• Alsoft has an v2.updates to Diskwarrior's extension for OS 9.2.1 compatibility. There are extension updates for both v2.1 and 2.06 of Diskwarrior (depending on your CD/application version.)

Warning to iMac G3/233-333MHz Owners with >8GB Drives:
I've had half a dozen iMac owners send a warning about installing OS 9.2.1 on an iMac that has a hard drive larger than 8GB if the OS is not installed on a volume within the first 8GB of the drive. For example if your iMac G3/233-333 has a large (larger than 8GB) drive as a single volume/partition and you update to OS 9.2.1, after the reboot it's reported you'll go into open firmware. (There was an OS X warning on this before by Apple - where Beige G3, iMac G3/233-333Mhz models, PB G3 wallstreets, etc. had to have OS X installed on a volume completely contained within the first 8GB of the drive.) Therefore I wonder if this same issue with OS 9.2.1 applies to those other models if they have a single volume larger than 8GB. [Two Beige G3 owners wrote to say this isn't a problem for that mac model]

TIP: A reader suggested booting with a Norton Utilities CD and running SpeedDisk as a solution for iMac owners that had the problem. Several iMac owners that had the problem after the OS 9.2.1 update noted that Speeddisk did solve it.

Reader comments and other notes on OS 9.2.1 installs, compatibility issues, etc. (latest reports first)

Reader Notes OS 9.2.1 Enables Toast 5 Burning in Classic Mode

" Hi !
I just upgrade my Classic system to 9.2.1 and after that I find that classic version of Toast 5.0.1 started working in OS X 10.0.4. When I had 9.1 Toast didn't work. This is nice, I have a USB burner and the current version of Toast for OS X doesn't support USB devices but old Toast for OS 9.X supported those. now I don't have reboot to 9.X when I need to burn CD !
-kimmo-"

A strange post from a reader in the Audio topic discussion forum (indicates that OS 9.2.1 now allows deep sleep even with non-compliant cards like the SoundBlaster Live installed - see directly below for another SBlive owner report that noted no deep sleep support)

" Just updated to 9.2.1 from 9.1 and now deep sleep is working despite having 2 unsupported cards installed, Soundblaster and Xclaim VR 128.

it also works in 10.1.

is there an update that fixes these cards included in 9.2.1 and 10.1 or is it just ignoring them or something? will this hurt the cards?
BTW, G4/400 AGP
Applenut "

Another G4/400 AGP owner noted no deep sleep with the SBlive card installed (as expected).

" I'm running a 400 MHz G4 AGP as well, with 9.2.1, and I still cannot deep sleep. I've got:

A Formac ProTV Stereo card (supports deep sleep)
A Creative Labs SBL! card (does not support deep sleep)
And a Radeon AGP card (retail, supports deep sleep)

Apple System Profiler still claims low power mode is disabled because of cards in slot-C, which is the SBL! card. Go figger. You got lucky!
Lord Vader"

Normally deep sleep requires firmware/ROM support on the card. (Deep sleep on G4/AGP, Cubes, PB G3 firewire, iBooks, iMac 350mhz and up) is when the system is put to sleep and the fans turn off (in systems that have fans).

" Here are some news regarding OS 9.2.1 installed on a Gigagbit G4 dual 450

1) Disc Authoring Support and Toast Titanium 5.0.1 do not live well together. Toast will not see the external FireWire QPS 8/4/32 drive if Disc Authoring Support is installed. I had to do a selective uninstall of Disc Authoring Support from the MacOS 9.2.1 installer. OTOH, Disc Authoring Support without Toast installed works as advertised; they just do not seem to like each other very well. :-\

2) DVD Player is not installed by default. Had to perform a selctive install of that item.
[As with the OS 9.1 downloadable installer (noted here previously), I see nothing but DVD player 1.3 included with OS 9.2.1. DVD player 1.x is for hardware decoder equipped Macs only (PB G3 w/PCCard, Lombard w/DVD decoder option, B&W G3/Yikes w/MPEG Rage128 daughtercard). There is no DVD .2x player/installer I could find (even w/Tomeviewer) in the 82MB OS 9.2.1 download I have.
The G4/AGP systems (and iMac 350s, PB G3 firewire, iBooks, Cubes) use DVD player 2.x, a software based decoder version. The last 2.x DVD Player update was v2.7 last month.
Just like the OS 9.1 update (download verison) did, the standard Apple DVD Player shortcut under the Apple menu on my G4/AGP system was missing after the OS 9.2.1 update. (The player was left intact in the Applications (OS 9) folder as before.)
Update - I just checked my G4 Cube, and it appears that OS 9.2.1 removed my DVD player v2.7. I had to download it again tonight. That system has a 100GB drive partitioned into 3 volumes (noted in this review). The G4/AGP has a single volume/drive and the DVD player 2.7 was left intact. Strange...-Mike]

3) The disk driver in MacOS 9.2.1 has been improved with regards to FireWire support. I had a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 40GB drive that was used to backup my system before the install of the OS upgrade. It was mounted inside the G4 and was present on the system during the OS upgrade. I had also chosen to upgrade the disk drivers during the MacOS 9.2.1 install. I then mounted the Maxtor drive in an OWC Oxford 911 case and attached it to the upgraded system. The drive appeared on the desktop without any prompts from the Finder to reinitialize the drive as per previous revs of OS9. The contents of the now external FireWire drive were intact and accessible. No third party FireWire drivers were installed on the system.
SC Lam "

Note - as I mentioned in my previous Firewire drive reviews (of OWC Elite 911, portable oxford 911 case tests, OS X vs OS 9.1 performance tests w/Cube, etc.) - OS 9.1's Firewire extensions (v2.7 - or later) mounted all my Firewire drives here without any 3rd party support (VST portable FW drives and those that I had build in the guides, using IDE drives formatted with onboard IDE from G4s for G3 Macs.)

If you have Toast, it is faster, more flexible, and has features disk burner doesn't (supports multiple sessions and can make bootable disks)

" I have B&W G3 300Mhz with Plextor PX-W1610A which worked perfecly under US 9.1 and Apple Driver, thanks to mod file, but after updating to 9.2.1 Disc Burner stopped working: Can't find "PerformanceBurnEngine" ...

And Disc Burner 1.0.1 won't install on 9.2.1, only on 9.1, so I must go back via 9 to 9.1 to get it work, huh.

[I asked if he had tried copying the modified support file back, since it may have been overwritten by the update-Mike]
no I don't think so. I reloaded the mod, installing it didn't help, I tried to reinstall Disc Burner, the installer didn't work on 9.2.1, only on 9.1. I have to install 9.0, upgrade to 9.1 and then install Disc Burner again. Now it works fine on 9.1.

And to make the day perfect disaster, I downloaded "Mac OS 9.1 Update" twice, both were corrupted, and third time I downloaded it as 15 disk images, they did the job. Five hours wasted.

Between the downloadings I tried to install OSX (Finnish 10.0.3) on my new iBook. It has some problems with QuickTime. It crashes every time I try to look downwards in any QT5 cube. And so does the Finder in in-line preview, and every browser as well (NS6.1PR, IE5.1pr ond Omniweb 4.0.3). Must be QT related, but clean install of OSX don't help, I've tried it three times. All my cubes work fine in OS9. "

NetBarrier 2.0.3 and OS 9.2.1:

" Hi Mike,
After installing MacOs 9.2.1 today I discovered that Netbarrier (latest version 2.03 control panel) is not compatitibale with Apple's latest OS software. It took me about 2 hours to nail down this culprit which causes a freeze at the end of the the startup process . Hopefully this will be of some help to your readers.
Regards
Ton
Think Visual
Communication & Design"

Note: Two readers using Netbarrier v1.6 noted no problems with OS 9.2.1.

3dfx Cards and OpenGL 1.2.2: Also as noted in previous forum posts, the later OpenGL versions seem to break game support with 3dfx cards. A reader noted OS 9.2.1 (installs OpenGL 1.2.2) resulted in Quake3 Arena not working with his Voodoo3 card in this forum thread. 3dfx card owners should make sure they keep a backup copy of their existing OpenGL extensions before upgrading.

While on the subject of graphics cards/extensions - on the G4 Cube with Radeon card, the OS 9.2.1 install also added Nvidia (v2.3) extensions, which I disabled after the update. (It also resets many Finder settings.)

Here's a post from a reader on the OS 9.2.1 installed ATI extensions:

" I've noted some interesting differences with the ATI drivers in the new 9.2.1 update from Apple. Previously, I had updated my ATI drivers from the iBook drivers and 9.2 drivers posted on this site by others. [Note - the files were never on my servers, but someone posted links to them at other sites-Mike] My system is a DP 500 with OEM AGP Radeon. My drivers reflect that configuration.

Old (9.1 + upgraded drivers)
ATI 3D Accelerator v 5.0.4 created Jul 27, 2001 ATI Driver Update v 1.9 created May 10, 2001 ATI Graphics Accelerator v 5.4.4 created Jul 27, 2001 ATI Radeon 3D Accelerator v 6.2.7 created Aug 1, 2001 ATI Resource Manager v 2.9.6 created Jul 27, 2001 ATI Video Accelerator v 4.8.2 created Jul 27, 2001

New (9.2.1)
ATI 3D Accelerator v 5.0.4 created Mar 28, 2001 ATI Driver Update v 1.9.5 created May 10, 2001 ATI Graphics Accelerator v 5.4.3 created Jul 27, 2001 ATI Radeon 3D Accelerator v 6.2.6 created Aug 1, 2001 ATI Resource Manager v 2.9.5 created Jul 27, 2001 ATI Video Accelerator v 4.8.2 created Jun 21, 2001

The new 3D Accelerator while the same version number, has an earlier creation date of Mar 28.

The Driver Update is newer.
The Graphics Accelerator is an older version.
The Radeon 3D Accelerator is an older version.
The Resource Manager is an older version.

The Video Accelerator while the same version number, has an earlier creation date of Jun 23.

I just thought it was interesting that I had 5 of the 6 applicable extensions on my machine that were newer then todays 9.2.1 update. Thought I'd pass this along. Anyone from ATI care to comment?
jmac"

(ATI commented "...Don't trust leaked builds as what's "final". Sometimes certain fixes are disabled temporarily for various reasons during internal builds.")

The warbirds III beta ATI driver download may have even later versions (or different ones at least). The link to those driver versions is
ftp://lists.ient.com/pub/WarBirds/WBIII/ATI_July_beta.sit .
(For use with OpenGL 1.2.2 only)

" Warning:
DVIator, Mac OS 9.2.1, G4 Built-in DVI video and 17" ADC Display.

Users with a 17" ADC flat panel display who use DVIator with the built-in DVI video on a Power Mac G4 should not install the new Mac OS 9.2.1 update for now! The updated video drivers in 9.2.1 can render the 17" LCD unusable in this configuration.

Only users with exactly the above combination of hardware including the 17" flat panel display are affected. Dr. Bott is working with Apple on a final solution.

Work-around:
Users with a 17" ADC flat panel display who need to install the Mac OS 9.2.1 update should follow the guide lines detailed here:
http://www.drbott.com/prod/dviatorfaq.html#Anchor-Important-49575

They will find an easy procedure that will permit immediate installation and use of Mac OS 9.2.1 despite the above issues.

Clarification:
This issue does not exist under Mac OS 9.1 or Mac OS X for the 17" monitor.
Users with a third party DVI card (such as ATI's Radeon) or running a second display should not experience these problems. Users with a 15" or 22" ADC display can install Mac OS 9.2.1 normally.

Only the specific combination of DVIator, Mac OS 9.2.1, the built-in DVI video card and 17" ADC Display can trigger problems. It is possible that the screen stays black after installing the update and you will need a Mac OS 9.1 CD or a second monitor to revive your system.

More information about DVIator can be found at:
http://www.DVIator.com/
Eric Prentice, CEO
Dr. Bott LLC
503-452-8101
ericp@drbott.com
www.drbott.com"

IXMicro Card Problems with OS 9.2.1:

" Hi Mike,
Do you have any reports of a problem with using an IxMicro video card. I have one in my DP500 as a second monitor card. The computer completely locks up when something on the second monitor is updated/drawn. I am able to reduce the occurrance by turning the colors down to thousands or 256 but it still crashes eventually. I spent some time isolating extensions but am having no luck. I saw a report on MacNN stating the same problem.
I'd love to have a work around or is it time to go out and buy a new video card?
If find it funny since there are now acceleration extensions for this video card included in the system.
Mark
Textile Technologies LLC"

(Actually Apple had past extensions for it, since it was an OEM card they supplied in some past macs (Twin Turbo in some pre-G3 macs, IX3D Ult. Rez OEM in some Beige G3 rev C models). If anyone has any tips or suggestions (or similar problems),

Reminder on CD/DVD Extension Versions and CDROM Drive Issues:

" Mike,
I have a Blue & White G3 and you might remember some issues a couple months ago with the DiscBurner update that slowed those G3s down either when waiting for a CD to spin up or when after waking up from sleep. Going back to version 1.4.4 of the CD/DVD extension fixed the problem.
That is still the case in 9.2.1. Whenever I put the system to sleep and then wake it up, window draws are slow as are most commands. These symptoms also occur when waiting for a CD (that's spun down) to spin back up.

The installed extension version is 1.4.7. 1.4.5 also exhibits the same problems. Reverting to 1.4.4 fixed the problems for me.
Just thought you'd like to know, Bernie"

I think this issue was noted here previously (perhaps also in some Drive Database reports).

Apple System Profiler Update and 2001 G4 Ram Timing Reporting:
One other thing I noted was that OS 9.2.1's Apple system profiler reports a mix of PC133 333 (OEM Apple dimm) and a PC133 222 dimm as "CL3", where with OS 9.1 it reported "CL2". (I verifed the "333" labled OEM dimm from apple did have CL3 Samsung memory chips on it, yet it was reported as CL2 before, in error.) I appears that like the B&W G3, even the later Macs run all dimms at the timing of the slowest installed dimm. (I.E. if CL2 and CL3 dimms are installed, all ram timing is CL3.)
Note: The above comments apply to a 2001 G4 model (133mhz bus/PC133 RAM) - 100MHz bus G4s report timing of each dimm separately even with the same ASP version. (My G4/450 Cube shows "PC100-222" in ASP.)