OK, so there are type 4 (UV plus vis light) and type 5 (UV only) sun optical mice. Type 4 mice require a different optical pad than type 5. Type 4 mice are tricky because they have to be adjusted to the grid (parallel vs perpendicular) in order to work correctly. There is a ps file that prints the type 4 mouse pad grid on paper. Do I have to laminate that print, or print it on a transparency and glue that onto an aluminum foil or print it onto a reflective foil? Because my printed pad on plain paper don't work with type 4 mice. Sniff. I wonder why I find so many optical mice in the garbage here. Any advice? Fred

On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Fred deBros wrote: I was given a sparcstation SLC with an optical mouse, no pad tho. After somet hinking, I tried aluminium foil which I made dimples in, which sorta worked. Then I had a bright idea. I got a piece of hardboard (normally used for backing cheap cupboard units), which has a textured back due to the manufacturing process. I then got a piece of foil and taped it over a pad shaped sqaure of hardboard, then pressed it against some soft foam, so the patter was imprinted on the foil. This works passably as a stop-gap solution until you can get something better :&) -- Matt --- Web Page: http://knm.yi.org/ http://pkl.net/~matt/ PGP Key fingerprint = 00BF 19FE D5F5 8EAD 2FD5 D102 260E 8BA7 EEE4 8D7F PGP Key http://knm.yi.org/matt-pgp.html

I've never seen a sound card that didn't have the means to convert "speaker" outputs to "line" outputs in some way or other, mostly with jumpers. I don't for a minute doubt that they exist, but if you look, you may find that there are a couple of jumper that bypass the audio amplifier. Likewise, there should be some line inputs somewhere. (I suppose a motherboard with integrated audio might not have these option. The microphones that they use with most PC's are of such low quality that they're suitable only for speech, but the codecs are capable of much more. A look at the manual, if there is one, might shed light. My setup, which I've used for years for transcribing my old vinyls and open reel tapes to CD, has separate outs and ins for all these purposes, but I've heard of folks having to put attenuators on the microphone inputs. The tape outputs from your stereo should do fine. I normally use the TAPE-2 in and out jacks on my stereo for transcription purposes, hooking them to line in and line out at the PC. What troubles me is that there seems to be no software that really works to control shot noise. Various packages introduce all forms of distrortion, but I've never seen/heard one that improves anything. Sad, isn't it? If you find your system really doesn't support anything beyond just the speaker out and microphone in, you can probably get by with the microphone inputs, but need to put a couple of resistors in parallel with the speaker/headphone ouputs, and attempt, by whatever means are available, to set the outputs to a 200 mV p-p range by the choice of those resistors, taking your output from the junction between them. Impedance matching isn't terribly important, since the inputs at the PC are high-impedance, but the voltage levels have to be controlled to avoid clipping. Have you considered disabling the audio arrangement you have installed and replacing it, at least temporarily, with something over which you have more control? Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gene Ehrich" <gehrich(a)tampabay.rr.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 5:29 AM Subject: Re: Off Topic - stereo to PC question