#MM Buying Advice (Help!)
4 messages in this thread
Jason,
"MPC 1" means exactly the Multimedia PC standard as established by
Microsoft and several other software, hardware and computer manufacurers.
MPC specifies a certain level of hardware performance and availablity. It
requires a CD ROM player, a sound board and at least a 286 processor. The
CD specifies a certain performance level, and apparently the Sony rep was
telling you that the LL drive doesn't meet that standard. I belive that
the small (8K) cache on that drive is what gives it problems. The Sony
drives with 64 K caches meet the standard.
The Multimedia demo and enclyclopedia that come with the LL are not MPC
compatible, as the MPC also requires running Windows with the MM
extensions.
I've got the Media Vision MPC upgrade kit that comes with the Sony CDU-541
drive, a sound board, and MM Windows. So far (a couple of days) I'm having
lots of crashes in MM Windows, and I don't yet have any MPC programs to
run, as the Compton's encyclopedia included with the kit will be sent
later.
Let us know if you have any questions.
Will
There is 1 Reply.
Well seeing has how te Media Vision upgrade is the one I was keen on, I'm
curious why you think it's crashing so much? Are you happy with the setup?
Did you buy it from Media Vision? What's the performance of the CDU-541
been like?
Thanks,
-jl-
There is 1 Reply.
Jason,
At this point, I don't know why the Media Vision MM Windows is crashing.
It seems to happen only when playing sounds, such as the alarm clock
"chiming", so I'd guess that it has something to do with the Media Vision
sound driver. I talked to MV today, and they suggested that it might be a
bad sound board. I'll just have to keep trying. Basically, I'm happy with
the setup. I bought it with the realization that this is very new
technology and that there are bound to be lots of problems. There are some
neat features. You can feed an input from a stereo into the sound board,
and then record that in MM Windows. You can also record from a microphone.
And you can mix those two inputs while recording. You can also mix the
input from a CD in the player. Lots of neat possibilities, although I
don't know what the actual applications would be. There is mention in the
documentation that you can link recorded sounds to Win apps that support
OLE, such as Excel, but I haven't tried to figure that out yet.
I bought from CompUSA, for about $800, list is about $1000. The CDU-541
seems to work fine, although I haven't really flexed it yet.
So far, MV support seems to be helpful, and not too hard to get in touch
with.
Will
There is 1 Reply.
Thanks for all the great info Will. I returned my Laser Library in the
plans of getting the Media Vision upgrade kit.
-jl-