I've added a G3 Internal Modem installation tutorial to the G3-ZONE.
ATI Beta 3D drivers: A post in the video card forum says the latest X-Plane update has the new beta ATI 3D drivers
that add fog, better transparency, etc. Pete Plank reported he's seen no problems with them.
Get the X-Plane update at: http://www.x-plane.com/update2.html (I don't have X-Plane so I can't personally comment on the drivers, but thought this was worth noting immediately.)
Martin Kaufmann posted the following message:
"
Anyway, I did the complete X-Plane Demo download, which was 21.3 MB on my hard drive (in .hqx form--15.7MB after decompression to .sea format). I have tried Nanosaur, and have fog too. Yippee! I have yet to try X-Plane, though. I use a G3 with ATI Rage II chip. I got the following updated files from the X-Plane demo to replace the existing files of the same
name in my extension folder:
ATI 3D Accelerator 4.3.0
ATI Video Memory Manager 6.6
ATI Graphics Accelerator 3.2.8 (Note: this file was called "ATIGraphicsAccel-3.2f8-CW", but I changed it to "ATI Graphics Accelerator" to ensure compatibility--not sure if the name makes a difference or not.)
Other files in the X-Plane demo include ones that seem specific for the X-Plane demo and/or an ATI Xclaim PCI card. I assume none of these are needed for use with the video in the G3:
ATI Extension 2.5.1
ATI Nexus Driver 1.0.10
ATI Offscreen Mem Manager 1.3
ATI Xclaim VR Driver 1.0.17
ATIDriverFrag.XClaim3DPro 1.0f11
If anyone knows if the "ATI Extension" or "ATI Offscreen Mem Manager" extension would benefit the G3's stock video, please post this. I have not installed them, and everything seems to work fine for me.
" Even G3 owners with the Rage II chip see benefits.
This just received from OrangeMicro:
"
Would you please encourage your readers to respond directly to either the
sales@orangemicro.com about pricing/delivery questions, directly to the
marketing@orangemicro.com about enhancements (like 3Dfx)
and only use the discussion board for things that would be a
general interest and help to all OrangePC users. It was my mistake way early
on in our discussion board to tell people to post to it, so if you can help
me correct my statement it would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Joel Vink
Director of Engineering
Orange Micro Inc"
I've removed today's earlier post after receiving this message.
A Beta version of AppleShare IP 6.0 is now available for download at: http://www.apple.com/appleshareip/
The new version features enhancements and performance improvements to network
services including file, email, print, web and ftp under a single administration and security system.
Key features of AppleShare IP 6.0 include new file sharing support for Windows clients through
the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, allowing Windows 95 and Windows NT clients to access AppleShare IP 6.0 servers. This provides cross-platform support for users who have
networks with mixed clients, Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAPv4) support for POP and SMTP mail servers,
and an email message storage system capable of conducting server-side searches using Appleís V-
Twin technology. The new printer server includes increased security options and
expanded support for TCP/IP through industry-standard LPR/LPD printing, allowing both Macintosh and Windows users to access
printers on AppleShare IP 6.0 servers via TCP/IP. Also included is support for third-party enhancements
and plug-ins which allow users to customize AppleShareís file, print and security capabilities.
Henri Baccouche sent an update to yesterday's post regarding new Apple G3s made in May having IDE slave functionality.
"
Mike,
The May 1998 production of Apple G3 cpus serial # starts with XB817_______ for all who would like to know. The code is XB for
Gossamer/G3......8 is for 1998 ...... and 17 is the 17th week of production.In reply to the post regarding that all IDE controllers have the
master/slave capability, then why is there apparently no easy upgrade path for the older G3 ës for this feature?
Regards,
Henri"
If this story is true, I suspect there is a change in the ROMs to enable it (possibly a patch will follow to the OS at a later date). I doubt there will be a ROM upgrade (it's on a DIMM)
from Apple, unless users paid for it. Just guessing here on what the change is of course, and I've yet to see any verification of this added capability.
3D Movie Maker:
This new QD3D application is available for download at: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/developers/tools.html#qd3d.
Here's the info: "3D Movie Maker is a tool for quickly creating QuickTime movie files which
contain animating 3D models. These QuickTime movies are then immediately ready to be added to a web site for viewing on the Internet."
Click here to download it from Apple's site (492k).
[12:00 PM Update]
Thad Brown received a number of emails about MP3 encoding. He will cover
it in depth later for the site Bring in the Noise column, but for now, look at MacAMP for a great player and
check out SoundAPP
for a very nice converter and player. SounAPP also converts MP3 files
back to standard audio files.
Mac Speech Recognition Software Survey: Tobias sent news of a company that has a
survey to gauge interest in a Mac speech recognition program:
"
Hi Mike,
I found a link to a company (or just a bunch of programmers) who like to write
a speech dictation and recognition software for the Mac. Right now there¥s
nothing to see, except a survey which you can fill out. They are collecting
ideas and numbers about that, to see if Mac users want such thing.
They also ask to post their url, so that people can fill out their survey.
It is: http://www.macspeech.com/
greetings
Tobias"
Speech recognition is one area that the Mac trails the PC (not for long I hope).
Dave Kinney wrote with comments on the PC CPU cards for Macs, and whether they really make sense
considering the low cost of a complete PC now:
"
Mike,
I've been following the talk about the Orange Micro card on your site.
The thing is, while $400 is better than
what the prices used to be, it seems an awful lot for what you get. I
set up a computer for my mother-in-law recently,
the specs are on the attached web site - and the cost was $949 (+ tax
and shipping when I ordered it, looks like the
price drop by $10 bucks since then). This machine has the Cyrix 200 Mhz
chip, and lots of goodies - and for the
price it really is a nice machine. It set up easy, runs all the software
she uses nice and fast - and the 3D card, while
not the best nowadays still ran the quake demo at very reasonable frame
rates at 640x480...not 3dfx by any
means, but certainly playable...
It just seems that buying a PC card is hardly worth it.... when for
$1000 you can have a really decent PC, without
all the draw backs...and actually, they also sell a $749 pc with less
goodies...but still a decent machine.
-Dave"
I've seen Intel 200MMX based PCs, less monitor selling in the $500 range now. For some, they
idea of running both OSs on the same machine is the attraction. Cost wise it's getting harder to justify
though as PC prices continue to fall. I hear well equipped 300mhz PII systems are now selling in the $1300 range, some with monitors.
More Spec Benchmark Feedback: Here's the latest reader comments on the benchmark wars:
"
the guy who says Motorolaís SPECint and SPECfp95 numbers for G3 were obtained without L2 cache is almost
certainly wrong. Motorola doesnít list the cache configuration used to obtain that score, but IBMís page on PowerPC performance does. IBM
lists the 750/300 at 13.2 int 8.5 fp (identical to Motorolaís scores) with 1 MB L2 @ 150 MHz and 64 MB of SDRAM on a 66 MHz system bus.
The memory controller is a MPC105, very similar to the MPC106 used in Appleís G3 machines.
http://www.chips.ibm.com/products/ppc/overview/perform.html
Timothy A. Seufert
"
The G3-ZONE has been updated with Miro tech support comments on the DC 20 issue.
Apple RamDisk tip: Glen Speckert sends a tip that I have not seen covered elsewhere:
"
Set the startup disk to MacOS 8.1.
Then set the startup disk to the (empty) RAM Disk.
Then shutdown or restart.
The little known fact is that the startup disk retains the knowledge of
the "previous" startup disk, and when it can't find the system on the RAM
Disk, it will boot from MacOS 8.1 (or MacOS 8.2) depending on which was the
previous startup disk.
-- Glen
http://www.DogDisc.com
"
MiniCad Benchmark Results: Markus Groeteke sent results from his 300Mhz G3 upgraded system:
"
First of all congratulations for your excellent website, itís one of my preferred! Iím especially happy with the birth of the new 3d corner, doing
computer animation and modelling professionally. Your FAQs and forums are a invaluable help for me, pushing the system to always
expanding limits!
Now to the subject of my e-mail. I ran ito the MiniCAD benchmarks and did the test. Here are the results:
18.05.98 12:36:57 h
Test Result
Create Worksheet 0:02 secs
Create 2D Objects 0:01 secs
Create Layers 0:02 secs
Create Classes 0:02 secs
Create Records 0:02 secs
Create 3D Objects 0:01 secs
Create Symbols 0:02 secs
Redraw Test 0:04 secs
Overall Time 0:12 secs
Performance Index 16.7
(higher = faster)
MC Speed Test v1.0f
©1998 Julian Carr Design
The test was done with following hardware:
Umax Pulsar 1000 (identical to SuperMac S900) with 464 MB RAM, Storm G3 card clocked at 303 mHz , 1MB backside cache at 1:1 ratio,
160 MB application memory for MiniCAD, 4096 K cache memory setting in the Finder.
Best wishes,
Markus Groeteke
3D|works visual computing
http://www.3dworks.de"
For those that missed past posts on the MiniCad benchmark,
download it at: http://www.zeta.org.au/~jbcarr/Download.htm. Saturday
and Sunday's news had
info on it as well.
CD Sunrise Extension: A lot of people wrote looking for the CD-Sunrise extension mentioned
in yesterday's news. Several readers sent URLs and info.
"
You can find the extension in the Info-Mac archive.
Look into the cfg folder (or _Configuration)
It solved my system problems with FWB CD-ROM Toolkit 3.0.2. It crashed
my machine very often (e.g. nearly every time I ejected a CD). I have a
Teac 516 16x CD-ROM drive.
CD-Sunrise rules.
XLR8YourMac.com absolutely rocks.
Thank you, Mike, thank you for everything you contribute to the Mac
community.
Bernd Schelling
"
Thank you for talking the time to write.
Dan Kuraisa also found it here on shareware.com. (Dan, your mail server is bouncing my replies again.)
Thanks to George Machen who also sent urls and info on the extension:
http://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pubindex/info-mac/cfg/cd-sunrise-22c.hqx.abs.html (this URL has more info on the extension)
ftp://uiarchive.uiuc.edu/pub/systems/mac/info-mac/_Configuration/cd-sunrise
-22c.hqx
"CD-Sunrise is freeware. You can copy, distribute, post other site.
If you have any question please send e-mail to jkanemar@aol.com
* CD-Sunrise doesn't support music CD and ISO format.
Thank you,
Junji Kanemaru"
I've mirrored the extension at this site as well (Click here to get it).
Toast Bootable CDs: Kent Kanja sent more comments on the subject: "
Some time last year I bought a LaCie 4x/6x cd recorder. This was back when
their 4x recorder was a repackaged Yamaha CDR400. Since then, I have
burned many bootable CDs. My most recent efforts have been performed with
Yamaha CDR400 firmware version 1.0m and Apple CD-ROM extension version
4.5.2.
Incidentally, I do not use my CDR400 as a reader. I have the TEAC drive
that came stock with my PowerCenterPro for that, and my bootable CD-ROMs
boot just fine in it.
Also, my CD-ROM extension is actually in the Extensions (Disabled) folder
when I burn cds, if that makes any difference.
Well this is how (I perceive) Toast works when it makes a bootable CD:
Toast needs the Apple CD-ROM extension so that it can obtain the necessary cd booting info for the boot blocks of the cd. For this reason,
it only needs to access the extension to obtain this data, so it does not matter if the extension was loaded by the OS or not. Again I could
be mistaken in my analysis, but I do have a bootable CD with a lot of my favorite utilities on it.
Incidentally, I have made other bootable cds by creating images of cds such as MacOS system software CDs or the Norton Utilities CD and
then simply putting my own files into the image. Iím not sure, but I believe at one time the block size of bootable cds needed to be a specific
number..."
3D Column Logo Contest: David R. Klett wrote with some excellent ideas on the new 3D column:
"
Mike,
Sorry it took so long to get this thing started, weíve all been deathly ill at my place
(one at a time, so as to maximize everyoneís misery).
Anyway, Iím mostly back now.
To start things off, what about a 3D banner contest for the top of page. The winner (and any other really nifty entries) writes an article
(complete w/screen captures if poss.) showing how it was done. Give everyone say, 20 days to get entries e-mailed in. Resolution should be
200H x 800W? [400-500W would be better I think.-Mike]
Additional ideas:
3D Optimized Hardware Survey, starting with video cards. Iíve compiled some 3rd party
reviews/opinions on chip architecture/manuf. I know youíll have some strong opinions, and Iíd also like to open it up for discussion by the
general readership. [Great idea, I'd love to hear readers experiences with apps and cards. The more the better.-Mike]
Favorite Real World Modeling application. Whoís actually using the stuff on the job and
what for? Also Your favorite deadline horror stories. We could get some interesting stuff to publish.
"
If you'd like to submit a 3D Logo design (full credit given of course), please contact me.
I added the latest reader comment (positive) on the MacWeek name/focus change to the Talk Back page.
Brent Kirsten sent news of a Family PC poll about Windows 98, with an option to vote you're a Mac OS user. Let's all go vote!
Miles SCSI Card/Photoshop Printing bug? Marc Bruner sends word of a large file printing problem in Photoshop when using the Miles card:
"
Mike,
I donít know if youíve come across this issue in your journeys, but I am having a problem with the InitioUW 9100 card that I canít find the
solution to. No matter what drive I put on this card I get the following:
Photoshop 4.0 printing to an Epson Stylus 800 printer will lock up sending the data whenever I try to print large docs (anywhere from 10MB to
150MB+).
What Iíve found out so far:
This only happens when I give Photoshop 48MB+ of memory. This does not happen when the drive is hooked any other SCSI chain (Umax
s900 base system 344MB of Ram). It does not happen off of an ATTO card that I have. It happens in two other machines I put this Initio card
and drive into (A Powertools X-force-which is real similar to the s900-and a right-out-of-the-box 8600/300).
It also happens from system 7.6.1 and 8.0 (Iím running 8.1) even with minimum installations, and with virtual memory on or off.
Iíve tried reformatting the drive with FWB, Connelly, and Anubis, all with the same results.
I have contacted Initio and they do not know of any conflicts with Photoshop (The printer prints fine on other apps). Have you heard anyone
else with the same problem?
Thanks so much for the wonderful page by the way, keep up the good work,
-Marc Bruner"
I welcome comments on this from other Initio Miles owners.
Net News:
Win98 the Ultimate Mac? (What a Joke...)
Sonnet Cresendo Nubus G3 upgrade
More than 20 states have filed anti-trust suits against Microsoft over Win98. Who do you think is right?
Make your opinion heard at: http://www.msnbc.com/news/166424.asp#survey. (Poll voting is on the left side of the page.)
MacOSDaily has a review of the Kensington Mouse/Thinking Mouse.
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 adapter
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.
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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