2400 USB report (w/Audio)

[Ivan Drucker]

Forgive me if this is all long known already, but this
list is low-traffic enough that I thought I'd share.

Well, I bought a USB card (MacAlly) for my 2400 years
ago and it's only now that I actually really tried it
out, since I upgraded to an iBook before I
Cardbus-enabled my 2400. All this talk of USB Audio
piqued my interest.

I used Mac OS 9.1. I got the Apple 1.4.1 drivers to
install by using Wish I Were... to fake out being a PB
G3 series, but I probably could have just used
TomeViewer to pull out the extensions. With the
fakeout, it installed fine.

My Apple Pro Mouse immediately worked. Cool. What
about my FireWire/USB Sarotech drive enclosure (which
I'd always used for FireWire only)? No go, until I
found a couple of extensions on Sarotech's site that
made it mount. Even cooler.

Finally, the Griffin iMic. Would it work? I plugged it
in, and opened the Sound control panel. No "USB Audio"
device for either input or output. I took a look at
Apple System Profiler, and it clearly saw the iMic,
and *reported that the USB Audio Driver was handling
it*. So the driver very clearly chose to reject
displaying the device in the Sound control panel. I
guess Apple means it when they say that USB Audio is
only supported with built-in USB ports. Bummer!

Now, for the surprise: USB audio worked flawlessly in
OS X 10.2. The device came up in the Sound system
preference pane as "iMic input device" or something
like that. Awesome! The mouse worked too. The drive
didn't, but I didn't try to find drivers (though I
don't think there were any).

So if you actually use OS X on your 2400 regularly,
you could actually use the iMic or other USB device
for better-quality sound i/o than the line-in and
headphone jacks. But not under OS 9. As for me, it's
really still an OS 9 machine, though I'm always awed
when I see Aqua on it. Maybe one day Ryan will get
sleep working and then I might spend more time in X...

Ivan.