Reviews & Daily News with a Difference!
= View Recent Site Features List = - Freq. Asked Questions (FAQ) - - Systems Features - - CPU Card Articles - - SCSI/Disk Articles - - Video Card Articles - - Audio Articles - - Game Related Articles - - Tips & Misc Articles - - L2 Cache Articles -	Need Help? Ask the Men in Mac! First 400MHz ZIF Upgrade Review for G3 Macs! World's first 400MHz G3 Upgrade Review Visit the G3-ZONE for G3 Specific info! Bring in the Noise! (Mac Audio) Complete Site Contents Send News items, Tips and Guest Reviews Advertise here! - Help support Accelerate Your Mac!
11/09/98 - Monday's News:	Click for Current News Page
More on the Pro's PCI Specs: The latest tidbits on the Mac Pro model's PCI specs: " Yosemite is using a 32 bit, 66Mhz slot. It should be noted that the bridge chip itself makes a huge difference in performance. A good bridge running on 33Mhz PCI can outperform a bad or inefficiently configured bridge. We're seeing some pretty good numbers on Yosemite, but it may be possible to tune the bridge to give even better burst throughput. " To recap the word I have is one 66MHz/32-Bit PCI slot (for the video card) with the other PCI slots running 33MHz/32-Bits. AGP is spec'd to 528MB/Sec max btw (as is 64-Bit, 66MHz PCI). [For more on the latest mac models, see the systems page.] = 4:15 PM Update = Carmine's (MIM) News Feed AppleTIL Updates (Monday:11/09/98)  Drive Setup 1.6.1: Read Me  The FreeSoft Company  Communications Bundle: Description  CompuServe: Apple Support Area Overview  AppleMail: Performance Issues  FAX with GeoPort and Power Macintosh In PageMaker 5.x  Desktop Macintosh Computers: Security Lock Ports  Bailey's Book House: Error Message After Printing  Apple Home Learning: Q & A  ASFU Fixer: For GDT's PowerPrint-Not Apple Print Pack  Domestic Apple Equipment's: No Guarantee On Foreign Operation  Fax Phone Book: Over 100 Entries Degrades Performance  Macintosh: Using While Placed On Its Side  AppleShare IP 6.1: Read Me  Mac OS: Out Of Memory Errors With File Synchronization  Macintosh: Printing to a PostScript Printer via IrDA  LocalTalk, Ethernet, TokenRing: Media Performance Characteristics  Mac OS 8: Dancing Icons in View as List Apple Drive Setup 1.6.1 (Apple Software Updates) The info I have on the new "Pro" Mac indicates it will have one 66MHz 32-Bit (not 64-Bit) PCI slot and three 32-Bit, 33MHz PCI slots. This sounds odd, as I thought the 66MHz PCI slot was to be 64-Bit. I'm asking for verification on this now. Several people have written again with comments on the Macweek G3 CPU card article. If you missed it - I commented on that in the Sunday and Saturday news. As noted there, see the FAQ (Question 31), Tips and Owners Survey results pages for owner feedback/ratings, compatibility issues and other system upgrade notes. Although there are compatibility problems in some cases, I can't count the number of mails I've gotten from owners happy with their G3 Upgrades, but there are exceptions. If you're having problems with a G3 upgrade, contact the manufacturer for the card with details on your problems. Often the cause of problems is a too-slow L2 cache dimm, too fast bus speeds, backside cache speeds or CPU speeds. As noted in the FAQ however, there are some general compatibility issues with some card designs and Adaptec SCSI cards (with wide drives generally) and software like Retrospect (the Retrospect workarounds page has tips that may solve this issue for many owners). This page lists two tips that solved backup/verification for me with the XLR8 400Mhz card and also notes the same card worked fine with no Retrospect settings changes in OS 8.5 with Virtual Memory Off. The Macweek article failed to mention this finding, which was also verified by a friend at Dantz (with the XL8 400Mhz card). OS 8.5/ATM Fonts Tips: Several readers replied with tips on the font issue. Joe Borzellino and Michael Beaudoin wrote that they fixed their problems with crashes by checking "preserve line spacing" rather than 'preserve character shapes' in the ATM settings. David Papas still reported problems however, but he also moved fonts so that may be part of the problem. "... I finally got it to work by doing a clean install setting preserve line spacing (not character shapes) and putting the fonts I wanted to use in the fonts folder instead of elswhere. This is not totally great compromise. It seems that once you crash from this issue. (As soon as you try to acivate a postcript font) These invisible preferences become corrupt and it just makes it harder. Anyway I hope Adobe upgrades soon. I to have a hard time believing that Adobe and Apple did not work this out ahead of time. ... David Papas " = 12:30 PM Update = More on OS 8.5/ATM Font Problems: Matthew Culmore wrote: " Hello- Any info on the font problems with 8.5 and ATM 4.0.2 and the improper rendering of fonts in many applications, Photoshop 5, even 5.0.2, Illustrator, etc. Tech support at both Apple and Adobe say it's each others software causing the problem, but that doesn't help if you live off Photoshop. Apple does have alot of complaints on the support boards,but nothing official as a fix is in. Can you shed some light on this. Thanks, and keep up the great site, Matthew Culmore " Issues like this are why I've avoided OS 8.5 for the time being. I know they can't test everything, but since Adobe apps are the bread and butter of many Mac professionals I'd like to think this was reported to Adobe early on in testing. Hopefully there will have a patch to address this soon. If any readers have information or workarounds on the problem please contact me. Today's Unreal news page has info on Banshee vs Voodoo II performance, a new Mac Unreal server, and discussions on the prices of Voodoo II cards. MkLinux Ram Size Fix: In response to another post in yesterday's news on the MkLinux ram size problem (crashes on Macs with large amounts of installed ram) a reader sent a fix for the lilo.conf file: " About MKLinux and RAM: the crash is very much there. (I have a maxed out G3; 384 MB RAM). You can solve the problem by typing the following line in your lilo.conf file: mach_options= -m180 It makes MkLinux think you only have 180 MB of RAM, while the MacOS can see it all. St.Breandan " Tim Seufert sent additional info on LinuxPPC, noting some advantages like support for PCI SCSI cards: " While it's not as polished in some areas as MkLinux, LinuxPPC can be quite a lot faster, and tends to support more hardware. See www.linuxppc.org. And the cool thing is that if, like Mr. Ravlin, you have a MkLinux installation, you can try LinuxPPC out with the same installation; you're just booting from a different kernel. I think most of the incompatabilities have been hammered out so that there are few other things that need to be changed (I seem to recall that you still have to get a different 'clock' program, because MkLinux has a special version that is different from the standard 'clock'). LinuxPPC used to require fiddling around with Open Firmware settings, which can be very difficult to get right, but with recent kernels and the new BootX program it can be booted in much the same way MkLinux is. And finally, LinuxPPC supports the Adaptec 2940UW card. If you're booting from Open Firmware, you will have to load the kernel off a drive *not* connected to the 2940 (Open Firmware can't talk to the 2940; Adaptec didn't supply an OF driver in its ROMs). Otherwise, everything should work. I believe that most or all of the precompiled kernels out there are now being supplied with the AIC7xxx (Adaptec SCSI card) driver compiled in. " Cool PowerBook Theme: Although I've avoided Kaleidoscope in the past I have to say I like the new 'High Ttech II' scheme available at: http://home.earthlink.net/~gi/navigator/g3series.html. I did change the finder background (file view windows) back to white and used gray as a desktop pattern to lighten things up a bit. It does take some getting used to but the style really matches the design of the PowerBook G3. The page above also has some very cool PB G3 icons and custom startup screen and about boxes for the PB G3. Well worth a look. Also note that Chris Martin, my OS 8.5 expert reports that Kaleidoscope solves many of the OS 8.5 MDEF issues by replacing the appearance manager (noted in the latest OS 8.5 Feedback page list of fixes) Ray Hill reported that his local Best Buy in Riverside, California, has the iMac on display, priced at $1499 with an Epson printer bundle. PB 3400 Upgrades: Julius Friede wrote that AllMac (800-933-4962) is offering A 3400 logic board upgrade/replacement to a G3. Pretty barren web site but might be worth a inquiry for PB 3400 owners looking to upgrade. I welcome feedback on their products if anyone out there has used them. Our recent calls/editorials for better support of industry standards is getting a lot of feedback. Tim Catlin's comments on this (and an improved OS) in yesterday's news struck a chord with many people, including this contributor to Australian MacWorld: " Mike What Tim Catlin said hit the nail right on the head. In fact, to such an extent, that I copied the text and sent it to leadership@apple.com I also mentioned OpenGL, which I believe is the one thing that he forgot to mention -- system base level support of Open GL. Anyway, perhaps this will make a difference. :) Thanks, James Allworth Contributor to Australian Macworld " OpenGL support at the OS level (combined with Rave or separately) would be a major plus, as even ID software has commented they would make Mac products if there were OpenGL support in the OS. Conix's OpenGL works great - as noted here in the past Lightwave 3D 5.6 with the OpenGL patch was much improved over the QD3D version, with fully shaded previews finally possible. Newtek also has a similar patch for the more affordable Inspire 3D as well. Hash Animation has OpenGL support as does Xplane for the Mac. I'm hoping ATI will have OpenGL support in their final Rage128 drivers as well. Note: Before sending tech support related questions please check the Freq. Asked Questions, Site Contents, CPU Card reviews/articles, SCSI reviews articles, Graphics card reviews, Tips/Misc, Message Boards and Help pages - in many cases the answers to your questions are there and they have far more detail than I can list in an email. For Apple G3 system info - see the G3-ZONE. News and guest reviews that don't require a reply are always welcome. Looking for past articles? Check the menu frame topics links (CPU Cards, SCSI, Graphics Cards, Systems) under the logo above or in the menu frame below or check the Recent Features page. Make a Difference: Be the Difference Randy Mita, Brad Lau and I came up with a new slogan and theme for Mac advocacy - "Make a Difference: Be the Difference". We're asking that all Mac owners take advantage of every opportunity to let others know the Mac advantage. It's a grass-roots approach that will surely help.