LAH-DEE-DAHH......

EYE-TV

The Keed.

Well, LAH-DEE-DAHH......
Despite utter confusion and stroke-effects, my dreaded MAC has Eye-TV on it; which means I can play a video-feed on it, like from our cable, or the DVR/VCR.
One given had to be performed in advance to the MAC to make it able to do Eye-TV.
An ordinary USB-port is too slow for video-feed; so the MAC needed a USB-2, high-speed USB.
This is via a card inserted into a PCI-slot. It has two USB-2 ports on it.
I relocated my MAC tower on the adjacent desk and installed the new card. Ain’t rocket-science.
There are card-slots; five of them. One has my old SCSI-card (“Skuzzy”) that drove my old scanner. I figure I’ll keep it to drive my Nikon negative-scanner, which is SCSI.
One slot has the monitor-card, with my monitor connector. That stays too.
So the USB-2 card went into slot #3, although there was something in the instructions about slot #1.
“What?” Linda said. “All the slots are the same.”
If top-to-bottom is 1 through 5, I could relocate the USB-2 card in slot #1.
But if it’s the other way around, the monitor-card is in slot #1, and I ain’t movin’ that.
We had no idea whether the machine was recognizing the USB-2 card.
A Windoze machine goes “Ah-HAH! I see a new peripheral. Do you wish to configure? Please wait while I figure the value of pi: OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMM......”
I ended up calling Mac Shack.
“Install a new PCI card into a slot, and OS-X configures it without the ‘Ah-HAH!’”
“Just click your ‘About-your-MAC’ button, and look at the PCI-slot info.”
Yep; sure enough. There’s a high-speed USB in slot #3.
“Ya won’t need to do anything; your MAC already configured it” (A CD had been included with a driver — but OS-X had the driver already.)
So then I set about relocating the USB-2 in the other slot, whereupon “About-your-MAC” said it was now in slot #5.
NEXT STEP: connect Elgato Eye-TV to USB-2, and insert its CD.
“Agree?” Click.
“Make-and-model?” Click.
“Enter serial-number.”
Done; no next.
NOW WHAT! The Elgato software installs the first time you connect things, but we couldn’t get past the serial-number (which we were reading directly off a prompt-card).
“You’ll have to call Elgato technical-support,” Mac Shack says.
I bring up the Elgato site, but no tech-support number — just a tech-support e-mail.
“Please log in.”
Oh, for crying out loud.
I click “register,” and did an online register with Elgato tech-support.
I then tried a log-in, but “Naughty-naughty! No such account.”
I gave up and walked our dog.
Our next guess was to connect a complete video-feed, connecting our cable to the Eye-TV.
Again; “Agree?” Click.
“Make-and-model?” Click.
“Enter serial-number.”
VIOLA! “Next” lights up.
No indication of any kind of needing a complete video-feed; in fact, the instructions seemed to indicate there shouldn’t be a video-feed.
Boom-zoom; we complete the software update (addition), which is also the online registration, but “no signal.”
I poke around, click “channels,” and it does a channel search of all the channels on the cable, just like a cable-ready VCR.
Channels are displayed as text, so I highlight Channel 13.
Suddenly Channel 13 flashes on the screen, but no sound.
We poke around, and a play-console is on the screen.
We notice what I thought was the “Stop-Record” button may also be a “mute” button, so we click that, and suddenly sound.
LAH-DEE-DAHH...... Channel 13 is playing through my ‘pyooter monitor and speakers.

I had a stroke October 26, 1993.

RE: “my dreaded MAC.....” All my siblings have PCs, so having a MAC is abhorrent.

“Linda” is my wife of nearly 40 years.

RE: “Please wait while I figure the value of pi: OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMM......” Windoze (“Windows”) PCs have a habit of always making you “Please Wait.” This is a pot-shot against my PC-using siblings.

“Mac Shack” in a small suburb east of Rochester is where I bought my Macintosh computer. It’s also where I bought the USB-2 card and Eye-TV.

“Elgato” is the maker of Eye-TV.