I'm using a mac without enough memory (or patience) to use RealAudio.
There;s no chance of my employers increasing the memory on my
computer, so what other software is available that will play realaudio
streaming media?

---

Request for Question Clarification by xemion-ga on 28 May 2002 09:22 PDT

How much ram do you have?  What macOS are you running?  Please clarify
this and then I can get back to you on your alternative options.

---

Clarification of Question by els24uk-ga on 28 May 2002 11:21 PDT

64mb ram, mac os 8.6 on a blue G3, running realplayer basic 8. plenty
of virtual memory. there's no problem installing my own software and i
have enough knowledge to do it. there's not an issue with line speed
or disk space.  the only reason my computer's not up to the job is
that it doesn't have enough memory. my employers won't pay for more
memory and nor will i.

Hi,

It's frustrating using an older computer sometimes, isn't it?  I had
the same problem once upon a time ago with a PC.

Because of the proprietary steaming method and the fact that Real
gives away basic players, you aren't going find competitors out there
making products to compete with the RealPlayer.  Even the Windows
Media Player currently being distributed plays almost any type of
file, yet it won't play RealAudio.

However, Real does maintain an archive of its older versions, some of
which have much lower system requirements.  One of them should solve
your problem. You can find the archive here:
http://proforma.real.com/real/player/blackjack.html

Unfortunately, Real doesn't provide a quick and easy way of finding
out the system requirements of all the old versions without
downloading them first; however, they do need fewer resources than
RealPlayer 8 does.  To give you one comparison, RealPlayer 8 (the one
you have) requires 32 MB RAM, while RealPlayer 5 needs only 8 to 16 MB
RAM, depending on your modem speed.
http://service.real.com/help/faq/rp8/rpb8inst.html#sysreqs
http://service.real.com/help/faq/rp5sysreq.html#mac

At a former employer's office, I used a legacy version of the
RealPlayer (version 4, I think) on a PC with no problems, although a
few streams (especially video ones) using new compression methods were
unavailable.  But most audio streams should work fine.

I hope you enjoy listening to the audio!

mvguy

a good answer, tho not really the one i wanted - i wanted an
alternative player, which simply isn't available. older versions don't
work, but suggestion gratefully received.

Dear els24uk-ga,

you didn't tell any information about your employer's mac and maybe
you shouldn't install any software to it without permission.

If you don't know how to find out the information about the operating
system version, RealPlayer version, amount of memory, available hard
disk space and the speed of the internet connection, you should ask
someone you know who can take a look at the computer to find out is
that computer up to requirements.

According to Webopedia you can play RealAudio streaming media only
with RealPlayer. Do you have one installed?
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RealAudio.html

A Beginner's Guide to the Mac
http://www.macoptions.com/os85/

Els24uk,

From experience, I know that your particular setup should not have a
problem running RealPlayer 8 Basic.

64 MB of RAM (especially if you have virtual memory on) should be
enough for the OS, a web browser or something else open, as well as
RealPlayer. I would not recommend downgrading to an earlier version of
the Player.

Have you tried increasing the allocated memory size?

Find the Realplayer folder and open it. You should see a "Realplayer"
alias (with the name in italics) and a folder called "RealPlayer
Files". Open the "RealPlayer Files" folder. In there, you want to find
the application that is named "RealPlayer", among all of its .dll and
.chl files. Click it once. Go to the File menu -> Get Info -> Memory.
Set the Preferred Size to 12288. Close the window.

Now try using RealPlayer.

If this still doesn't work, you may have a conflict or system software
issue. You may need to reinstall your system software, and merge your
old system into it. A real hassle, but it works almost every time.
Unfortunately, it's a big pain, and if you don't know what you're
doing, you could end up losing files. Perhaps it's best to take the
machine to a service provider in such a case.

Good luck.

I don't see what the big deal about adding more memory is.  It's a
simple and cheap procedure.  I usually use crucial.com's memory
selector to find what type of ram I need and then search for ram with
those specs using mysimon.com.

Earlier versions of real player don't work with many files.  Most
files require 8 or higher.