" A lot of dual processor G4 systems were locking up on their own. It's been called the "no mouse click" crash, and other things. If you left a DP G4/500 sit for about a half hour, the machine would lock up on it's own. The mouse pointer would still move around but it wouldn't register any mouse clicks. The 2.7 update has fixed this problem. I still have an issue with the Wacom tablet, a Keyspan Serial to USB adapter and a MacAlly 7port hub. At least my machine doesn't crash when I go to dinner now. Thank you Apple for 2.7!!!!
Scott T.
Art Director"

" There is a lengthy thread on Apple's G4 discussion board (Strange Crashes). V2.7 CPU plug in is an interim fix for freezes many DP G4 500's have experienced. Previous CPU plugin version was 2.6. DP G4s with the earlier version 2.5 appeared to work fine, but something happened in 2.6 (I'm guessing), which was released in September 2000. The EnergySaver problems are not fixed in V2.7. As far as I know thats the only thing in 2.7. I don't know the impact on overall performance.
Sam
G4 500 DP "

" Mike,
Strange luck. I ran the Software Update and it claimed there was nothing new for me. I looked in my multiprocessing folder and I had version 2.6 of the plugins, so why didn't it offer to update to 2.7?

OK, so I fire up Interarchy and watch where Software Update connected to, then went there and found the .smi file and downloaded it. When I tried to run the installer, it said I had to have MacOS 9.0.4 or later.

Strange, I have 9.0.4 (just got the dual 500 MHz machine a couple of weeks ago). And another strange thing is that the installer had my "Scratch" partition listed as where it wanted to install and had the "Select Disk" button greyed out.

So I ended up using TomeViewer to open the tome and pull out the plugin directly. Installing it made no immediate difference that I could see. AE benchmarks came out the same.

Anyone else having problems with Software Update or the installer having such problems? (My boot disk is partitioned into three partitions, and a second drive is also partitioned into three partitions. Would that make a difference?)
Wayne Folta "

My Dual G4/500 boot disk has one partition and Software Updates showed the 2.7 Plugin update the first time I ran it after I heard it was available.

Another reader said the update also didn't show up in Software update:

" Hi Mike:
I ran the software updater on my G4/500DP Gigabit, and no such luck. There was no updater. I needed a Java Update, and another small item, but there was no such animal as a CPU plugin.
Please tell me where to find...I am stumped.
Any assistance is appreciated.
David "

After this mail I checked Apple's Software Updates page which didn't list it on the main page, but checking the G4 updates page found this page dated 12/18/2000 that has the download available.

" Hi Mike,
this update is a fix for some persistent problems G4 MP owners have been having with the 2.6 version of the Apple CPU Plugins extension. One of the main issues is that the computer would stop responding to mouse clicks, even though everything else was fine. Your readers should probably know about it, the best place to find all the gory details is a lengthy discussion on Apple's Powermac G4 forums. The link is http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?50@167.nIGeansicPY^2@.ee9ba3f/66
[Note: requires registration to view, link may not be valid over time-Mike]

Aaron Johnson "