" 11.9 on a G3/266 MT, 50 megs to the app. "

The Direct Download page is: http://www.zeta.org.au/~jbcarr/Download.htm, which also lists the performance of many machines in MiniCad. If you have a 300mhz G3, 300 or 350mhz Mach 5 604E and MiniCad I'd like to know your scores. Not sure if the benchmark macro will run with the MiniCad demo version, but it might (unless the benchmark does a save, export or print, which are disabled in the demo version). Download the Eval version of MiniCad at: http://www.diehlgraphsoft.com/products/MiniCAD/demo.html

Bottom Line Monitor Sale: David Goldman of Bottom Line sent word of a special sale on Micron B-Stock/refurbished monitors for my readers:

" DEMO15-2 B-Stock Micron 15GX 15" Monitor $149.99
http://www2.blol.com/bld_desc.t?edp=22861&level=l

DEMO17-2 B-Stock Micron 17FGx .26mm 17" Monitor $249.99
http://www2.blol.com/bld_desc.t?edp=22862&level=l

xlr8yourmac readers can take an additional $10 off the price.

Net cost is $139.95 for the 15" and $239.95 for the 17" Just price in the comments area of the order. "

Not sure what the shipping costs will be but this is about $30 and $60 (resp.) lower than the Macgurus sale posted late Friday on the same monitors, but MacGurus included free ground shipping for my readers.

Lightwave Benchmarks Feedback: Key Vaidya sent some comments on benchmarks:

" Mike -
One of your readers found a link to a Chris's Lightwave Benchmarks and was dismayed at the position of the lists of the G3. He thought we weren't doing so well. I went to the site and did some examining and found something quite different. The G3 CRUSHES EVERYTHING! The only machines that beat it in a single processor was the 550 and 600 mhz ALPHA. I think this should be clarified. Also I am very suspect of the Numbers used on the CPUMADNESS website. I did some checking at the www.spec.org web site and the numbers listed for the PII 400 didn't match up with any manufacturers numbers listed and they didn't list any sources for their information.

Thanks for the great news and info.
Key Vaidya"

I agree from looking at the madness site I'd consider it suspect.

BeOS and G3 CPU cards: I've gotten more feedback on BeOS Release 3 and G3 CPU cards:

" Hey Mike,
Finally got my BeOS R3 CD, it installed and works fine on my 9500 with PowerLogix PowerForce 275/275 running at 307/307 (it even recognizes the proper CPU and speed in the 'About' box).

Not much has changed it seems, and I've not been able to get the MacOS runtime environment SheepShaver http:www.sheepshaver.com to work totally yet.

I'll send in more info after I play with it more.
Later,
M. Lamoureaux "

Another Reader commented:

" Hi Mike
I couldn't load Be R3 on the NewerTech G3. However it loaded with a NewerTech 604/200 and when I changed to the 266 G3 all was well and works great.

My rig here:
7500 DAV motherboard, 198m ram, 4m vram, MacPicasso 540 & 3DOverdrive.

Still can't get MKlinux 2.1 or any of the 6 updates to run on the G3 even with the ResEdit trick to the extension..

Sorry to hear about Kay, hope she's better soon...... And You take care not to burn out, running your great site....
Cheers Pete"

Apple to adopt AGP Port: I've asked for this in my pleas to Apple (see my Year in Review) and apparently there will be a AGP video port in future Apple machines according to this C/NET story (thanks to Dan Kuraisa for the URL).

As I've said in the past, AGP may not be perfect but getting the video off the PCI bus is a good move, and AGP is a standard now, so they'd not have to fight to get a new standard, form factor, etc.. There is a AGP card explosion now on the PC, with some fast 8MB AGP cards for as little as $99 retail. Let's hope at least some of them will be made available for the Mac.

AGP 1X runs at the main bus speed, and there are 2X (133mhz) and 4X versions appearing now. ATI's RagePro chip is already 2X AGP compliant. 2X AGP triggers on the rising and falling edge of the 66mhz AGP clock. It requires SDRAM, as the AGP bus can use main ram for texture storage. Think of it as a fast, dedicated video bus from the CPU to main memory, without having to share PCI bandwidth with other busmastering cards. A good move for the future IMHO.

For more info on AGP, check out: http://www.agpforum.org/

Bootable CD's Feedback: The latest comments on previous posts on the issue from last week. (see out Tips page for a page on Toast Tips)

" One cavet about booting from the Disk Tools floppy to access the CD. The Apple CD-ROM extension must be in the system folder on the Disk Tools floppy. I trashed HardDrive Setup to make room on the disk. The Yamaha CD Writer is one that my company IT department bought. I had an APS CD Writer which worked flawlessly until the laser died. Sometimes you end up going backwards in the name of progress.
Peter Sterling "

I've posted a new Guest Review from Bob Dalley on the Bottom Line 300/300/1MB Railgun.

Audio News: Thad Brown, writer for my Bring in the Noise Mac Audio column, sends word of a new version of Cubase:

" There will be a version 4.0 of Cubase next month, Cubase is the absolute number one app in this house, so I am pretty keyed up. "

I can't wait to see his writeup of the new version.

IBM Drive Jumper Info: Kenny Wong sends news that his cold start problems with the IBM 9GB (DDRS-39130W 9ES) drive were due to a jumper setting:

" The startup mounting problem is solved !
Thanks for your suggestion.

The culprit lies in the omission of setting the Auto Spin Up jumper (J 5) properly.

In fact I was misled by the jumper information posted in the IBM Storage web site. The description of the jumper 5 setting is wrong in their notes. By putting in the jumper block, Auto Spin Up is "enabled" in this particular 9ES model, but not "disabled" as described in their notes (which is true for most other IBM HD models). I pick it up when I find the opposite is shown in one of the figures of the jumper function. "

Drive Tips: If you're having problems booting off a new SCSI drive that's slow to spin up, Doug Godfrey sent a tip:

" I found a shareware control panel called Timeout 1.0 that can adjust the Mac OS HD startup time to allow 7200/10000 RPM drives to spin up. I increased the spinup time from the default 15 sec. to 20 sec. and now can boot off of an IBM UltraStar 2XP 9.1 gig. "

I suspect that macdownload.com or shareware.com has the utility.

Internet Explorer 4.01 Feedback: Greg Santilli sent in a problem report:

" I installed this program on a g3/266 that was running 8.1 non hfs, over 4.0a. I connect to a streaming video site, that uses java code.

I ended up with repeated java errors that crashed the machine, and then on restart, that gave an incorrect address for half of my Raid, causing another crash.

This appears to be a software conflict in the new extensions, since 4.0a has run with no problems prior. 4.01 also will not run with apples java reader [MRJ] without problems. It crashed much more often with the Apple reader in place, then with the MVJ machine in place.

However, 4.0a doesn't crash at all wiallotmentth the apple reader in place.

4.01 will take a huge memory allotment with MVJ reader in place, then use all the memory, failing to purge memory, until the computer crashes. This when using it connected to a streaming video site.
gs"

I've tried to avoid the version 4 browsers personally.

Net News:

Steve Wozniak talks about thinking differently and how the Mac really won (as all computers now try to emulate it) at: http://www.dailycal.org/archive/05.13.98/news/wozniak.html. I've always had the utmost respect for the genius of Wozniak. A truly gifted man with a great personality that we all owe a great debt to, as without his original Apple design there would have been no Apple Computer.

Raymond Kam has some WWDC pictures posted at: http://hotel.cprost.sfu.ca/vanvr/Gallery/AppleUpdate98/May111998.html

There are plans for new Amigas and a OS upgrade according to this News.com story.

We need your G3 info! Reader "Oz" has offered to help with collecting data on Apple G3 system compatibility issues (hardware and software) of all types. Please send him any Apple G3 system compatibility info/issues you have or are aware of at: oz@bbdoperu.com

Search Tip! For searches on product names with mixed capitalization, use keywords like PowerBoost Pro (not Powerboost Pro or powerboost pro) and MaxPowr (vs maxpowr or Maxpowr). It seems that capitalization within the word on the site pages is throwing off the engine. Keep that in mind when searching for some of the odd product names.

Need Help? Before you send email for tech support, please check the Troubleshooting page or try searching the site (use quotes for exact matches! i.e. "mach 5" vs mach 5 which will match machine, 5, etc.) and to check the FAQ, Performance Basics, Links, and Forums for solutions to your problems or answers to tech support questions. They have a lot of good info and are a great source of help.

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