From owner-freebsd-multimedia Thu Aug 21 11:03:52 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA08891 for multimedia-outgoing; Thu, 21 Aug 1997 11:03:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from xcf.berkeley.edu (scam.XCF.Berkeley.EDU [128.32.43.201]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id LAA08875 for ; Thu, 21 Aug 1997 11:03:44 -0700 (PDT) From: grady@scam.XCF.Berkeley.EDU Message-Id: <199708211803.LAA08875@hub.freebsd.org> Received: (qmail 16004 invoked from network); 21 Aug 1997 17:55:54 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO scam.XCF.Berkeley.EDU) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 21 Aug 1997 17:55:54 -0000 To: freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org, freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Subject: recommendation for FreeBSD laptop configuration for sound production? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <15999.872186153.1@scam.XCF.Berkeley.EDU> Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 10:55:54 -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-multimedia@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I am going to be buying a laptop soon. The main initial use of the machine will be to produce sound effects for improvised theatre performances, but I wouldn't mind having a generally cool system as well (perhaps also running W95 for gameplay during commutes). I've gotten some ways into writing sound effects program (in Modula-3), but decided to stop until I actually had a laptop (since it's kind of hard to lug my tower to each show). I've never bought a laptop before, and in particular, I don't know what the story is with respect to sound cards. Does anyone have a recommendation of a laptop that would have a decent-quality sound-card? I'm going to need to load samples from CD, so something with an appropriate digital input is important. Also, I have an external SCSI Jaz drive for my desktop system, and I would like to be able to connect it to the laptop, so SCSI would be good as well. Along with the card, I'll need more than a gig of disk (since the sound FX samples themselves will probably take around a gig, and I don't want to rely on the Jaz drive). Also, at some point I might want to connect an external controller (a large knob would be best) to some port. Generally speaking, I don't usually buy bleeding-edge stuff (because I'm too cheap); suggestions that might be just above the mid-point of the curve would be useful... BTW, I'm willing to run 3.0-current, assuming it's reasonably stable... I've heard it said that for laptops, it's a good idea to try one out before using, so I'll add that I live in the SF Bay Area, in case someone has a particulr store to recommend. (I will, of course, be releasing the software when its complete; I can't imagine many people are clambering for improvised SFX, though..) To summarize, I'm looking for recommendations for a laptop with: good sound card >1G disk SCSI reasonable # of external ports Thanks for any help! Steven