Re: CU-SeeMe on "Old" Macs

John Ingham (johningh@tafe.sa.edu.au)
Tue, 4 Feb 1997 15:44:24 +0930

There have been several questions lately about whether older Macs such as a
Macintosh IIfx and a Performa 68030 could be used with any success with
CUSeeme 0.85b1. I used my LC-1 (which has a 68020 processor) for a year or
so before I upgraded to a 7200 and although the interface was a little
sluggish, the LC-1 received video and audio as well as the 7200. The only
performance problem I had was the in-ability to send audio; the poor 68020
just didn't have the grunt to compress audio in real time.

It must be realised that CU-SeeMe over a 28,800 modem gives nothing like
broadcast television! Depending on the power of the computer at the
compressing end, the complexity of the image to be compressed, and the
amount of movement of the original, you might see up to 6 fps in bursts.
But 0.5 to 1 fps is much more the norm.

Also, when you are connected to a reflector your receive bandwidth is
divided by the number of open windows you have. I have found that some of
the slowest updating windows have indeed come from users with very fast
connections.

Try this. Make *direct contact* with another CU-SeeMe user who is
connection is similar to your own, rather than via a reflector, and gauge
the performance of your system then. And when sending audio, freeze your
video first if you want your other party to have any chance of being able
to understand what you say.

John Ingham
Supervisor, Technical Operations, CALS (Centre for Applied Learning Systems)
Adelaide Institute of TAFE (Training and Further Education)
GPO Box 1872 Adelaide South Australia 5001
Ph: +61 8 8207 8550 Fax: +61 8 8207 8552
Email: johningh@tafe.sa.edu.au
Web Site: http://www.tafe.sa.edu.au/video-conf/
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