Audacity Forum

Supposing you didn't get the battery polarity wrong:

Try doing a PRAM reset: hold option, command, p and r while booting until you hear the chime for a second time.

If that doesn't work, do a deep discharge by putting the battery in with the wrong polarity for a minute. Then change to the right polarity.

Can also be a problem with ram. Get the ram out, clean contacts with a hard eraser (like a pencil eraser), clean off any remains, replace, test.

Also, be patient. It could still decide to boot after 20 mins. OSX could be doing some minor repairs to the disk in the background. Or the disk could be failing...

But why the battery? Macs work fine without it, except for the date and time...

cyrano wrote:But why the battery? Macs work fine without it, except for the date and time...

Every time I powered up I was getting the 'calender/clock not set to the right time' message so I thought I'd just change the battery out. I've now attempted everything you suggested (including leaving it on for 20 mins - I got a BAD burning smell and I'm thinking I've fried something!) In light of this I've decided to pass on TRYING to convert my songs with this particular machine and will endeavour to dig out an (again old!) Advent laptop running Vista to try that. Oh well, some you win - some you lose eh?
Thanks again to everyone for their help, shame it hasn't worked out for me where this particular machine is concerned. PS: If this laptop doesn't work (if my memory serves me well the reason I retired it in the first place was because I wasn't getting on so great with Vista OS!) does anyone have any recommendations for a laptop that will 'just work' with Audacity giving me 24bit conversions (oh, and 'Power Director 8' come to think about it - these are the two main things I would be using it for).

7track wrote:recommendations for a laptop that will 'just work' with Audacity giving me 24bit conversions

Windows laptops (except high end) do not come with separate line-level inputs, just a mic input that might or might not be "compatible" (detect and adjust for line level stereo).

So in that case you want a USB interface to go with the laptop, such as http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Sound ... Interfaces. Most but not all there are 16-bit. Read the descriptions or follow the product links.


Gale