• Fixed a bug (hopefully) where the FAT version would not launch on systems < Mac OS 8.5 reporting something like “The application "Coaster (FAT)" could not be opened because "InterfaceLib--PBXGetVolInfoSync" could not be found.”
Coaster 1.0.5 - August 8th, 1999
• Fixed Bug where Balloon Help in the Recording Window would not always show properly/at all.
• Reworked the "Send Email/Bugreport…" command under the Apple menu to now place a file on the desktop which you can attach to your email (instead of placing the profile onto the clipboard).
• Fixed a bug where the recording destination folder would not be found on relaunch when you moved it in the hierarchy or renamed it or any of its parents. (Uh-oh - one should follow Apples's guidelines and NOT use absolute paths, but Alias records...)
• Automatic Recording with the split action set to "Pause Recording" didn't work correctly. This has been fixed.
Coaster 1.0.4 - June 11th, 1999
• NEW FEATURE: Added a "Send Email/Bugreport…" command under the Apple menu. This will gather important system information and provide you with instructions on how to paste them into emails you send me. PLEASE USE THAT FEATURE!
• NEW FEATURE: When holding down the Option Key while starting a recording (e.g. by clicking the record button), the maximum preroll time available is used. So even if you are late in clicking the record button, you will get the 2 seconds of audio before that time (value for 44.1K/Stereo/16 Bit).
Coaster 1.0.3 - April 12th, 1999
• Fixed bug where selecting maximum or certain other values of preroll in Automatic Recording would result in scrambled audio files (occurred only on stereo and/or 16 bit files).
• Fixed bug where selecting maximum preroll doubled some recording portion in the beginning.
• Improved performance for preroll feature. Now, 2.9 seconds of preroll work well on a 25MHz/68040 machine, whereas in earlier versions this would only work up to around 400ms without audio dropouts. If you plan to use long preroll times, make a test recording beforehand to check that your machine is fast enough.
• Fixed bug where quitting Coaster would turn on PlayThrough and set maximum Input Gain, resulting in very loud, distorted sound coming out of your Mac's speaker and blowing your head off. [Thanks to M. Dicker]
• Worked around a problem where the Split-Feature would sometimes not work on a Centris 650 (and probably others) with System 7.5.5 (or earlier; maybe also on later versions).
• NEW FEATURE: (Left/Mono) Input Gain can be set using Cmd-<UpArrow>/Cmd-<DownArrow> keyboard commands.
• Fixed some wrong ballon help messages.
Coaster 1.0.2 - March 27th, 1999
• Fixed two memory leaks occurring after a recording.
• Now, when there is too little memory to start the recording, an informative alert is displayed. Previously, recording simply didn't start (without any indication of the reason).
• NEW FEATURE: New display: Number of recorded files during the current session. So you can see at a glance if Automatic Recording did what it should and created that many files as you intended.
• Elapsed time reset to zero when a recording is deleted.
• Remaining Time wasn't displayed correctly on volumes with more than 2 GB of free space. Now, this display works up to 4GB. Over 4GB, only ?:??:??:??? is displayed. I'll see if I can come up with a workaround in the future that works with more than 4GB of free space. (This intermediate fix only works an systems that support the PBXGetVolInfoSync() toolbox call!)
Coaster 1.0.1 - March 17th, 1999
• implemented strict asynchronous IO chaining. That is, at no time there is more than 1 pending entry in the async IO queue. This now is fully according Apple's advice. This was done in the hope that this'll fix the crashes when using the split feature occurring on some PowerMacs running Mac OS 8.5.x.
• NEW FEATURE: The Recording Window now accepts drags from the finder (folders and files). The dragged (err, dropped...) folder is set as the recording destination folder. This should also work during recording, so that you can change the recording destination on the fly (in case the disk becomes full or whatever...).
• Added Tutorial on setting the Automatic Recording Dialog settings appropriately.
• Factored out the History from the Coaster Manual.
• Added a short description for use on Download sites.
Coaster 1.0 (First official public release) - March 5th, 1999
• FINALLY FIXED! Thanks to Adam Siegel, I finally discovered what prompted the paramErr (-50) when opening the recording window on some machines. The reason is a bug in Apple's(!) Sound Input Device Driver that returns bogus values. So far, this has been confirmed on PM7200 and PM7500. For these machines, I have provided a workaround (instead of stereo gain, I support only the functioning, "normal" gain setting which is equal for both channels - you can record in stereo, of course!). I do this by checking the machine Gestalt value. If you experience a similar behaviour on your machine this means it has also that buggy driver, but this is not yet known to Coaster. There is a simple procedure to make Coaster work on your Mac by adding an entry into the BUGs resource #1000. For detailed instructions on how your Mac can be added to the BUGs resource, please send an email indicating EXACTLY the model you are using. Instructions on how to modify Coaster will be sent to you as soon as possible, normally within one day. I need you to email me, as I must update my "buggy Macs" database with every known faulty Mac so that new releases already have the list 'built-in'.
• NOT YET FIXED: reported crashes in file splitting on PowerMacs with OS 8.5.1. I have no clue...
• Once again, setting the root volume as recording destination is correctly displayed and stored in the preferences. (This was broken in 0.9.9b)
Coaster 0.9.9b (…)
• Internal change: Moved to MacZoop 2.0.
• Now requires Appearance Manager (≥1.0.1) Download it from <ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/Development_Kits/Appearance_SDK_1.0.3_v1.0.1.sit.hqx>.
• some minor graphical updates to Mac OS8 HIG
• provides better error reports
• graphical errors when using AppleScript fixed
• NOT YET FIXED: reported crashes in file splitting on PowerMacs with OS 8.5.1
• NOT YET FIXED: A reported bug where paramErr (-50) occurs. I simply couldn't track down the problem so far as I cannot reproduce this error.
Coaster 0.9.8b (grmpff!)
• Rudimentary AppleScript™ support. For details, see the demo script in the AppleScript folder.
• Added possibility to save and retrieve complete recording settings in a file (includes the settings of the Automatic Recording Dialog). Launching Coaster by double clicking a settings file opens the recording window automatically. Useful if you have several scenarios (CD, speech, radio, ...) with different settings for gain, sample rate, channels or destination folder.
• In the About-Dialog, additional info on the available features of the recording hardware is displayed (e.g. mono/stereo possibility, mono/stereo gain, AGC etc.)
Coaster 0.9.7b (internal version, never released)
Coaster 0.9.6b (Feature complete really really... well, you guess it)
IMPORTANT: Delete Preferences from earlier versions!
• Stereo input gain bug now (hopefully!) really fixed.
• New Feature: Balloon Help in all dialogs and the Coaster menus.
• New Dialog: Keyboard Shortcuts, accessable from the Mac's global Help Menu.
• New Feature: Units in Automatic Recording Settings dialog now saved in preferences.
Coaster 0.9.5b (Feature complete really final Final Beta)
• On Macs providing independent gain settings for left and right channels, the Link-option and setting gain values would not work reliably.
• New Feature: Cmd-click the level meter to toggle the headroom display between available dezibels and the maximum absolute level that occurred since the last headroom display reset (by just clicking into the level meter display). Useful for obtaining useful values for setting parameters in the Automatic Recording Settings-Dialog.
Coaster 0.9.4b (Feature complete final Final Beta)
• Record Paths that are abbreviated in the dialog window display are not retrieved correctly from Preferences.
• Record Path abbreviation was not calculated correctly.
Coaster 0.9.3b (Feature complete Final Beta)
• OpenFinderFolder() causes to send back an error -1708 (Apple Event not handled), though everything worked fine. (Don't know what the problem is. Simply ignoring it for now.)
• Clicking the Record Folder Path in the Record Dialog opens the folder in the Finder and brings the Finder to the foreground. (Code taken from Snippets. Why do we get an "event not handled" error?!?!)
• Launching Coaster w/o Prefs, opening record window, closing window, reopening it: New Creator for files is set to garbage value. (lastCreator was not initialized in constructor. Now initialized to app's signature.)
• Clicking the "Split File Now!" button creates a new file immediately, into which recording resumes. Subsequent naming of "the file" will create files with the given name as prefix and a count (starting from 1) will be appended.
• Gain levels displayed below Gain sliders. Clicking the value sets 1.0 for both Gain Sliders (i.e. FLAT).
• The window is no longer closed after a recording is saved/cancelled. Close the window with the Close button or the Close command.
• Cancel renamed to Delete. It deletes the last recording(s).
• Setting the record folder to the root level of a volume, only a colon : is displayed, but the volume name is missing. (Bug in MacZoop.)
• Naming batch of files, where name already exists: Error displayed for every file, but no possibility to correct name. FIXED.
• Cancelling out of Record Folder Selection Dialog leaves all Record Window Items disabled. (Bug in MacZoop: gWindowManager->Activate() in ChooseFolder() in wrong place: It gets not called if the dialog is dismissed by clicking exit.)
• Auto Recording Feature. (see above for description)
• Eliminate Clicks option. (see above for description)
Coaster 0.9.2b
• Recording in 8 Bit/Mono/48kHz caused Quadra660AV/880AV to freeze. This is hopefully fixed now.
• If clipping indicator is lit and new clipping occurs, clipping sound was not restarted. Now, everytime a clipping occurs, clipping sound is played (if the option is enabled), even if the clipping indicator stays lit for the whole time.
• Entered value in "x samples is clip" now validated after input. If out of range, warning appears and previous value gets set. Range: 1-999.
• Coaster now performs a thorough check if all capabilities which are required for the recording job are present on the Macintosh where you run it. If there are not, it tries to give a descriptive message telling you what's wrong or missing.
• Compiled with new MacZOOP framework (1.8.2).
• Window position now remembered in preferences. On reopening the window, a check is performed if the window is completely visible on the screen. If it is not, it is repositioned to a default position on the main screen.
Coaster 0.9.1b
• After a recording, when naming the temporary file, the Finder-Window or, even worse, the desktop does not show the new name of the file. (Finder updates its information only when the volume modification date is changed. So now, after having renamed the temp file, we create a temp file and immediately delete it. This duzit.)
• Record command is not dimmed when recording is not possible on the corresponding machine. (Now, we check if we can open the default input sound device. If we can‘t, the menu command is disabled.)
• Play-Through switching did not work reliably. Play-Through not saved and restored correctly from Preferences.
• FRAMEWORK: When activating window by clicking title bar and then moving mouse after havin released the mouse button, after window is topped it is moved to the then current mouse location. Corrected.
• The application name was changed to ”Coaster“, anticipating the planned CD-Recording feature: The term coaster is used for CD recordables that got trashed by errors during CD recording. (New Name: ”Coaster“; New Creator: ’rC#1‘, scheduled for registration at Apple.)
• When closing Record window, previous Sound Input Device settings (in effect just before opening the window) should be restored. (Saved at entry, restored in the window destructor.)
• You can set the creator of a new file by editing the Application file with ResEdit: Change the Resource 'DATA' #1000 accordingly. (At the moment: Movie Player (TVOD))
• Resource File Refnum not restored when writing to preferences file. (Resulted in not finding resources or writing preferences into application file.)
• Preferences File not named correctly. Now: 'Coaster Preferences'.
• Record Window position is not remembered between openings of the window (always alert position).
• Application Help Balloon Text is wrong.
• Clipping sound smaller, shorter and more appropriate (probably:-)).
• Disable opening of AIFF files. (For the moment, until we can do something useful with them.)
• Got confirmation from Apple for being able to use ’rC#1‘ as Creator code. (rC#1 creator code approved by Apple.)
• Preferences now in resource 'pref' #1000.
Coaster 0.9d (originally named "Burger")
• First development version for courageous beta testers - thanks Markus!
