George Cole of Bottom Line sent a note that they just dropped prices on the PowerLogix 466/233/1MB ZIF upgrade to $679.99.

I forgot to mention the 3D Game News page was updated earlier today.

Alexis Rosen sent a note the "Display Name Registry" utility noted by a reader in an earlier post today is is buried in a 7+MB file at: ftp.apple.com/developer/Development_Kits/PCI_Driver_SDK.sit.hqx. Based on past history of posts like this I don't expect it to last long at that location :-). Thanks Alexis!

Auto-Start Virus on LinuxPPC CD? Ed O'Briant writes with a warning:

"This from Virex 5.9.1 on my recently received LinuxPPC CD-ROM:

Virus: "AutoStart 9805-A" found in file "DB" Location: "LinuxPPC 1999:DB"
Last Modification Date: Wednesday, June 2, 1999 12:13:55 PM
File repair or deletion was not attempted.

Not good.
Ed O'Briant"

Tip: I always disable the auto-play settings in the QT Control panel to help prevent the spread of the Auto-Start worm.

More on USB CDRs: A reader responded to an earlier post with tips and another opinion on USB CDrom recorders:

" I have the QPS Que drive as well. I have had no problems burning folders, audio or video files from my B&W G3/400/DVD/Zip. On the QPS site, they have some troubleshooting tips.

1) Connect the drive directly to the G3 or iMac rather than through a hub. I use the Entrega 7 port powered hub with no problems. Currently, however, I do have the Que plugged directly to the G3 USB.

2) Lower Disk Cache to 1024K. My cache defaulted to 6084K!

3) Set the memory in Toast 3.8 to 5120 minimum and preferred.

The drive works perfectly with these settings.
My question for you:

What affect will changing the cache from the default (huge) setting to the lower 1028K have on other devices and drives and my system? Obviously there is a reason the computer selected such a large amount. I have read other suggestions for lowering the cache--when editing video in Premiere for example.
Steve "

One common video capture tip is to lower the cache to the minimum amount (I think this was noted in my Fuse capture card review along with other tips). OS 8.5 and later defaults to setting the disk cache to some percentage of total installed ram I believe, usually 6MB seems to be the setting here. As noted on the SCSI/IDE features page article called Disk Cache study last year, Macbench scores really improve with larger disk cache sizes (noted in the Performance Basics article as well). 6MB seems to be the point of diminishing returns in MacBench at least. Larger disk caches help finder responsiveness especially on older Macs with slow drives. Viewing folders with many files in them really slows down with tiny disk cache settings.

Sony FireWire CDRom Recorder: Bruce Modell of CDW wrote in response to an earlier post from a reader asking about FireWire CDRs:

"Mike, Here's an FYI for you.
I am taking Backorders on a new Sony Firewire 4x4x24 cd-rw
Sony part # CRX120e/x. These should be avail in early July.
CDW# 171744 $429
Bruce Modell
Senior Account Manager
Macintosh/Networking/Wintel Specialist
CDW, Inc. "

TurboMax/CDR Recording Feedback: Several readers have noted problems burning CDRs after adding a Turbomax IDE card. I suspect busmastering is the issue (sharing the PCI bus or some interrupt of the data flow) but as a test try not using any Turbomax connected drives as a data source. And remember that Toast does not support IDE CDROM burners - only Charismac's Discribe. Also make sure that Toast has a large buffer/cache (I use 8MB or more) and see if lowering the burn rate (2x vs 4x, etc.) helps. I'm looking for owner feedback to see if using all onboard SCSI connected drives (SCSI CDR and source data from an onboard SCSI hard drive) also have the problem when a Turbomax IDE card is present.

More on New B&W G3s: Another report on the mixed batch of Rage128's with heatsinks and the ZIP bezel bundle:

" I can confirm that the speed bumped BW g3's come with a Zip Bezel. I just set up 2 of them and it comes in a bag with a manual on installing a zip drive. It mentions Apple and Non-apple zip drives working. Also, one BW had a ATI Rage 128 card with a heat sink and the other did not!
Fred Evans "

More on Overclocked ZIFs/HD Data Errors: This reader reports his problem was due to a bent pin, whereas the original report was CPU speed related (backing off to 375Mhz solved the problem):

"Mike,
After reading all the postings about the problems readers are having with their overclocked OtherWorld ZIFs I thought maybe I should write. As I told you in my last email, I still am running reliably at 433 for over a week and I'm pushing the machine really hard. Here in Los Angeles the weather is beginning to get hot and I'm happy to report my machine is handling it well.

Regarding the disk corruption issues... At first, I too, had some weird disk corruption issues when mounting disk images also when unstuffing files that I had DL'd. I thought the Western Digital 13G HD (5400RPM) I have didn't like the high speed ZIF (I was still running at 400). I tried using my 10G Maxtor as the main drive and still experienced the same corruption issues. I was prepared to put the ZIF back to 366 but decided to check everything else first. I discovered that I had bent one of the pins on the ZIF when I installed it. I gently reoriented the pin and reinserted the ZIF correctly and all disk issues were resolved. Ran my G3 at 400 for a few days before I applied heat sink compound and switched it over to 433.

As an aside, about 6 months ago I purchased an IBM 35101 10G drive and it would run fine for a few days in my 266 G3 before I experienced the same problems your readers are now reporting. I even replaced it with another IBM (same model) and the problems persisted. I think some ATA drives just don't like Apple's IDE bus. The Maxtor and the WD I have now have both run fine for a few months on the G3 IDE onboard connectors (I have the 1st G3 so I can't do master/slave) and are flying at 433! The WD scores 1535 (4M disk cache) and the Maxtor 1345 (4M disk cache). Both of these are 5400RPM drives and have been formatted with Drive Setup 1.7.2 which installs disk driver 3.2.1.
Robert "

Note that the OWC ZIF problems were generally related to PTP/CarrierZIF owners and there was only one report of data errors at a 400Mhz overclocked speed.

PB (Bronze) Overclocking: Derrick Yamaura sent a note that there is a Overclocking page for the new bronze keyboard Powerbook G3s at http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~t-imai/pbg3e2.html. The author is famous for these guides and many are included on my links page. Warning - overclocking a Powerbook is not something I suggest due to delicate soldering of surface mount resistors and the potential for damage to the system in doing so. The author of the page has notes on a PB G3/400 at 466Mhz and 500Mhz speeds by increasing the CPU/bus speed ratios.

New Fuse Bundle: Timothy McMahon of Aurora Design wrote to say they are now bundling Videoshop with the Fuse capture card (reviewed here last year).

"Mike,
Aurora Design is pleased to announce that we are now offering the availability of the full version of Strata's VideoShop with our Fuse card. The price for this bundle is $525 and will be available as early as next week.
Timothy McMahon
Aurora Design, Inc.
www.auroradsgn.com"

Apple Drive Setup 1.7.3 Brett Sheppeard sent a note that Apple had released DS 1.7.3. yesterday. According to the TIL (#11303), it is said to improve reliability with UltraATA drives in the B&W G3. Hopefully this solves the data corruption issues noted here many times in the last few weeks with drives like the WD Expert. Here's a quote from the TIL:

"includes improved reliability for Ultra ATA transfers on G3 Blue and White machines.

When to use Drive Setup 1.7.3.
Immediately after you set up your computer for the first time.

Any time you install Mac OS versions 7.6, 7.6.1, 8.0, 8.1, 8.5, 8.5.1, or 8.6 on your computer, you should use Drive Setup 1.7.3 to update the driver on your hard disk again. If you are using a version of Mac OS prior to 7.6, it is not necessary to use Drive Setup 1.7.3 to update your hard disk drive. Note that Drive Setup 1.7.3 was tested with and is supported with System 7.5 through Mac OS 8.6. "

As noted here last week, Drive Setup 1.6.2 also solves the problem (p/o OS 8.5.1 update) as the driver does not support the UltraDMA modes where the problem is seen. I welcome feedback from readers on the performance impact of DS 1.7.3 vs 1.7.2 and if it solves the WD Expert issue in older B&W G3s (I'll test tonight for this myself as well). I wish there was a CPU cycle usage utility for the Mac, as UltraDMA modes can result in dramatic efficiency gains in tests I've done on a PC (from 90% usage to 6% in some cases by enabling DMA mode). The new IDE chip rev used in the latest B&W G3s also addresses the issue of data integrity I'm told. See my New Features page posted last week for pictures of the new drive brackets and cable setup in the latest shipping B&W G3s (as well as the Rage128 Heatsink).

USB CDR Feedback: A reader comments he's disappointed in his USB CDRom recorder:

"Mike,
I bought a QPS Que 4x2x8 drive, and was very disappointed. Due to the slow nature of USB, it rarely burned reliably at 4x. Actually, I never got it to burn once successfully at 4x! I couldn't even get it to burn at 2x without connecting it directly to the computer (not the hub).

My question to you is, are there any FireWire CD-Burners available, or soon to be available? I'll take two!
Marty"

Peeking at Open Firmware: Readers report that not all B&W G3s shipping now have the Rage128 heatsink (faster card clock speed is assumed). At this time I suspect only those from the Apple store have all the latest improvements until older stock in the retail channel is purged. This reader used an Apple software utility to peek at the Mclk (rage128 clock speed) value and other info on his B&W G3:

"So I finally broke down and bought a G3/400/DVD yesterday, and I started poking around to see what I could find out.

A while back, Apple used to ship a little utility called "Display Name Registry" that would let you browse the Open Firmware device tree on any PCI Mac, and it provides a wealth of useful information.

For example, last week on your (truly excellent, BTW) site, you mentioned that the new G3's had heat sinks on the Rage 128 chips [see New Features page -Mike]. Mine doesn't, and there's an entry in the device tree under the ATI section that's called "RF,MCLK", which has a value of 7501 -- which lends credence to the chip only being clocked at 75 MHz. (On a related note, it calls the ata-4 controller a "cmd646-ata".)

More interesting is that there's an entry for a SCSI controller (the same 5 MHz SCSI-1 that's been on Mac motherboards seemingly forever now), even though there isn't a connector for it!

On a more ironic note, the Fast-Narrow to Slow-Wide PCI bridge appears to be a DEC 21154 chip, which Apple has to have brought from Intel [Note: Compaq bought DEC I'm told, not Intel-Mike], since they bought DEC out a while back. I feel almost feel like putting an "Intel Inside" sticker on the thing!

Anyway, if you want a copy of the utility, there's probably a version somewhere on Apple's developer site -- normally, it ships with the "Tool Chest" developer CDs. There were a couple of other utilities that displayed the OF name registry (I found a great recipe for ginger snaps on version 2.0 of the Adaptec 2940UW ROM!), but "Display Name Registry" has the best interface (which isn't saying a lot).
Keep up the good work!
(Anon.)"

Many readers are asking where to get the utility he mentions. If I knew where it was I'd post a URL here but I don't.

CarrierZIF/PowerTower (Catalyst mb) Feedback: This reader has some interesting notes on his Catalyst based PowerTower (not Tsunami based like the PowerTower Pro) system:

"Hi Mike,
I just submitted a report to the CPU database on a XLR8 CarrierZIF with the OWC 366 ZIF. This is in a (non-Pro) PowerTower 180e. I have a few observations that I thought you might be interested in, but didn;t want to clutter up the database submission any more than I already did.

Even though my L2 cache has worked fine for 2.5 years with the system bus running at 60 MHz, it prevented the machine from booting even at low bus speeds, like 45 MHz. I had to go all the way down to 320/40 to boot with the 1 MB PowerCC L2 cache. Removing it solved that problem, and I am running well at 400/200/50. I can verify your experience with the PowerCenter Pro in that a 60 MHz bus speed is fine - 390/60 works very well. I wish switch settings for bus speeds over 60 MHz were documented, as I bet there's a little headroom there, and 400.4/200.2/61.6 would be interesting. In any case, anything over 405 freezes the system. [I'm not sure bus speeds of 60mhz are possible-Mike]

One tip: When I installed the XLR8 software, somehow an alias of the Mach Speed G3 control panel was placed in the start up items folder, which caused a system crash upon booting. Turning it off and leaving the actual Mach Speed extension and control panel on made everything OK. [I never saw this issue here - but didn't check the startup items folder for aliases-Mike]

The 7200 graphics acceleration (for Catalyst systems except for the PowerCenter Pro) should be turned off before installing the upgrade. In my case I could not even see what was going on, and the machine crashed after a few seconds. Using virtual memory, you can actually use the extension, but there are glitches still present. [Both the 7200 ext. and VM tips was noted here last year on a tips page about PowerForce G3/PowerCurve systems owner feedback. It's also noted in the FAQ CPU upgrades section.-Mike] Without the extension, redraws of large windows seem a little slower, but it's no big deal. I don't have the MB 5.0 CD, but I did run MB 4.0 video tests if any PowerCurve/PowerCenter/PowerTower owners want to know how a G3 upgrade will affect their on-board video. My system had the full 4 MB on board.

(All graphics tests at 1024 X 768/thousands)
MB 4.0 (604e/180/7200 graphics ext.) = 467
MB 4.0 (G3/400/200/no 7200 graphics ext.) = 568

So while occasionally a window redraw seems slower, overall the graphics performance goes up a little even though you lose the 7200 acceleration extension. So I'd say people shouldn't worry too much about the loss of this extension. If I can ever actually purchase an ATI 128 card, I'll test that too.
Ken Skidmore"

Note that Newer Tech's G3 CPU cards often had issues with onboard video (7500/8500, etc.) in thousands colors mode. The recommended solution was to get a PCI video card. This was noted in the first Newer G3 CPU card reviews (see CPU Cards page).

Off-The Shelf ZIPs/B&W G3s: To further dispel the rumor that non-Apple ZIP drives might be a problem in B&W G3s - here's a message from an Apple insider about the included ZIP bezel in new G3 systems noted in yesterday's news:

"...all new G3's will ship with a extra bezel in the box so that customers can add a off the shelf internal Zip and be good to go. "

Bottom Line Specials: Site sponsor Bottom Line sent their latest List of Specials good until 6/18/99 or while supplies last. Included is a Railgun G3 275Mhz 1MB Backside Cache At 1.5:1 for $289.99 and $79.99 OEM IDE/ATAPI ZIP drives.

More on nVidia TNT Graphics cards Mac support : I've posted several notes on the rumors of possible Mac support for nVidia's amazing TNT/TNT2 graphics cards in the past, most recently the news of nVidia releasing their driver code and an insider comment on being requested to write nVidia specific PowerPC code. Ruffin Bailey sent a note on a post that indicates it's not going to be part of any Mac model, but then with Apple's close ties to ATI I never really expected that to happen. Ruffin's mail follows:

"This was on fgnonline this morning, so I imagine it's new news. I apologize if this is an old story I overlooked. 'Floyd' pointed it out to me this afternoon:

'No Acceleration For Mac
Macintosh: Apple has denied numerous rumors that nVidia's TNT2 3D chip is to be installed in its new line of Macs. Andy Hess, the company's development relations manager [nVidia I assume-Mike], told Game Daily, "If Apple is interested in bringing TNT2 to the Mac, we'd be more than happy to talk about it." He also said that if it was interested the company would face no problem in getting the 3D accelerator fitted. -www.fgnonline.com'
Ruffin Bailey"

I'm still hoping that with the nVidia driver code released to the public some company will write Mac drivers. The previous post here on requests to write nVidia specific PowerPC code sounds promising. The nVidia TNT2 is currently the king of the hill in high-performance/low cost graphics card chipsets on the PC.

IXMicro News: IXmicro sent a series of press releases including a note that their 3Dfx Banshee chip based Game Rocket is due to ship on June 20th. This card appears identical to the VillageTronic MP850, but is slightly lower in cost. They mentioned their dual monitor output IX3D card (two monitors driven by one PCI card) which uses the same chipset as the previous IX3D line (see Graphics card page for reviews) They also have an online store now for direct sales.

More on QT4 & MP2 File Support: A reader replies to a reader post in yesterday's news:

"QT3 always played MP2 files fine for me, I just tried with QT4 and then still play fine... Make sure the type/creator is MPEG/TVOD I guess.
Matt Smackeron"

Another reader wrote that using SoundApp is an alternative:

"Here's my solution to Greg's problem: use SoundApp. It handles just about every sound file format, and plays all of them wonderfully. I've never once had a crash with it, unlike what I get constantly from MacAMP. QuickTime's MP3 support is also just very lacking. You can get SoundApp at http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~franke/SoundApp/ . If you have problems playing MP3 files in SoundApp, make sure the file type is MPEG, rather than PLAY or anything else that any other programs might set it to. (It's easy to change the file type/creator using many different shareware applications available.)
clay"

SoundJam Announced: Casady & Greene today unveiled their newest Macintosh program, SoundJam MP(TM). Scheduled for release in the 3rd quarter of this year, SoundJam MP hopes to be the first full-featured MP3 player/encoder program for the Macintosh available in stores. SoundJam will require OS 8.1 or later, Power Macintosh with 604 processor at 120 mhz or faster and CD-ROM drive. For more information visit the product page at http://www.soundjam.com

If you don't check every day's daily news (updated several times a day normally) you might miss something valuable. Check the summary list below for highlights of the last two days news and the archives page for older new page links. For a blast from the past, read what was on the news page here exactly a year ago.

Other Net News:

• Microsoft's Win98 Bug Fix has its own Bug Microsoft issues an alert on its Web site about the just-released Windows 98 Second Edition, which may hang when the computer is being suspended. (News.com)
• Sun to Announced PalmPilot-Java Tie-up (News.com)
• Compaq develops Linux handheld (News.com)
• 400Mhz PII Notebooks arrive (News.com)

Monday's News Summary

• 3D Game News updated
• Wanted: Mac Rage128 Tweaker for clock speeds
• ORB Drive Tip for large file copy freezes
• B&W G3/ZIP 250 Feedback
• IBM SCSI Drive Jumper Settings
• More on CarrierZIF/PowerTower Pro
• XLR8 CarrierZIF review revised for latest PTP info and OWC overclocking warning
• Report of data corruption on overclocked OWC ZIF
• PowerCenter Pro owners followup on IX3D Card problem report
• MacWorld Rumors: P1, C2 (iMac 2?) & Quake II/Carmack to appear?
• QT4 can't play MP2 files
• Article on possibility of Apple being bought
• Apple has registered macmate.com
• PB G3 spotted in Austin Powers movie
• Rate Your G3 Upgrade database updated
• Other Net News

Weekend's News Summary

• XLR8 CarrierZIF review posted
• B&W G3 owner report on BUZ, problems with IBM drive
• Summary of PowerTower Pro/CarrierZIF problem reports
  (including tips that solved some reader problems)
• IXMicro Ult. Rez/PowerCenter Pro problem report
• 3D Game News page updated
• Tip for OS 8.6 owners that moved Sherlock prior to install
• Other CarrierZIF/Manual feedback (positive)
• Warning on Peltier Coolers
• iMac spotted in 'Spy Who Shagged Me' movie
• ZIP disks formatted in non-Apple ZIP drives OK here
• Tech support mail backlogged
• Voodoo2/VPC/500MHz G3 not enough for PC 3D games
• Other Net News Links

For other recent site news/features links, see the Sidebar to the right and the Recent Site Features page.

If you own a G3/300 or faster Mac, you might want to get our PPC Checker utility that will report if your CPU is copper or aluminum based.

Considering a G3 Upgrade? Check the CPU Upgrade Owner's Survey results and search for owner reports by Mac model and/or card brand. The database is being updated daily for new reports. Also make sure you ask your dealer about any issues with your particular mac model as I have gotten several reports of issues with certain G3 upgrades in some Mac models (Mach 5, PowerBase, 7300). I urge any owners that have had problems to report this via the Survey Form. Always give the most weight to recent owner reports (dated in the listing).