Reviving Your Mac Musicomputer
If you’ve been doing the song for any period of time, you realize which you don’t need to record for mac or official computers to be a huge help. They help out in each different place of life, so why should your music career — whether it is complete-time or part-time, beginner or pro, singing or drumming — be any specific?
Even if you’re not prepared, inclined, or capable of attempt mac or official building a sub-$one thousand recording studio (now not counting the fee of the computer that you already have, of course), you can use your PC or Mac to do flyers for gigs, maintain the books, tweak digital photographs or even movies, pursue some (felony) e-mail campaigns and lots of different things. But when you have jumped off into laptop-primarily based digital recording (as opposed to virtual recording the use of a stand-by myself, hard-disk-primarily based, all-in-one studio like a Roland V collection or Korg D collection), then the pc is extra than your bookkeeper or staff artist. It’s your co-producer.
You’re the boss
Sometimes you might not feel like you’re the boss, although, especially while the laptop freezes within the middle of a consultation, or crashes at some point of an important up- or download or does any number of other ungeeky matters. It is not unusual for each Mac and PC, whilst used because the hub of a busily spinning track production environment, to end up occasionally “uncooperative.” It might not start up at some point; it’d start and freeze sooner or later; it would just sit there, or it could heave and chug and cross “spring,” too.
Let’s test what to do while the reluctant or troublemaking co-producer isn’t your human partner (for once) however your computer. This time we’ll take a look at useless, demise, or dysfunctional Macs, and once more, we’re going to talk about PCs. We will deal with the most common situations, wherein you have energy, and all the portions are hooked up right (double check your cables besides). However, you get the infamous blinking question mark, a frozen desktop after begin-up or a begin-up chime observed via a zip, zero, and nada.
Work the problem
There are diverse startup techniques that allow for buying around easy “admin” password protection; that’s what maximum situations involve; in other words, there’s possibly no fancy third-birthday party software program running as a way to defeat maximum or all the following workarounds. None of the mac os official methods are completely painless or free, but you need to decide how essential it’s far to have that drive’s contents at the unbootable gadget. Now, allow’s destroy down the methods for you one by one.
(1) By conserving the “c” key at some stage in the startup, you may boot from a CD or DVD with a valid Mac System on it. Some G4’s (silver-door tower and in advance) will boot into either OS 9 or OS X so that you can get one or the opposite variations or both. You should purchase the very last OS nine package (9.2) for approximately $50, or you could buy Mac OS X with the ultra-modern model (10.5), putting you returned $one hundred or so. If you do not need the newest model of OS X, you can purchase 10. Three or even 10.2, so that you can price you substantially much less than the latest launch. If you begin up with a Mac OS installer disk, you could go to Reset Password on the Installer or Utility menu (depending on what version of OS X you get). And you there in the commercial enterprise.
(2) Another startup option is to do just that — that means to maintain the “Option” key as you hit the energy switch or keyboard button. This allows you to choose a boot extent amongst any related drives, together with Firewire devices. This will paintings’ handiest manner is if you have an outside Firewire drive, with a Mac OS and some utilities installed, attached to your computer. Although the Mac also has USB ports, you can’t begin up from an outside USB drive; do not trust anybody who says otherwise; simply look it up on Apple’s web page for yourself. Who is aware of why they made ’em that way, but they did. If you could beg, borrow, or scouse an external Firewire drive with a System and a few utilities already on it, this can sincerely work. Then you may return up something you want from the power earlier than reformatting it. If you cannot borrow the sort of device, one might cost you approximately a hundred greenbacks, plus you’ll want the OS to put on it, so that is a doubtlessly costly option.
(three) A slightly extra geeky approach is to keep down “Options” simultaneously as starting so that OS X boots into “excellent consumer mode.” No password is required to muck around with what’s referred to as “Root” access. Of route, you will be the use of Unix instructions at this factor. If you do not know Unix, you could get enough help from Wikipedia and different geeky assets online to discover ways to search for out and disable the password safety scheme. If you are not a “pc kind,” even though this might be no longer a practical option for you. This is a loose option, money-sensible, but you may do untold harm mucking around inside Mac’s mind if you may if you’re no longer sure approximately what you are doing.
(4) Finally, you could start up even by conserving the “t” key down and turn the Mac into a Firewire target disk. This means you can absolutely plug the pc into another Mac, and that other Mac will see the primary as an external force. Then you could reproduction all the files you need to maintain to the borrowed Mac or to an outside power that you have additionally mounted on it. Like #2 above, this option calls for arising with some system from someplace, and of course, you need to beg or borrow it (now not thieve) if money is tight. Do you have any pals with a Mac computer (a 3rd millennium PowerBook, iBook, or new MacBook or MacBook Pro with the Intel chips)? Sure, you can use a newer iMac or a Mac Pro tower, but a laptop positive could be less complicated. You may even need a Firewire cable (an “A to A” one, meaning both ends are the identical size).
You’re not alone
If you’ve got a sad (or konked out) Mac, that is what you’re up in opposition to. It can seem hopeless at instances, but it is now not. In the Old Days, Macs had been fairly smooth to troubleshoot and keep. Not so any longer with the Unix-primarily based OS and extra sophisticated hardware. But, with a touch assist, you could do it. If you need extra technical help, there are actually masses of Mac-focused websites wherein everyone from noobs (novices) to strength customers can get preserve of the first-class Mac troubleshooting to assist, and even some freeware or shareware restore utilities.
The Mac community remains a supportive one, so hold inquiring for help and rendering some to others, but you can. You may be surprised by way of the quantity and exceptional help that other Mac parents provide you. With some assistance, a few persistence, and possibly a bit of luck, your Mac’s unhappy startup face — and your own — will be domestic all over again to a smile.
