Mac Lab Machine Setup
Mac Lab Locations
Update : 25/7/2008 - All Behavioural studies in the Mac lab have now finished. The information on this page is purely for reference.
The future of testing with Macs at MACCS
Apple has made many changes to the Mac since 1999. Basically the change of operating systems from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X and architectures from PowerPC to Intel has stalled or ceased the development of most of the tools that MACCS currently uses for cognitive testing on the Mac.
MACCS is moving away from the Mac as a platform for cognitive testing. We plan to have all our labs running on Windows systems by mid 2007 and as a result have changed our current Mac setup to enable researchers to make this transition as easilly as possible.
Anyone still using PsyScript or PsyScope should not begin a study if they cannot have it finished by the 30th June 2007 which is when the last lab Macs will be replaced.
Enter Superlab
Cedrus, with Superlab version 4 have completely re-written their application to run on Windows and on Mac OS X as a universal application. Anyone doing cognitive testing on the Mac in 2006/2007 should use Superlab. When the Macs are replaced you will be able to run your experiments on the Windows PCs that replace them.
Alternatively if you want to run an experiment that cannot be done in Superlab you will have to reprogram it in something else that runs in the PC Labs.
MACCS has a number of licenses for Superlab, contact the Systems Administrator for access. In addition a run-only version of Superlab is currently installed on all the Mac and PC testing computers in MACCS.
Mac OS X local account restrictions
After Mac OS X is finished loading it automatically logs in as a user account. This account does not have access to install software or change system settings. If you want to run additional software you will have to use different computers. These computers are optimised to run PsyScript/PsyScope and Superlab well and seemingly trivial changes to the computer can affect performance.
Dual Boot Operating System
The hard disk in each lab machine has 2 operating systems.
- "Macintosh HD" which contains Mac OS X, the PsyScript 5.5d3 Beta, PsyScope X build 45, SuperLab 4.0.1 and other OSX applications.
- "MacOS9" which contains Mac OS 9.2.2 and PsyScript 5.3d3. There are no additional OS9 applications installed.
By default when you switch on the computer it will load Mac OS X.
To load Mac OS 9 turn on the computer and hold down the "option" key until a menu appears with two disk icons in the middle of the screen. Click on the disk named "MacOS9" and then click the "right arrow" icon.
If you need to use Excel or a script editor you will have to do so in Mac OS X. We will not be supporting additional applications under Mac OS 9.
Where to store script and result files
All scripts and data files should be stored in the "Data" disk.
Psyscript is an exception as it requires scripts to be in a certain folder. Experiments that are currently in progress should be stored in either;
- /Applications/PsyScript/Scripts/ on the "Macintosh HD" disk if using PsyScript with Mac OS X.
- /Applications (Mac OS 9)/PsyScript/Scripts/ on the "MacOS9" disk if using PsyScript with Mac OS 9.
Once a PsyScript study is finished all files from the Scripts folder should be removed from the computer or moved the the "Data" disk. This is because PsyScript does not work well when a large amount of scripts are stored in its Scripts directory.
There are shortcuts located in the dock for these locations. If files are stored outside of these locations they WILL BE DELETED when we re-image the machines periodically.
Getting and removing files from the computers
Each computer is equiped with a CD-RW combo drive so you can read CD discs as well as copy up to 650MB of data to a CD-R or CD-RW disc. There are also FireWire 400 and USB 1.1 ports available so you should be able attach most memory sticks or external hard drives. Note that FireWire transfer speed is about 30X faster than USB on these machines.
There is also a program called Fugu in the OSX dock (the puffer fish icon) that you can use to drag and drop files to and from a remote file server that supports secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) such as Currawong.
PsyScript desktop computer specifications
Operating System Mac OS 9.2.2 & Mac OS 10.4.8 Processor 700Mhz PowerPC G4 RAM 384MB Primary hard disk 40GB ATA Secondary hard disk none Optical Drive CD-RW Combo Floppy Drive None Zip Drive None Monitor 17" flat CRT Video Card Nvidia GeForce 2 MX AGP 32MB Button box interface none Microphone Internal Microphone * Other ports USB 1.1, FireWire 400 System Profile Report Superlab 4.0.2 (run-only) PsyScope X release 45 PsyScript 5.1d3 (OS9) and 5.5d3 Beta (OSX) Microsoft Excel 11.3 Smile Editor 3.0.6 SubEthaEdit Editor 2.1.2 GIMP 2.2.8 Windows Media Player 9.0 * In addition to what is listed above we have a limited number of griffin iMics available. The iMic is an device that allows you to connect non-USB microphones to a USB port. By default there is only the internal microphone available. The iMic will also only work with experiments run under Mac OS X.