• Fixes issues between Aliens vs. Predator and Mac OS X 10.1.2
• Fixes flickering of cursor.
• Fixes gaming going into window mode in 10.1

See the install info in the Patches section. (There's a typo in there referring to the GiantsMP patch as of tonight.)

" Reacting to an insider tip, Other World Computing took a closer look at the Sonnet G3/500MHz upgrades.

What OWC discovered upon removing the heat sink off the two Sonnet products available was that the G3 processor on the board is labeled G3/466. Essentially, these 2 Sonnet 500Mhz upgrades and possibly others in actuality have a G3/466MHz processor instead of the G3/500MHz processor customers think they are paying for.

This is a very significant issue and we will likely have more information to report in the future on this, as well as additional parts reviewed for this switch. [Photos of the PCI model are here and a Banker model photo here.]
Any possible legal/liability ramifications have not yet been determined.

You know from my advice that I never recommend over clocking. If in fact this is what Sonnet has been doing as a common practice, I can only express my extreme disappointment in Sonnet as an organization.

Further, OWC has confirmed both XLR8 and PowerLogix are not following this practice and have the same speed processor on their upgrade boards as they advertise the speed of the upgrade to be. In fact, OWC further discovered that OWC customers of the PowerLogix G3/350MHz PCI in December actually received G3/400 processor loaded boards. Bonus!. :)
Best Regards,
Larry O'Connor
Other World Computing, Inc. "

Larry noted they have suspended sales (noted on a product page ) of the G3/500s pending further investigation
Both of the CPU chips on my Sonnet G4/500 Duet card I installed in my Cube were 500Mhz rated/marked parts. (I usually include a Specs page in my CPU upgrade reviews here where I list the part numbers/ratings of the CPU chip and cache on upgrades I personally review/examine.) If any readers have checked the CPU/cache part numbers of other upgrades let me know.
(Update - Sonnet wrote me saying they will officially comment on this issue on Monday.)

"Check out IBM's 120GXP Drive Specs Document "Reliability" section in the specs file at:
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/desk/ds120gxp.pdf
Note the "Recommended power-on hours (monthly) 333"

Although I can't say as I noticed a recommended POH/month rating in other drive specs in the past, that's not exactly confidence inspiring. (Especially for anyone that runs their system 24/7.) For a 30 day month that would be an avg of 11.1 hours per day.

Last year there were several notes/links here on 75GXP series drive failures (one owner started a class-action lawsuit), but knock on wood my 3 are still doing fine - but they've not been in servers or used more than a few hours a day. The most disturbing reports on the 75GXP were the large number of owner reports on failures (often repeated ones) from Cnet's review of the 75GXP 75GB drive. When I posted that link about 51% of the owner ratings gave the drives a negative/thumbs down rating. [There's now 140 (59%) negative ratings as of today at noon eastern time.] There have been some failure reports in the database here, but not a large number so far. (But that means little to someone that has personally experienced a failure, or repeated ones.)

" Mike,
You might put up a pointer to this apple boards discussion [link may expire in the future] on getting an Epson C80 printer sharable on a LAN. The basic idea is that you get a cheap (I got it for $67) parallel<>ethernet print server, enable the appletalk protocol in the print server and then you can use the "Epson Appletalk" protocol from Print Center to add the printer. It prints fine from 3 computers on my home LAN and wirlessly thru my Tibook/airport/Airport base station/. With Epson rebates, I have a networked, shared printer for $230, which I think is pretty good. This trick might also work with the much cheaper ($70 with current rebate) Epson C60, so you could get this up and running for about $140.

I looked at other printer sharing solutions that involved Ghostscript, Unix lpr hackery, applescripts, etc and didn't like any of them. This works transparently for my wife and kids, so we're all pleased!
Chuck Bouldin"

" Hello Mike,
you have on your website today [yesterday] a workaround on how to put the iPhoto Library on another Volume.
But there is a better way:

Write in Terminal
defaults write com.apple.iPhoto RootDirectory /path/to/desired/location

For example if the Volume that you want to put it on is named "Data"
defaults write com.apple.iPhoto RootDirectory "/Volumes/Data/iPhoto Library"
(you need the quotes if you have a space in the name)
Greetings,
Rainer Ziller "

" USB SanDisk ImageMate (later noted SDDR-55)
Comments:
" I am pleased to report that the new OS X drivers posted today on the the Sandisk site www.sandisk.com work.
I have a Quicksilver G4 (867) running 10.1.2. I Imagecapture opened up as soon I inserted a smartmedia card with some pictures in it. I was also able to download to IPhoto. I did find what others had reported. If you have one bad file IPhoto quits unceremoniusly.
N.S. "

SanDisk's support/downloads page doesn't list just "imagemate", requiring you to enter a model number to see the list of available drivers.
[Update - a reader replied to this post with more info]

" I looked around and discovered that the new drivers are for the SDDR-55. The SDDR-55 is the USB SmartMedia reader. The SanDisk SDDR-31 and SDDR-33 CompactFlash readers just use the native Mac OS X USB drivers.
=Gabe"

My SanDisk SDDR-05 CompactFlash USB reader is not compatible with 10.1.2, and other owners of that model noted the same thing. I checked SanDisk's web site for an update. For the SDDR-05 "a" model (w/Eject button), they only note the old tip here of having a card inserted before booting OS X. The "b" version (no Eject button) is not supported in any version of OS X.

" iPod Software 1.0.4 Updater adds support for iPod names of up to 255 characters, additional languages including Brazilian/Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish, and addresses compatibility and performance issues which users may have experienced with version 1.0.3."

(V1.03 was pulled quickly, reportedly due to issues with B&W G3 Macs.) The 1.04 updater is available at http://doCs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120077.

" The IgniterLT will eventually replace FUSE as our low-end capture/edit product. It adds unbalanced, stereo audio I/O and is compatible with our higher-end Igniter series. It also has a compression range from 50:1 to 1.5:1 (13mb/s)
http://www.auroravideosys.com/Pages/pr_igniterlt.html
We're also offering Macworld specials on IgniterLT and Fuse until Jan 14th.
Jeff Mercure
AuroraVideoSystems"

Smartmedia CardReader Reports
• USB SanDisk ImageMate used w/G4 AGP (OS X)
  (noted new drivers work with OS X 10.1.2)
  
  Combo DVD/CDR Drive Reports
• IDE Toshiba SD-R1102 (8x/8x32x + 8x DVD) in G4/AGP 2001 (OS X)
• Firewire SD-R1002 4x4x24x + 4x DVD used w/G4 AGP (OS X)
  (IDE drive in FW case)
  
  DVD-R Drive Reports
• IDE Pioneer DVR-103 in Dual G4 (OS X)
  
  IDE CDRW Drive Reports
• Sony CRX-120E 4x4x24 in Beige G3 (OS X)
• Sony CRX 175A-A1 24x10x40x in B&W G3 (OS X)
  (no iTunes support)
• Traxdata CDR-2440MB (24x10x40x) used w/modified iMac (OS 9.2)
  (listed under "other" brands)
• Yamaha 2100E 16x/10x/40x in Beige G3 (OS 9)
  
  Firewire CDRW Drive Reports
• Lacie 24x10x40 (CDBP-241040A) used w/PowerBook G3 2000 (OS X)
  (problems noted w/Retrospect)
• Plextor PX-W2410TA 24x/10x/40x (OWC Pro drive) used w/Beige G3 (OS X)
  (Noted Retrospect 5 for OS X worked with the drive)
  
  SCSI CDRW Drive Reports
• Yamaha CRW4416S 4x/4x/16x in Beige G3 (OS X)
  (using El Gato drivers)
• Yamaha CRW4416S 4x/4x/16x Ext. used w/G4 AGP (OS X)
  (using El Gato drivers. Noted past 2906 card tip helped) Firewire Hard Drive Reports
• IBM Travelstar 20GB in OWC portable case used w/PowerTower Pro (OS X)
  (Updated report noting his problems were solved by replacing the CompUSA FW/USB PCI card with a different card brand.)
• Que M3 60GB used w/Dual G4 (OS X)
  (problems noted)
  
  IDE Hard Drive Reports
• IBM Travelstar 30GN 20GB in iBook 2000 (OS X)
  (comments include info on install)

You can find full owner reports by searching the database by drive/brand/interface/mac models (the latest reports are shown first in searches).
For guides to installing CD/CDRW/DVD drives or Hard drives in many mac models, see the IDE Articles page. The Firewire articles page also has guides on case kits, installing drives, etc.
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. [If you post an updated entry - make sure you use the same name, etc. as you did before so I can find your past entry. Thanks.]

Software Updates: (For game software, see Gaming News below)
• iPod Updater 1.04 (Apple update/restore utility)
• AppleSpec Database
  
  OS X Specific Software
• Maxmenus [PR only on an OS X menu utility]
• MegaSeg 2.1 [Professional DJ MP3 Mixer]
• Espion [visual search util]

Mac/PowerPC Related News:
(Note: Rehashing of press releases, repeated news, etc. not listed)

• Tripath Powers Apple's Revolutionary Ultra-Compact iMACs With Exceptional High-Quality Audio (yahoo)
• Macworld Expo: Fewer exhibitors, reduced show floor space reflect economic times (yahoo)
• Can the iMac fix what's wrong with the PC? (silicon valley)
• For Apple, to Be Flat Is a Virtue (NYTimes)
• New iMac: Cool or clunky? (cnet)
• "Summit in the Rockies" QuickTime VR Conference Announced (mactech)
• Time for truth: Why Apple's new iMac ISN'T 'flat-out cool' (zdnet)
• The new iMac - just an angle-poise lamp or a design classic? (computerbuyer UK)
• Apple Delivers Hyperbole and Beauty (NYtimes)
• Will the New iMac Revitalize Apple? (business2.com)
• Apple's Pricey iMac Design Falls Flat (LA Times)
• iPhoto Album Contest (itools)
• MWSF: Post-keynote commentary, G5 info (architosh)
• Keynote (Apple)
• Power of X Presentation (Apple)
• Macworld Best of Show winners announced (maccentral)
• Mac Boxes Make Nice Couches (wired)
• Tribble at the Top? Apple, NeXT grande fromage returns (the register)
• Hercules waves the ATI flag (the register)
• MW Expo: CRT iMacs 'far from dead' (macworld uk)
• Full iPhoto Euro version 'in pipeline' (macworld uk)

Gaming Related:
• Aliens vs Predator 1.0.1a [see patches section for link & install info.] (macplay)
• Glider Pro X (casaday & greene)
• Stellar Deep [online multiplayer game] (pyrogon)
• Real Myst [not sure what's new, as i thought this game had been out for some time] (realmyst)

Misc. Hardware Related:
• ATI and Hercules form a strategic partnership on high-end graphics (hercules)
• MediaBank MT-R (miglia)
• Rewritable DVD rivals make their case (cnet)
• DRAM recovery means higher PC prices -Time (the register)
• Samsung raises DRAM prices, keeps schtum (the register)

• 1 year ago today
• 2 years ago today
• 3 years ago today