[This is a past news page, the current news page is at www.xlr8yourmac.com/]
(News was light today as I was out all day on personal matters and just returned at 1:00AM. I fixed the broken link to Yesterday's news.
Thanks to those that sent a note about it.)
Toshiba Combo DVD/CDRW in G4 Report: (Update: search the Drive Compatibility Database for the latest Toshiba Combo drive reports - Toast 4.1.x and Toast 5 does support the Toshiba Combo drive, and in the
latest iTunes updates, some models are also supported. Our FAQ's CDROM/CDR section also has tips on mods to support files for Toshiba Combo drives.)
Tim Thome sent a summary of his tests with the new Toshiba drive in a new G4 Mac:
"Hi Mike!
Summary
-------
The Toshiba SD-R1002 drive is a disk that support partial Mac functionality
at a price. Driver support not withstanding, it is a good drive, but the
cost for the combination of CD-RW and DVD doesn't compare to a SCSI card and
equivalent CD-RW drive for those who already have a DVD drive installed.
The Computer
------------
Mac G4 AGP (Rev 0?)
MacOS 8.6
Apple CD/DVD driver version 1.3
Apple DVD Player 2.0
The Drive
---------
The disk appears as a standard DVD-ROM disk drive. The package includes
Windows CD-R utils, including Adaptec Easy CD-Creator and Direct CD. It also
includes a game bundle, all games are on a 2-gig DVD-ROM disk.
Installation
------------
Thanks to the tutorial on installing CD-ROM drives into a B&W, installation
is a breeze. The G4 with internal ZIP drives makes it a pain to disconnect
power to the Zip, but once past that, wasn't a problem. The drive is a bit
longer (about 3.4 inch longer than the Hitachi factory DVD drive), but the
shielding has notches that allows you to keep the shields in place.
Something to note... the Zip and CD-ROM are contained in a single carrier on
the G4. This wasn't immediately apparent in the tutorial. [ This is true of the
B&W G3 as well - the housing is one piece-Mike] Take advantage of
this to check the jumpers for the ZIP drive, mine did not have any for
master or slave.
The Good...
-----------
Good news is that the drive is bootable. Upon startup, popped the 8.6
installer and held down the "C" key, and the G4 booted up without incident
from the Toshiba drive.
More good news...
The Apple DVD/CD drivers included with 8.6 support this drive as a DVD-ROM
without any patches.
Trying a DVD-Video disk, I inserted "Armageddon" using the 2.0 DVD as
shipped with 8.6 for the G4, the disk mounted, and DVD playback is as good
or better than the Hitachi drive (GD-3000). Note that this is not a
"patched" driver as needed with some other drives.
The Bad...
----------
Toast and DirectCD do not recognize the drive as a CD recorder/rewriter. The
drive is pretty new, and the PC utilities require updates to support the
recording functions of the drive. Good news is that Adaptec does know about
the drive, and it is safe to assume that if the Mac community pushes hard
enough, we'll see updates to the tools to support the drive.
Not tested... Retrospect (I have an older version, backing up to tape...)
[ I doubt it would support it with an entry in the device file-Mike]
The Not so Ugly...
------------------
It's a good drive. If you already have a DVD-ROM installed, it is not a
practical issue to replace the drive for similar functionality at the price
that the DVD-CD/RW drives are at presently. For the same price, you can get
a supported SCSI drive and card, and get more functionality...
Pro's
+ Bootable
+ Supported by stock Apple drivers
Con's
- Cost
- Not supported by current CD-R tools on the Mac
-Tim Thome
"
For future reference, I'll be adding this report to the FAQ's CDR and DVD sections, which already include comments on the Ricoh DVD/CDRW drive.
Beige G3/VRM Feedback: I need more feedback from Beige G3 owners
that had problems with copper CPUs (450's) or are running G4 upgrades.
The VRM module issue noted in yesterday's news does not seem to
be a factor based on feedback so far, but I welcome more
Beige G3 owner feedback from those that are running fast CPU upgrades (G3 or G4). As noted in yesterday's news, my
G3-ZONE troubleshooting page has a picture of the VRM. My Raytheon VRM has that name
on one of the chips on the component side of the VRM, visible without removing it.
Some owners have reported seeing no brand name on the module (it's often silkscreened
on the board and not visible without removing it, which requires removing the AV/Personality
card.
Firewire Case/CDR Drive Tests: A reader sent a report of several CDRW drives
he tried without success to get working in a Clubmac case. (An ADS case owner wrote that
his case didn't even come with CD drivers)
"Hello Mike,
About your request for info on using IDE CD-RW drives with Clubmac's
Firewire/IDE case, well, not good news. I tried three drives: an HP
8250i, a 9100i, and a TDK AI-CDRW8432 (TDK's 8x/4x/32x drive), and none
worked. The included software is what comes with ALL Clubmac Firewire
drives, be it a hard drive, CD-R, or whatever, but according to the tech
support response I got only a few CD-RW drives work with their case.
Plextor and Matshita were the only brands I was told would work, and
another response from them (from a different person at Clubmac) said no
CD-RW's would work. Also, the case does not come with a bezel for
front-access 5.25" drives, and the setup looks odd without it.
[ The Bezel part number is noted in the original update of the Firewire/IDE case article here-Mike]
More about the software: the FireSCSI extensions are for CD-ROM and
CD-R/RW compatibility. I had a 24x-speed Creative Labs CD-ROM lying
around and tried it too, but neither Apple's driver or CD-ROM Toolkit
could make use of it. Orange Micro's bridge just doesn't seem to get
along with many kinds of devices. I was led to believe by various support
email exchanges that the firmware on the bridge itself must be
specific to the device connected, especially for CD-RW drives, and if
that's the case don't bother. [ Another reader said this is true also, that the
bridge must be set to ATAPI mode-Mike]
Toast could see the FireSCSI SCSI bus, but
it hadn't a clue about drives on the other end. This was my first attempt
to get a working Firewire CD-RW drive without getting ripped off (I have
lots of IDE pulls just sitting around), and I won't try again until the
ADS Technologies case, which advertises broad support, ships. Their page
is at http://www.adstech.com/products/pyro_drive_kit_more.html, but I
think I got that info from this site. [ An ADS owner wrote yesterday
that the case came with no CD drivers at all-Mike]
I wish Clubmac hadn't told me that
their case supported all CD-RW drives... they could have saved me lots of
time, and themselves an RMA. All this price gouging for retail
Firewire drives/lack of support in Toast/false information from companies
is making me sick and in the mean time I'm using an HP 9200i in a case
with a Belkin USB/SCSI adapter. With reliable 6x burns, it's good enough
for me. Regards,
-Nick"
As I noted in yesterday's news, even at $112.50 (+shipping and bezel) + an 8X IDE CDR drive
makes it cheaper (and safer) to just buy a Firewire CDR like the 8X BOA from OWC ($385 w/Toast & 10 CDRs).
More tech. details on the issue of CDR support:
"Mike,
The firewire bridge in the ClubMac case is based on a chip
manufactured by LSI. This chip is indeed capable of supporting a
CD,CDR,CDRW or DVD drive.
However, the EEPROM on the bridge must be properly configured to
support CD drives which involves several steps.
First the CSR ROM structure that describes all FireWire Storage
devices must be changed to indicate that the device is type 5
(CD-ROM) not type 0 (Disk). This is a complex process in itself, but
that is best left for another day.
The second step is that the bridge must be configured to run in ATAPI
mode (it is shipped in ATA mode) and the correct DMA mode or PIO mode
supported by the device must also be configured.
Once these changes are made, the case can be used with CD and DVD
drives. A matching open bezel is available from ClubMac tech support
for $5 + shipping.
I have not used the case with the Indigita software, so I cannot
report on that aspect of compatibility.
The problem at the moment is that there is no publicly available
Macintosh utility to perform the necessary alterations to the EEPROM.
PC users can find a well hidden utility to perform the functions on
the an LSI FTP site at ftp://ftp.lsil.com/pub/ in the SymChips folder.
There may be a solution for the Macintosh sometime in the future.
John Brisbin
"
Quake2 1.03 Performance Tweaks - 54 FPS on Pismo G3/500! After a Pismo 400MHz owner reported much higher rates than in my PowerBook G3/500 review in the Game FPS database, I started digging in the config.cfg file to
see if my lower scores could be improved. After making a few changes, I saw dramatic gains
- 10 more FPS at 1024x768 and about 15 more FPS at 640x480. I've updated the game/apps page of the Pismo review for the new results (in red) and listed the tweaks to the config file there.
In a quick test on the Rage128 Pro AGP equipped G4/450 AGP system, 1024x768 scores were also boosted to 40FPS. With the tweaks, the Pismo G3/500 runs 54 FPS at 640x480 and 24 FPS at 1024x768 (tested on battery power).
Run 3rd Person View in Quake3: The following tip was noted in the 3dfx/gaming forum:
"(By kotos)
for something new, try the third person pov in Q3
hit the "~" key to bring up the console
type
/cg_thirdperson "1"
and hit return
to turn it off type
/cg_thirdperson "0"
and hit return
then exit the console by pressing "~"
sorry to dummy this down but ya never know
"
And another reader tip in reply to the above:
"(From Val)
yep, i have it toggle bound to my space bar ....(i use Yuriko, and man I wish i could meet her in full geometry!)
try this newbies :
//3rd person viewpoint toggle
bind space "toggle cg_thirdperson
cg_thirdpersonrange "30" // Default is '40'.
set sensitivity "14"
put it in your autoexec.cfg file (substitute your own settings)
"
GigaPixel Graphics Chip Performance Comments: Bryan Speece, Director of Macintosh Business Development at 3dfx sent a comment that illustrates the performance potential of Gigapixel's technology, which 3dfx is acquiring:
"Mike,
...on the GigaPixel website there's a link to a Peddie Report article that does a nice job describing the technology. (Peddie is a graphics industry insider pay per view report that all of us in the graphics business subscribe to.) The Peddie folks also commented on their first-hand demo of the early rev of GP silicon:
"So we went and looked at some demos, and of course that meant looking at a game. And that meant looking at Quake III. And it looked good, at 1024 x 768 x 32 @ 80Hz with full-scene anti-aliasing and frame rates approaching 200 FPS in some scenes. They had a G400 running next to it, same scenes, and of course the G400's scenes were riddled with edge jaggies...
...But what about the features in the Giga3D core? Well it does bilinear, trilinear and anisotropic filtering, can generate up to 5 Gpixels/sec., 32 bits/pixel fully turned on, at any depth complexity, and almost any resolution, and it's scalable...
... The proof of concept part I looked at was built at TSMC in 0.25-micron gate array and had about 600K gates...
"
As a reference today's traditional graphics silicon engines are pushing 25M gates!!
-Bryan
"
RealPlayer 7 Install Tip: Here's the simplest of the tips received in reply to the
problem post in yesterday's news:
"Well, there was a news post on your site on 3-30-2000 and He had a problem
with RealPlayer Beta 7. I had the same problem. Whenever I try and
install it, it would say it could not create a folder and just quit. I tried
everything and finally I tried increasing the memory allocation for the
installer, it installed and worked.
Before I installed it I had a copy of real player on my hardrive copyed over from a diffrent computer and it would not start up, realplayer would just quit as soon as it was opened. But now
it works. I have a G4-400 AGP with 320M Ram and MacOS 9.0.2.
-Jagil-
"
G4 Owner comments on Adobe PageMaker 6.5.2/OS 9.0 Issues:
"I just thought some of your readers might want to hear that Adobe has
found a possible file corruption issue with PageMaker 6.5.2 and OS 9 (rev
version discussion below). While researching some serious issues we've
had with PM on our new G4, an Adobe tech recommended I check on a temp
file deletion issue. They've found that OS 9 sometimes doesn't delete a
certain type of PM temp file properly, and the user needs to manually
delete it since it can cause file corruption. Upon testing PM on our G4
with 9.0.2 I found it WAS deleting the files, so that WASN'T our problem.
But if someone is running OS 9.0.0, they might want to see if it's doing
it properly on their machines.
[ Utils like EmpyTempFolder,etc. can delete these temp files-Mike] Here's what the tech told me:
Exit out of PageMaker. Perform a find using Sherlock and search for the
text string "aldtmp". Drag any files with "aldtmp" in the name to the
trash INDIVIDUALLY (meaning one at a time...apparently something can go
awry if you try dragging group of the files at a time...it might be a
Sherlock GUI issue), and then empty the trash. If you find that your
system is NOT deleting these files, you should do this procedure EVERY
SINGLE TIME you quit out of PM. Since the problem seems to have been
fixed in 9.0.2, I would expect any possible problems regarding this
particular issue in 9.0.0 will be fixed with the 9.0.4 update.
Anyhow, I just thought other folks having problems might want to check
this out.
Dan Ogle
IT Director
Jeffrey/Scott Advertising
"
The Owner's CPU Upgrade Ratings, and Mac Game FPS databases were updated
in the wee hours last night.
Software Updates:
The recent features page also lists articles posted (most recent first) as does the sidebar links here. The site topics pages (systems, cpu upgrades, etc. - see top and sidebar links on this page) also are places to check as well as the FAQ.
Thursday's News Summary
- Beige G3 Voltage Regulators & CPU Upgrades
- USB iMedia Keyboard Mouse Freeze Fix
- IBM MicroDrive PCCard/USB Adapters page created
- Inspire Plugin/PF G3 Conflict
- Apple Store Selling Cinema Displays Separately
- Casio QV-3000/Microdrive/iBook Comments
- Cheetahs in Some G4/SCSI Systems
- MS Natural Keyboard Pro Driver
- ClubMac Firwire/IDE Case Maxtor Drive Compatibility
- Pod Racer No-CD Tip
- RealPlayer 7/OS 9 Problem Report
- Seagate Sold
- OWC Blowout on PB 190/5300/3400 batteries
- Ambrosia forum comments on Faster util
- The Owner's CPU Upgrade Ratings and Mac Game FPS databases updated.
- Other Net news/Software updates
Wednesday's News Summary
- MCE PB CDRW drives announced, same as Taxan's?
- IBM MicroDrive/Pismo Report
- More on Fanless Rage128 Pro Cards
- Q&A with 3dfx/Gigapixel on Notebook Chip Possibilities
- Dantz Retrospect Driver Update for Yamaha CRW8424 CDR
- $289.95 Price on Toshiba's DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
- More VPN Feedback
- OS 9.04 & L2G3 Upgrades
- Adobe livemotion review
- Last chance on Stuffit Deluxe discount
- The Owner's CPU Upgrade Ratings and Mac Game FPS databases were updated.
- Other Net news/Software updates
Tuesday's News Summary
- 3dfx/Gigapixel Conference Call Tidbits
- 3Dfx's Bryan Speece Comments on GigaPixel Benefits
- Kenwood TrueX 72x CDrom Beta Mac Firmware Tests
- Source for IX3D and IXTV Drivers
- Mac VPN Feedback (Updated Twice)
- Toshiba's DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
- Another IE 5/Suitcase 8.2 Tip
- Reader Request: Virtual Private Networks and Macs
- More GaugePro/UMA Motherboard Comments
- More Yamaha 8424 SCSI CDR Feedback
- 128MB FPM/EDO Dimm Feedback
- Blue Planet Drive Jumper Info Site
- More IE 5.0 Feedback
- Mac TrueX CDrom Drive Firmware
- 3dfx To Acquire GigaPixel
- The Owner's CPU Upgrade Ratings and Mac Game FPS databases were updated
late last night with new reader entries and my Pismo G3/500 review game performance results.
- Other Net news
For links to older news pages see the Archives page.
The recent features page has a lists reviews/articles you may have missed.
For a guide to finding answers to questions - see my Site Guide page.
Considering a CPU Upgrade? Search the CPU Upgrade Owner's Survey results and search for owner reports by Mac model and/or card brand. The current database has more than 3,300+ reports and growing.
Answers!
