From: 	Quinn MacDonald
Sent: 	Monday, June 22, 1998 6:53 PM
To: 	mike
Subject: 	G3 Troubleshooting Tips

Mike,
We exchanged email a few weeks back about G3 slowdowns.
Well, It appears that a picture is starting to form.
(I have requoted the gist of our previous message
at the bottom for your reference).

I was experiencing a 30-60 second system lag in Photoshop 3.0.5,
SoundEdit 16 2.0.7 and Toast 3.5.4 with a clean System 8.1.
Sparing the details, but on a G3 Mac, it appears that, get this,
Microsoft Component Library is the culprit. I have restored my
machine many times to factory default, but MSIE 4.x was always 
present, except just recently. It seems that any application
that creates a temp/RAM/scratch disk is affected, if you
have launched MSIE at some point during your work session.
This may not be MSIE/Microsoft Component Library's faultm
but rather some 3 way conflict or IDE or 8.1/G3 issue.

Pretty much all Microsoft software accessess the 
Microsoft Component Library. This I don't like.

You may wish to quietly include this in your troubleshooting
procedures for the next few weeks. Other people must be 
experiencing this. I'be had other techs look into this
and probably 40 hours myself.

Part of the previous email is as follows:
>My G3 MT 233 works perfectly. Solid as can be, so
>no complaint there. I am using OS 8.1 and Photoshop 3.0.5
>(Upgrade time!). Boot up from the Quantum 4 GB ATA
>drive, launch Photoshop, choose File/Open... to open a 30k file
>and a 30-60 second delay occurs. Almost makes you think
>the Mac has hung, as the background hasn't redrawn.
>We're talking 30k files, not multi-megabyte images.
>The files are not corrupt, on a remote volume,
>disk is not unoptimized, etc. Should open quicker than
>it takes to think it open. Photoshop has 20 mb
>RAM, asynch file i/o, no Autostart worm-nonsense,
>and nothing else is running.

>This delay does not occur with extensions off.
(Right, because the Shared Library Manager does
not load MSIE's Component Library.)

>But, after 4 hours one night trying each extension
>one by one, there does not seems to be an obvious
>culprit. I have a clean system using the Disk Restore
>image that comes with the G3 (Apple 8.1-only extensions, 
>all verified by NUM 3.5.3./TechTool Pro/MacTest Pro) 
>and nothing else. View-by-package in Extensions Manager
>showed all correct extensions version present.
>I tried enabling/disabling extensions 
>by name order, then by kind (i.e., enabling the Shared 
>Library Manager then the various SharedLib files, and 
>so on), VM, all off, all on, and more, but it is not 
>reliably reproducable. This problem has not always been 
>present, and has only manifested itself in the last month. 
>I have swapped logic boards and hard disks to be safe, 
>but no change. After an hour or so it returns.(I restored 
>the original Quantum drive in leiu of the replacement 
>Western Digital - the replacement Western Digital drive 
>was 300 Mb smaller, so no thanks.)

>Now, I plugged a Seagate something-or-other SCSI HD
>into the internal SCSI, mirror-copyied the ATA drive 
>to the SCSI,restarted, booted from the SCSI, and 
>blanked the ATA drive. This problem has not returned!

Yes, it did. I hadn't used Photoshop much, but it did
return. In fact, I removed the IDE CD-ROM and internal HD
and replaced them with SCSI units, and the issue did not
disappear.

>My only thought is the Mac OS 8.1 CD Restore image that
>is included with the G3 is slightly different from the
>shrinkwrapped OS 8.1 CD, in the same way that System 7.5.3
>has different versions of software than System 7.5 with the
>System 7.5 Update 2.0 applied. It is very possible that
>the G3 CD includes G3-specific versions of extensions
>that still are listed as part of the Mac OS 8.0/8.1
>Extension Manager "Package". My OS 8.1 CD is at work, so 
>I will do another install tomorrow. 
(Nope: 8.1 stock and the G3 8.1 CD were identical, version
for version, no enabler, etc.)

Hmm. What do you think?

____________________________________
Quinn MacDonald - 
Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada