Old Pictures of the MLL

(Old) MLL Pictures—None of the equipment pictured here is still in use!

Original MLL machines: Apple PowerMac 5260

MLL 257 Picture

Scroll right to view entire image >> This is the large lab with 17 student stations, all but two facing the outside of a horseshoe shape. The teacher station is behind the viewer. There is one Apple LaserWriter Select 360 (on the LocalTalk link) in this lab. The door on the right connects to the older Mac lab.

Scroll right to view entire image >> This is the small lab, also with 16 student stations. There is an island in the center with 8 workstations back-to-back and one teacher station facing viewer. The room is too small for a full horseshoe shape arrangement of student stations. The door to the left leads into the development /administration office.

Computer Lab

Scroll right to view entire image >> This is our first-generation Mac lab: 18 LC 475, 520, and 575s on a daisy-chained LocalTalk network.

Administrative Station

The network administrator and primary development station (Power Mac 8500/150) with 3DO MPEGXpress encoder to the right and the NT data server on the far right.

See old iMac lab tour

	One of the development stations (Power Mac G3/233) with scanner (HP ScanJet 4p) and OCR software Xerox TextBridge Pro (replacing OmniPage Pro 6.0 from Caere). Teachers use the (blue) Zip drive to transfer files to and from home. The APS 2X CD-R ("burner") using Adaptec Toast software under the Zip is used to create archive CDs of MLL material or images of student workstation hard drives. The cassette deck on the right is for digitizing audiotape material or radio broadcasts. The "Tower of Babel" and binders on the left hold some of the custom MLL primers on applications and activities.
A hand-held vacuum with assorted nozzles is essential to a healthy lab. This one, the Metro Data Vac/2 by Metropolitan Vacuum Company, was about $215 from W.B. Mason office supply.
	Radio Design Labs' Stick-On preamps boost the Koss headset's mic-level input to a line-level input, which is required when using a mic input other than Apple's proprietary PlainTalk mic, which has a slightly longer mini plug that taps into DC power directly off the motherboard. Koss SB/30 stereo headsets are durable and cheap ($30), but the mic is only of fair quality. In our experience, Koss's record of delivery leaves much to be desired.
Since installing the preamps at left, Griffin Technologies has come out with the NE Mic Audio Adapter, a non-powered $20 mic-to-line level PlainTalk adapter that works somewhat better, except that it did not have a hardware or software gain controller. [Note: we now use Plantronics DP 500 USB headsets with mics.]