Computers

Workstations in the lab

The phonetics lab is equipped with three computer workstations and three sound attenuated booths for making recordings, running perceptual experiments, etc.

WORKSTATION ONE

Workstation one houses the main Windows computer which is connected to the other computers in booths 2 and 3. Perceptual experiments can be run from workstation one through all three soundbooths or in any other combination. The USBPre pre-amplifier rests on the stool with the monitor facing booth 1. There are labeled cords which will help you identify what needs to be plugged into where for your particular needs. This computer as well as the other two Windows PCs are able to run perception experiments using the software Presentation.

Figure 1. Workstation 1

WORKSTATIONS TWO AND THREE

Workstations 2 and 3 are available for everyday tasks including designing experiments in Praat, interacting with the server, writing materials and stimuli, analyzing data using R, tracing tongue and palate images uses Palataglossotron, etc. The computers at these two workstations are Linux machines. If you need to run a Windows application on one of these machines, for example Palataglosstron, use wine via the terminal. For other instructions on how to interact with the server, see that section of this manual: interacting with the server. You will also find the trace pads and headphones at each of these workstations. Please remember to log out of these machines when you have finished your session; they will lock anyone else out if you forget.

workstation2_NCSU

Figure 2. Workstations 1 (top) and 2 (bottom).

Moving files to/from the server

You copy files to the Phonetics Lab server using the terminal in Mac OS or Linux, or using a program like WinSCP in Windows.

To copy “yourfile.zip” to your home directory on the server, type this at the terminal prompt (“$” indicates what to type into the server, you don’t need to include it, but any spaces are important):

scp yourfile.zip yourunityid@phon.chass.ncsu.edu:

You should then be prompted for your password. There will not be dummy characters like on a web page so just type and hit enter.

To download “yourfile.zip” from your home directory on the server, type this at the terminal prompt:

scp yourunityid@phon.chass.ncsu.edu:yourfile.zip ./

If you use WinSCP, run the program and open a connection to phon.chass.ncsu.edu. You should be able to drag files back and forth.

Working with files that are on the server

In addition to moving files to and from the server, you can use various tools available on there, such as the forced aligner.

You can log in to the Phonetics Lab server using the terminal in Mac OS or Linux, or using a program like PuTTY in Windows.

From the terminal, type this to open an interactive session:

ssh yourunityid@phon.chass.ncsu.edu

Once you have accessed your directory personal directory on the server you can do things like view a list of your files by typing this:

ls