Coming Tomorrow: I just installed the Apple G3 internal modem in my G3/MT 266, and took photos of each step. I'll have a tutorial for the G3-ZONE tomorrow. Also I hope to have a review of the Fuse capture card done in the next few days. With Kay still having problems walking, I'm spread a little thin but will have new reviews as soon as I can.

If you can't wait for results with the Fuse, search the site with the keyword fuse for beta tester reports and results I had with a slow Jaz drive as the capture disk.

Tomorrow's page will have several news items of interest, make sure you stop by. There will be a new 3D Logo contest starting as well for use on the new 3D column here. Stay tuned! [6:30 PM Update]

Anubis Raid 2.0 Released: Charismac has just released their Anubis Raid v2.0, which adds HFS+ compatibility. Upgrades from previous versions are $69, as are competitive upgrades. For all the details, read the press release. [2:00 PM Update]

Just my Luck... I finally get a mention in MacWeek and the URL is wrong. See the front cover of the latest issue. AccelerateYourMac.com. Note that someone has registered that domain now - which is the title of my site, but a different URL. If they title their site that way, I'm filing a protest. I'm leery it's an attempt to take advantage of all the hard work I've put into this site by taking advantage of the site name. I have filed a trademark application, but am still waiting (it's a 6 to 9 month process). Remember the original - www.xlr8yourmac.com ! [2:00 PM Update]

Ray Swartz of ATI reports that Norton Utilities speed disk 3.5.2 worked fine on his Apple G3 IDE drive:

" I found today's news about Norton SpeedDisk not working on the G3 odd, because just last night I used v3.5.2 successfully on the EIDE 4 MB internal drive on my G3/233 DT. It dismounted the drive and completed its task without problems. I am using MacOS 8.0 and I booted from an external drive.
Ray Swartz
Macintosh 3D Software Engineer
ATI Research, Inc."

Apple G3/Disk Optimizers: Michael Baker wrote with notes on several utilities:

" After noticing some serious fragmentation on my internal drive on my Apple PowerMac G3/233 DT, I decided to optimize my internal drive- something I haven't done since purchasing the G3. This led me to two discoveries.

1) Norton SpeedDisk 3.5.x (and the other Norton Utilities as well, for that matter) still doesn't know how to deal with anything other than SCSI drives... It unmounts the drive during the process and immediately reports that it can't find the drive...I ended up rebooting to remount the drive, as none of the Norton tools could see it anymore.

2) MacTools Pro 4.0's optimization tools will happily nuke your data. Dragged out MacTools Pro 4.0 as MacTools has always been the superior tool for quickly and easily fixing file and drive structure problems. Not sure whether it was the newer OS, slight changes in HFS (I've still avoided HFS+) or just the phase of the moon, but I found that after cancelling the optimization partway through, my drive was 3.6 gigs lighter. Nothing I tried could recover the data.

Luckily backups exist, but this could pose a major problem for other readers. Thanks for passing this along and keep up the great job with the site!
Michael Baker"

I've always been overly cautious with disk tools and new systems or OS versions. [1:00 PM Update]

Jake Williams wrote in reply to today's earlier post regarding master/slave support in Macs:

"Hey there again mike,
You are right about the IDE controllers. They have always supported two devices. Even since the 580ís and 630ís. The problem is with the Macosís driverís. At least it always has been. Iíve know people to have two IDE drives installed in a performa 6400 and access the other drive from a linux port, but I canít remember if it was LinuxPPC or MkLinux. I have always wondered why the MacOS did not see slave drives. My two cents,
Jake Williams"

Apple's InfoAlley has a new article (#34505) regarding Mac OS 8.1: Energy Saver off by 10 minutes on Shut Down [1:00 PM Update]

PowerBook Duo System for Sale: In order to raise funds I'm selling the Duo 270c:

• PowerBook Duo 270c with 2300 logic board upgrade (100mhz 603e)
• 16MB RAM/240MB HD (OS 8.1 installed)
• 14.4 internal model
• Apple MiniDock (these sell for $399)
• External Floppy drive
• Dual Charger and AC adpater

The Duo needs a motherboard battery replacement (battery is included) and the 3 included batteries don't have a lot of life in them but otherwise it's in excellent condition. If you're interested, make me an offer.

" Hi Mike,
You probably already know, but qt3.com is a really cool new site dedicated to Quicktime3. Their samples of the Sorenson codec are excellent. It looks like Sorenson should replace the uses for Cinepak.

I'm going to get the 1984 commercial in Sorenson. :)

Their samples pages also have all of the recent Apple commercials in the Sorenson codec, so they are much better quality than the ones some of us d/l'd a while ago. Higher frame rates (24 and 30) are pretty reasonable for web and CD-ROM w/Sorenson compression.
have fun,
-ryan

(The Bill Gates movie is interesting, but it looked like every bone in his body was resisting. imo....)"

ramBunctious v1.3 is now available at: http://www.kagi.com/rambunctious/. This shareware Ramdisk utility is hailed as the best out there and v1.3 adds several new features requested by users such as:

• ramBunctious can now be fully controlled by AppleScript. There are several sample scripts to give examples of using ramBunctious via this powerful interface.
• A RAM-only checkbox is available when creating RAM disks, so no space is necessary on the hard drive for the image file when creating new RAM disks .
• ramBunctious now remembers the name of the RAM disk volume, even when it's RAM-only.
• The documentation display mechanism has been significantly improved.

ramBunctious also has the following features:

• You can have several RAM disks mounted simultaneously, limited only by memory available.
• ramBunctious has a "write-through" option. When activated, everything written to the RAM disk is saved to a (real) file. This means that the next time you mount the RAM disk, all the contents are still there. This helps protect against data loss in the event of a crash or power failure.
• ramBunctious uses normal application memory. This means that when you're done using a RAM disk, that memory is available for other applications to use. In other words, you don't have to reboot to reclaim the memory.
• Each RAM disk may be configured to be mounted automatically during the computer's startup process. - These options, and more, are fully user-configurable for each RAM disk via a status/settings window. In addition to the settings, the status window includes LED-like access indicators that flash when the RAM disk is being read from or written to.

" A friend of mine (David Brown) gave me an interesting speed tip. If you set up a Ram Disk as a web browser cache it will speed up browsing greatly. However, it used to be that on unmounting or shutting the computer down the contents of the Ram Disk would dissapear. What David realized is that Rambunctious 1.3 will save the contents of the Ram Disk as a disk image. Making the cache available for use at subsequent sessions.

Between using IE 4.01 and this trick I notice a great speed increase in web browsing."

I think the utility is well worth the $12 shareware fee. [12:00 PM Update]

More BeOS/8600 Info: Jason Chen wrote with his experience with BeOS DR2 and a 8600:

"Hi Mike,
In case you're interested, I tried BeOS PR2 on an 8600/250. As it was an unsupported system, I e-mailed Be about it, and they said it would probably work, but it was at my own risk. So I tried it, and most everything worked. It showed my processor speed as 83 MHz, though. But as I didn't play with BeOS very much, I can't tell you much more than that. I think I know why it reported 83 MHz for my Mac and 100 MHz for the 8600/300. With the inline cache, the system bus as seen by the processor is effectively sped up to 100 MHz in the Mach5 systems. So the bus multiplier on a 8600/250 is 2.5, and the bus multiplier on a 8600/300 is 3. (Byte's clock speed applet that came with ByteMark confirmed this on my 8600/250... 250 MHz processor, 100 MHz bus as seen by the processor.) With no information about the Kansas motherboard and the processor types (or perhaps with BeOS thinking a 100 MHz bus on a Mac certainly must be in error), BeOS apparently uses a default bus speed of 33 MHz, the bus speed of a BeBox. Keep up the good work! I love your site.
-Jason"

Developers give MacOS strategy a "Thumbs Up" says this ZD/NET article [12:00 PM Update]

New PowerLogix Speed Control: Powerlogix has released a new update to their CPU speed reporting utility. It now will show CPU temperature as well as CPU, cache and bus speeds. They've given me the OK to mirror it here as well. Click here to download the utility from this site.

They also commented on the method used to read the temperature:

" The PowerPC 750 has a thermal register that we poll. The processor chip has a thermistor built into it; we are just reporting what is in the register. We aren't doing anything except looking up data in that register and displaying it; all other software does the same thing.

My Powerbook reports between 96 and 100 C. Keep in mind this is the cpu junction temp internal to the chip. If you look on Mot or IBM's site they might have info on this register."

I'm still seeing 52 deg. C readings on my G3/266MT, and other owners report temperatures from 26 deg C to 84 deg C. There has to be some cause for this wild spread on the Apple G3 systems. I'm still betting it's something to do with the CPU supply voltage variation from system to system.

New G3s to Support Slave IDE drives? Henri Baccouche wrote saying he'd heard that recent production G3s have IDE slave capability:

" Dear Mike,
I just learned that PowerMacintosh G3 CPUs coming off the production line in May , now have Master/Slave EIDE ability. That is a second EIDE drive can be installed. Before it was replacement only. It takes the special twisted cable, etc. [Standard IDE does not require a twisted cable - only PC floppies did this. PC IDE cables are std 40 pin ribbon cables.-Mike]

The tech docs I have on the Gossamer design don't discuss this issue, but I'm pretty sure they must have made changes to the I/O controller (Heathrow) to make this possible. Probably to the ATA Manager software, too, though maybe the support was already in the software, in preparation for future hardware.

This will save a lot of money. This means that the original UDMA 4 or 6 GB drive can remain as a boot drive (partitioned if needed) and then a 11.5 GB EIDE drive can be installed for data. A 11.5 GB will hold 50 minutes of DV data and cost less than $500 to install.

The task now is to figure out which serial # is the start of the May production. I am interested in the 233 MT serial #. Btw, do you know what the serial number / letters mean?

Regards,
Henri Baccouche"

I suspect the hardware supported slaves all along, as the IDE standard spec (and every IDE controller I've seen) has supported master/slave devices since say one.

Micro DC20/Apple G3 Problems (again): I'm not sure what the real problem is here, but months ago I received a story from a G3 owner stating that the Miro DC20 capture card did not work. Last week I received two G3 owner reports the card does work. Now I've just received another problem report - stating that Miro verified there is a problem.

" Hi there,
I have a G3 266 mhz with a miro dc20 card and it does not work. I had used this miro dc20 card in my 7500 and was very pleased with it. I have been told by miro that the dc20 is not compatible with the G3. Any suggestions?
vega "

I wonder if this is related to the G3 PCI problem that Magma told me about months ago. They were to send a PCI Expansion chassis for review but stopped shipment when they said a PCI problem was discovered in the Apple G3 and PowerBook G3 and that they were waiting for a fix. Possibly later G3's have the fix, but that's just a wild guess.

Adam Jobson wrote to comment on the source of the Spec FP and Int scores shown at CPU Madness:

" the numbers listed @ cpumadness are directly off of Motorola's page, where they are listed as estimates. It should also be noted that those are without an L2 cache.

naturally, both of these brings into question the validity of listing this as the result you would get off an Apple PowerMac G3/300. cheers,
Adam Jobson"

CDR Tips: The latest comments on CD-ROM burning. (see out Tips page for a page on Toast Tips)

" FWIW, I recommend unchecking the "Fast" option if someone is using a CD-R or RW drive. I guess Toast had a problem with CDT's caching. It simply cached the wrong info. and my mpeg-audio (mp3) CD had nothing but skips and data placed in the wrong place. It's a pain to go back through some 180 tracks to find which ones were cached and burned incorrectly.

cache 'n burn,
-Ryan Tanaka "

" Mike,
Regarding a bootable OS8.1 floppy disk with a CD extension - do you remember the the CD-Sunrise extension I sent you a while back? Well, it's so small and works with almost all brands that it's a natural for adding to the boot floppies. I did and it works flawlessly with my Toshiba. Bye and get some rest! :)
Ray Hill "

I've now mirrored the freeware extension here at the site. (Click here to get it.)

Railgun 300/300 Reader Review: I've updated the review from Bob Dalley on the Bottom Line 300/300/1MB Railgun with Macbench graphs.

Audio Column Update: Thad Brown talks about news at the AES convention, a new version of CUBASE and more in the latest Bring in the Noise.

MacWeek Name/Focus change feedback: Due to the length of the responses, I decided to post a separate page of reader comments on the issue. Watch it - some are hot. It's in the latest Talk Back.

BeOS Notes: As a followup to comments from this weekends BeOS/G3 reports, a reader sends an update on platform support:

" Again because of Apple, BeOS R3 does not fully support the new 8600/9600's motherboard/cpu. It does whoever work, just some bugs/glitches which will probably never be fixed. A friend of mine got BeOS working on his 8600/300, but he had many glitches, one of them which i can remember was BeOS reporting it was only running at 100mhz :/
later,
justin"

More Bootable CD Feedback: Rod Paine responded to Friday's post regarding the Yamaha CDR400, Apple's CD-ROM extensions, and bootable CDs:

" Mike,
I don't know what specifically Peter Sterling's problem is, but were using a Yamaha CDR-400t with v1.0m firmware and Toast 3.5.4 and have Apple's CD-ROM v5.4.2 in the CD's OS and have no trouble at all creating bootable CD's... which even boot from CyberDrive and other low-cost non-Apple firmware CD-ROM drives.

I wonder if he has installed a "Universal" Mac OS 8.1 on his CD Master drive? This is what we use so that our clients can boot anything. We burn CD's of the client's fully configured system folder, so they can recover quickly if they have a major failure. But, the OS on the CD is a stripped-down "Universal" 8.1. We're burning from two different drives, one with Apples v8.0.9 driver and the other with an FWB HDT 2.5.2 driver. Both drives have no trouble creating bootable CD's with Toast 3.5.4 and with Apple's CD-ROM 5.4.2 involved. FWIW
-Rod
ASTEC Company, Inc.
Purcellville, Virginia "

If missed the weekend news here's some highlights:

Sunday: Bottom Line monitor sale, Minicad benchmark results, Spec Benchmarks, Beos/G3 Cpu card feedback, Apple's adoption of AGP video card slots, IBM 9GB Drive jumper tips, HD Spinup utility, IE 4.01 bug report and a link to WWDC photos .

Saturday: AIO Mac photo, Minicad benchmark links, Emailer database rebuild tip, G3 mixed SCSI/IDE feedback, Q & A on OrangeMicro's $399 P200 CPU card and details on Apple's P166 card with a link to a site that lists software that won't run on it due to no 32-Bit drivers.

Net News:

• CD Rom Burners Compared (PC World)
• Quicken offers free investors tools (PC World)

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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