" Hi Mike:
Here's an update on the DVD Rom drive failure. (it's now fixed)

It's an alignment problem with the drive itself in the case. Because it is slot-loading, it's critical that the slot line up exactly with the opening in the case. My drive had moved up slightly, about the thickness of a business card, which was enough to prevent the CD from ejecting.

There are several different fixes recommended by the Apple Service techs, depending on whether the CD or DVD is mounted. The first is try powerkey and hold down the trackpad clicker to force eject; if that doesn't work, the next step is (while pushing F12 - eject disk) to slide a stiff business card into the slot at a slight up angle so it rests on top of the stuck disk. That should be enough to move the disk down and then out.

The last resort, before you send it into Apple, is to physically move the drive itself up slightly. This was accomplished by taking the bottom of the case off and prying the left side of the drive case up a little. There seems to be about 1/16 inch wiggle room for the drive. This is what I had to do. After placing the bottom case back on, flipping it over, plugging in AC, then hitting the power key, the disk immediately ejected. I will be sending it in to Apple so that they can precisely align the drive, but for now it is usable.

Since the movement is so small, I would expect other new TiBook owners might experience a stuck disk too.
hth,
b.t."

Bob Friede also just wrote that disabling Speculative Access fixed a problem with his VST Expansion bay ZIP drive, where it would freeze on insertion with Speculative Access enabled.

I had assumed the cache speed issues with the review loaner were due to the chips on that particular sample, but now I'm not so sure after the recent reports. I have already added the cache speed and Speculative Access tip to the FAQ's PowerBook and CPU upgrades section for future reference.

" Hi Mike-
Had a strange problem with my G4 pb - received it on Wednesday and didn't get to play till Saturday. When waking it from sleep, the screen went nuts - horizontal lines that migrated and made the screen completely unreadable.

After messing around awhile, I was convinced it was a hardware problem (remember broken ribbon cables?) so I called Apple. The very friendly support person walked me through the startup manager, (didn't know about that) and finally had me run the software restore which wasn't a problem since I had yet to install anything. Worked great. Kind of scary, something on the hard drive corrupted - could be the rom-in-ram. Anyway, working great now, hope it was an anomaly.
Hugh "

I welcome other PB G4 owner feedback.

"Starband Satmodem
As an installer of this sat modem, and former Echostar employee, Starband insists that the ethernet port is temporary and will only appear on early models of the Satmodem. That would the model 180. The model (last I heard it was called 360) will not have an ethernet port, but will only have USB. Starband claims that USB is the lowest common denominator on computers capable of taking advantage of this high speed transfer.

And yes, as your others have noted it is possible to decipher the ROM on the Satmodem via the serial connection and turn on the ethernet port, it will only work until they make that model obsolete.
yours truly,
Garr Baker"

" Mike,
Just a follow up.
Removing the internal CD from the IDE bus does work but there is an easier way. I had to wend my way up the tech support chain at Roxio to a Mac support specialist, but eventually I found what I needed.

When Toast starts up the first time it scans the bus and finds the first CDRW drive in the system. In this case it is on the internal bus. If you tell it to 'search' a second time it rescans the bus and identifies all the drives available...but it still only presents the first drive as a recording option. You have to tell Toast to search once more and it will then switch to the second drive in line. If you have a third drive you 'search' 4 times and so on.

Hope this will help your readers with similar problems since this solution is no where in any FAQ, manual, or on the website for Adaptec or Roxio.
Lee Vining"

I've added this tip to the FAQ's CDR section for future reference.

" I wanted to comment on the letter from Heliodoro T.about IOKit.

He is technically correct, one can write a PCI driver for anything want currently. He has missed the point though. One of the chief strengths of IOKit is it concepts of Families, and standardized interfaces. There is not currently a (publicly available) IOVideoCaptureFamily. While they could write a driver that knew how directly write to the Framebuffer, that would be difficult and not advisable. They would also need to write all of the User utilities (viewers, etc) or custom interfaces into quicktime, instead of leveraging the standard interfaces. If they know that Apple intends to introduce such a class (and I imagine they do) it would be a disservice both to their engineers and their customers to waste time on an implementation that would be incompatible with what is occuring in the near future.
Louis Gerbarg "

BTW: Heliodoro had sent a screen capture showing TV/Video overlay working in OS X beta using a cheap Windows compatible TV card.

Another reader wrote with an interesting observation:

" MacOS X drivers for the Wired4DVD card may not be entirely in Wired's hands.

If you take a look at the DVD Station application you'll note it bears a striking resemblence to Sigma Designs DVD player. Also note that the Mac player contains Sigma RealMagic logos in its graphics resources (PICT 197 and 198).

It appears that this may be a situation similar to the Voodoo 2 card situation, where Sigma is actualy writing the application for Wired. In that case it could be a very long wait indeed.
Tom Fisher "

I've asked for more info from Wired on OS X support and a better explanation of the problem they noted previously. I will post any comments they have when they are received.

CDRW Drives:
• IDE Iomega 8x4x32 in G4/AGP
• IDE Sony CRX140 in Beige G3
  (noted making CDRW slave and ZIP master allowed booting from CDRW drive)
• IDE Sony CRX140 in G4/AGP
  (noted drive would not mount CDs with multiple sessions)
• IDE Sony CRX160 in B&W G3
• Firewire APS 16/10/40 w/Beige G3
• Firewire Que 8/4/32 w/Beige G3
  (updates added to his 1/17/2001 entry)
  
  Hard Drives:
• IDE Fujitsu 30GB in iMac
• IDE IBM 13GB in Beige G3
• IDE IBM 75GXP 45GB in iMac
• IDE Maxtor 40GB in Beige G3
• IDE Maxtor 30GB in Beige G3
• IDE Quantum 40GB in G4 Cube

You can find full owner reports by searching the database by drive/brand/interface/mac models (the latest reports are shown first in searches).
If you've added a IDE, SCSI, Firewire or USB hard drive, CDRW, tape drive, etc. make sure you add a report to the database.

• Metabox G3/400 in 8500/180 (rated 6)
• Newer Tech G4/400 in Beige G3 (rated 10)
• Newer Tech G3/300 in 7600 (rated 9)
• Sonnet G3/500 in 8600/300 (rated 10)
• Sonnet G3/333 in PowerBook 1400 (rated 10)
• Sonnet G3/400 in 9500 (rated 10)
• XLR8 G4 450MHz in PowerTower Pro 225 (rated 10)
• XLR8 CarrierZIF w/G3 350 ZIF in 7500 (rated 10)
  
  
• iMac G3/350 OC report

You can find these full reports by searching the database selecting the indicated Mac model and upgrade card brand/type. If you've upgraded the CPU on your Mac, please post an entry in the database. Search the database for entries from most every upgradable Mac model *before* you buy. (Searchable by mac model/upgrade brand)

• Quake3 retail (1024x768) from 2001/G4 466 with Rage128 Pro
• CineBench 2000 (1024x768) from PowerCurve (w G3/400 upgrade) and Voodoo5

• Review of "Hammerfall Lite" audio card
  [more Audio articles]
• Review of Acard's AEC6712 Ultra-SCSI PCI Controller
  [more Storage related reviews]
• Audio Apps and CPU Upgrades
  [more Audio or CPU Upgrade related articles]
• Review + Install Guide for PB BlueChip G3/500 CPU Upgrade
  [more CPU upgrade reviews]
• Newer Tech ZIF Carrier Card
  [more CPU upgrade reviews]
• How to create a universal adapter from a Plaintalk mic
  [more Audio articles]
• Review of G4/533 w/GeForce2MX
  [more Systems articles]
• Interview w/Nvidia on GeForce2MX, GeForce2GO
  [more Graphics card articles]
• 7500 to ATX Case Conversion
  [more ATX conversion articles]
• PC ATX Power Supply Conversion for 8600/9600
  [more ATX conversion articles]
• Acard SCSI to IDE Adapter Review
  [more Storage articles]
• Audio Notes From Macworld Expo
  [more Audio articles]
• Macworld SF 2001 Coverage
  (articles on the new PB G4, New G4 Towers, iTunes, iDVD and Q&A/Photos of the first Mac Nvidia Graphics card!)
• Mac GeForce2MX Pix and FAQ
  [more Graphics card articles]
• OS 9.1 Feedback/Tips/Compatibility Issues
• File server performance tests: Quantum Snap 1000 vs Appleshare
• First Report on Sonnet 7200 G3 CPU Upgrade

Software Updates:

• Ratoc Software update for CBFW2
• FriendlyNET FR3000 Series Firmware Upgrades
• Fireworks 4.0.2 (direct download link)
• NameCleaner

Apple TIL Updates:

• Mac OS X Public Beta: Internet Explorer Downloads Do Not Appear Immediately
• G4 (Gigabit Ethernet): DVD-RAM Available Space Issue
• AppleShare: Platforms and Mac OS Releases Supported
• MacBinary: File Format Description
• Help: Downloading Software
• Network Assistant 2.0.1 Updater

Mac News: (Note: Regurgitated press releases, etc. are not listed)

• Apple and the Lap(top) of Luxury (fortune)
• Apple vs. the skin trade (zdnet)
• OS X: we have it, they want it. (macuser uk)
• Even More Video Magic on the Mac (businessweek)
• QPS releases portable FireWire drives (macuser)
• Tests of New G4s Find Graphic Differences (macworld)
• Will OS X Succeed? It's Up to Application Developers (macworld)
• Review: Rewind (cnet)
• QPS $30 Rebate extended (QPS)
• POST OF THE DAY - Apple - Best mea culpa ever? (motley fool)
• The Age of Everyman Tech: Gentleman's Agreement (os opinion)

Gaming:
• Lance demo 1.0 (RPG) (macgamefiles)
• Mac game developer seeks testers for new 3D game (maccentral)

Misc./Hardware Related:
• Sony Brings Industry-Leading, All-In-One CD-RW/DVD-ROM Capabilities to New VAIO FX Notebook Line (yahoo)
• Sony takes on LCD makers with slim screen (digitalmass)
• IBM wants to crush the clamshell (cnet)
• Sony unveils beastly graphics engine (EETimes)
• Micron seeing further decline in memory prices (cnet)