project on that other platform. That one I never got to touch! IIRC, RealBasic is the offspring of FutureBasic, but looks great in its own right at any rate. The "real" programmers I've known scoffed at basic until the newer object oriented guuuuiiiieeey ones came out. Now one of the hardcore types I'm occasionally in touch with even uses V.B. for interface prototyping and dusts off the "Real" programming language skills to graft in speedy subroutines, he's getting as lazy as I am! snickers I'm babbling again, Get ahold of FB and some kind of C/C++ or something suitably geeky that'll be useful for Linux, OSX or some dark side kinda crap if you ever NEED it. You'll have more than one brush to experiment with now and to pack in your field easel later. Forget about learning something more suited to the Ivory Towers of academia and portraiture for the royalty there, learn something commercial and apply it to or have it support your interests in art! But then again, I don't lnow all that much, which my geeky buddy still reminds me of . . . given the chance! jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
oldmacman Full Member USA 713 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 16:24:28 Pascal is pretty nice to begin on. It's very structured and it makes sense. Try Think Pascal on the IIci; it's a great compiler with a great editor and debugger. It's freeware now. Official 68kMLA Music and NeXT Expert OpenStep Page at http://openstep.topcities.com/ Macs Liberated: SE (2), LC, IIsi, PB 145b, Quadra 700, 6100 (2), PB 5300, PowerMac 5400/200, Performa 6400/180 PCs liberated from Windoze: 3
Trash80toG-4 NIGHT STALKER USA 2899 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 16:53:13 quote: Pascal is pretty nice to begin on. It's very structured and it makes sense. Try Think Pascal on the IIci; it's a great compiler with a great editor and debugger. It's freeware now. oldmacman, one consideration for n3philim would be that the artists I've known were somewhat less than worried about structure and somewhat more in need of financial wherewithal than the programmers I've known. For any of my younger comrades, if you're going to learn one language while you're in school, be certain it has variants across platforms and commercial applications. AFAIK, Pascal variants would not qualify. For those of you with programming experience: your first suggestion may make a lot of sense in the short term for a single project or to lay the groundwork to go deeper into computer science, but try to offer advice and reasons to learn something with commercial and/or artistic applications as a more practical long term endeavor, even if it requires more work at the outset, it MIGHT be a wise investment in effort for the long haul. The cranky, clueless old guy is gonna keep quiet in here now! jt ™. Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
n3philim Starting Member USA 6 Posts	Posted - 14 Sep 2002 : 17:13:00 Well, as to what SpringBoard and SupportBoard do, they aren't AtoD for music. They're AtoD translator cards for things like soundwaves and microseisms and stuff that means you and your little Mac have to haul butt in a pickup truck to the Middle of Nowhere to get readings from a data storage box. Its evident from the beaten upness and discoloration of the case of both monitor and motherboard that my new friend the IIci was hauled all around Eastern Washington's Hanford area and put near the ground. The boards themselves are covered in protective lacquer so they won't get corroded from the elements, and the main GreenSpring RackMac (the package that the SpringBoard and SupportBoard came from) book suggests sticking your computer in a protective shell also sold by the company. Now I feel bad that I scoffed my programmer friend when he was going into his RealBasic salespitch. But I wonder if I could track down a copy of Norton for OS 7.1 and retrieve the trashed off programs that were invariably thrown off the IIci.... Does that count as cheating? Also, what sort of stuff should I take notes on in my manuals? The things tend to confuse me with all the numbers and serial codes that refer to things, especially the different parts of the chips. Should I just ignore that stuff?

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