The Railgun review is complete, just having a friend proof read it for any of my infamous typos. It should be online later tonight - it will be linked as a site feature (above). I've got a ton of mail with feedback on a lot of posts today and yesterday (Techtool Pro cache bug, Quake Bond level, disk cache issues and more). It will be in tomorrow's news. I'm taking a break tonight and having a few cool ones for a change - you do the same! [6:15 PM Update]

Mac Voodoo II News: Contrary to what some of the competition thinks and says, MicroConversions is  working on Mac Voodoo II drivers. Here's a clip from my conversation with them (more will follow soon):

Mike: Are you really working on drivers? As a insider (and competitor) told me that nobody has a contract with 3Dfx yet to get the needed source code.

MICROCONVERSIONS: Yes and Yes... We ARE working on Mac drivers. We DO have source and binary code licensing agreements with 3Dfx. We DO have this code in-house. And, we are the only ones who are and do.

I will tell you this as well... it is going to be extremely difficult for anyone else to properly support Mac with Voodoo2. They (3Dfx) are so driven by the big numbers the PC manufacturers represent (400,000 to 500,000 per month), and their experience with Mac volumes through TechWorks is so bad, that they just aren't interested in supporting the Mac or even increasing their exposure to our community. If we get competition, it would probably be from one of those PC companies and this would be bad for the Mac community. First, their way-lopsided volume advantage compared to us (or any other small company) would put the other out, and second, their Mac drivers and support would not be as optimized as a Mac company's. Also, their support could VERY EASILY be fleeting."

Accelerate Your Mac! always has been and always will be the  source for cutting edge 3D and Voodoo II info. We broke the news on Voodoo II and the Quantum Obsidian II and will continue to keep you up to date on the latest developments in 3D hardware. Stay tuned - there are many more new technologies coming!

Bug in TechTool Pro 2.02? One reader reports that his cache size is not correctly reported in the latest version of TechTool Pro 2:

" I know for a fact that I have a 1Mb L2 cache installed in my 7600. I got it out of a PowerTowerPro that had fried its motherboard. Anyway TTPro (2.02) reports that it is only a 512Kb cache installed. I also used N-Power application and it reports correctly that it's 1Mb.

I'm not sure if it's just my configuration, or a bug. Heard anything similar?

Raoul Callaghan
Deakin University
Melbourne Australia"

Based on many mails on the subject, the only common cache reporting bug was with G3 CPU cards, where the 1MB backside cache was reported consistently as 512k in size.

Strata Software Sales: Andy Fenner sent word of some special offers on Strata software that might be of interest to readers:

" Mike,

I just found a decent offer on Strata's page. Vision3d ver 4.0 is being cleared out a $10/copy! I know it's an older version (1993 release) but it's still a great program for anyone trying to get started with 3D graphics. I'm having a great time with it.

Also, buying this qualifies you for some nice upgrade paths:

Vision3d 5.0 $79 VideoShop3d 4.0 $89 MediaPaint 1.1 $89 Studio Pro 2.1 $499

Here's the URL:
http://www.strata.com/html/vision3d_offer.html

-Andy Fenner

BTW - My PowerForce 220 is still running at 315/126/45 (I backed it down from 322 for the 45MHz bus.) This card is the bargain of the decade, thanks for turning me on to it. Keep up the good work!"

Reader asks for 7200 Upgrade Petition: James Foss has a request that all 7200 owners petition vendors to offer a PCI CPU card upgrade:

" Also, would it be possible for you to put a message on your XLR8YOURMAC page such as :" ATTENTION Power Mac 7200 Users! Please write to Newer Tech, Sonnet, Power Logix, etc. and ask for a G3 upgrade for 7200!" This would help these companies see the demand for such an upgrade and might help their decision.
Thanks,
James Foss"

I can't get Newer Technology to even respond to a mail about their 30 day MBG policy, but I wish all 7200 owners the best of luck. A motherboard upgrade may be the best option, see the back ads of MacAddict, Macweek or Macworld for sources.

MacMall lists Mainstreet PowerBooks: Frank Partipilo writes that the latest flyer from MacMall has the new low end PowerBook G3 (aka MainStreet) listed.

" Hi Mike,
Here's some info that you may be interested in. I received a flyer in the mail from Mac Mall today. In it they're advertising G3 notebooks for as low as $2299. That's for a 233mhz G3, 32MBram 2GB HD,20X CD, and 12.1" DS screen. I haven't heard about these anyplace else yet, so I wonder if they're running the ads just little too soon.

Frank Partipilo"

The official release date is May 6th I believe. I did not see them at their web site. The model he mentions is the low end model without backside cache and is said to be about as fast as a 240mhz 603e. I am going to try hard  to wait for prices to drop a bit on the 250/13.3" active screen models.

Newton Repair Story: Although I don't normally post Newton stories, I felt Peter Fraser's experience deserves some recognition.

" I thought I'd pass a tidbit along - I had a great experience recently, and the rest of the world should hear about it:

I have a Newton 120, recently acquired. It was on my desk at work, with the cover open and near my phone. Some papers partially covered it. The phone rang, and foolishly I leaned with my elbow right on the glass touchscreen and shattered it.

I felt really dumb, and heartbroken.

I surfed a little and learned that Apple does the repair, by mail, and that it would cost more than I'd paid for the Newton plus take an interminable amount of time. Well, that's fine, but my budget was such that I would most likely have had to trash the Newton - an idea I hated! Somehow, very luckily, I stumbled across another source for the fix: David Watson, in Kansas.

Not only did he do the job for half of Apple's price, he repaired my unit the night he received it and mailed it out the next business day. The cost savings is due to his foresightful purchase of many Newton parts from a former employer, which I believe he did in the true Mac spirit rather than as a potential source of profit. The idea was, let's save this stuff and use it to extend the lives of lots of great little Newtons.

But that's not all - my Newt had a damaged LCD display as well, which he also replaced, free! Heck, he even repaired a stripped thread on a case screw, and installed the latest system software.

This is one heck of a guy, and he typlifies the Mac way. Send him your Newtons for fixing, or just drop him a line of appreciation!

David Watson: dwatson@oz.sunflower.org

Cheers!
Peter"

Wouldn't it be a better world if everyone did business that way?

Bob Greenberg writes that he has seen the problem of hard disk cache writes not being written to disk become a problem after lockups or crashes. The problem is really not linked to G3 cards, as it's a write cache issue, not a CPU card issue.

" Mike,

Regarding the discussion of HD Write Cache problem w/G3 cards this may still be a more general problem.

I am using a Power Mac 7600 with a Powerlogix 250/250/1MB card. At home I have a Power Mac 7200 PC Compatible. Both systems have Quantum Atlas II 4.5 GB wide drives connected to ATTO cards and are running OS 8.1. I have similar problems corruption problems on both machines, but only after a crash. Approximately every other time one of my systems crash Disk First Aid, Norton Disk Doctor, and Apple Personal Diagnostics will all find disk errors, and subsequently can fix them. Similar errors have been extremely rare otherwise (without a crash).

By the way I love your web page and look at it at at least 3 times a day including weekends. Thanks and keep up the great work.
Bob Greenberg"

Anytime a lockup occurs there is a chance of data loss, even using the system disk cache (the lockup could occur when data is being written to disk or as the volume bitmap is being updated) but delayed cache writes increase the risk of loss.

The original Fireball problem mentioned last week is more severe as it happens even with normal shutdowns unless the write cache is disabled, or a "sync cache with shutdown" driver is used. HDT 2.06 and later has this option in the driver.

I have had no problems with the IDE Fireballs such as my 6 GB drive in the G3/MT. I've also had no problems so far with the Atlas II 2.2 GB drives in raid setups.

For those lucky people with high speed Net access, a reader sent a tip that will help accelerate surfing even more:

" Hello, I don't know if you have already reported on this or not but I have found a very interesting tip that will speed up web browsing on high speed connections by a very large factor. This tip is so obvious I kicked myself for not seeing before.

It discovered it when I was hooking up a powerbook to our hub which is connected to a cable modem. Internet is served to every computer in the household via a LocalTalk net and an Ethernet hub by IPNetRouter.

In testing the connection out I visited some web pages and grumbled at the horrible slowness of their loading because of the many disk accesses that are used to read and write to the cache. Then it hit me, why was I even using a cache at all with such a high speed connection? When I put the cache at zero and pages would light up in the blink of an eye. No disk accesses, no slowdown. This trick will require an ISDN or higher and you will have to download pages every time you go back to them, but the time it takes to download the entire page again is usually faster then having to read it from the cache.

Spencer Nielsen"

I posted something a few months back, setting your browser cache to zero bytes and increasing the ram allocated to the browser. Another trick was to put the cache in a RAMdisk.

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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