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11/15/98 - Sunday's News:	Click for Current News Page
Today's Unreal Tips page has notes on the latest Unreal Map of the Week winner, a Unreal Total Conversion (TC) called Unloaded, comments on the $99 MacMagic 8MB 3Dfx Voodoo 1 card, Voodoo 2 card/CPU speed performance notes, new Monster tips, and IP addresses for the WON Unreal servers. And since Saturday's Unreal News was updated at 11:00PM last night, make sure you check that update for exclusive Cops solo map screenshots and a huge list of other Unreal news. Frank Bernier wrote he saw on the MacWelt web site (German Mac Magazine) that VillageTronics got an award for their 3D cards at Macworld Germany. I'm assuming that was their new Banshee 3Dfx cards they were to show there. Gary Amstutz, USA dealer for Villagetronic, has now received shipments of the $99 MacMagic 8MB Voodoo 1 3Dfx cards. These cards also feature a software 'tweaker' and look like the best value in 3Dfx Voodoo 1 cards for Mac owners. Gary indicated that the MacMagic tweaker utility works well with VM turned on. This is good news for people running with limited amount of RAM in Unreal (the freeware 3Dfx Tweaker requires VM to be off). [Update - for a review of the MacMagic and other Mac graphics cards, see the Graphics card section of the Video articles page.] A reader that asked to not to be named wrote with notes on Audio support improvements included in the latest USB dev kit: " You know how some audiophiles were complaining because Apple did not include technology to enable time-sensitive data to stream over USB? The latest developer version of the drivers, USB dev kit 1.1a1, supports isochronous transfer, which is that missing technology. I don't have an iMac, though, so I can't say how stable this newest driver/API kit is. They do say that some changes were made, though. " More on ADB Controller Conflicts: " Hello, This is a suggestion to John Fuch's problems with ADB devices. This looks like the same problem that I'm having. I can't get my Gravis Firebird to work with a Logitech Cordless Mouseman. Using ADB Parser I concluded that the two devices are fighting over the same id# with the faster one winning. He mentioned it started with MacOS 8.5; mine started with 8.1. My guess is that something changed (timing probably). I suspect that is when the ADB manager became PowerPC native. To check for address conflict, you can download: ADB_Parser_5.0.7.sit.hqx The next time you're able to boot with both devices, run ADB Parser and see if one of the devices is at id 03 and one at 0F (the mouse and keyboard are 01 and 02). Click on the 0F address and the right hand side of the window should have a field named "orig id" or "orig addr". If this is different from the "cur id" of 0F, it means the device successfully changed its ADB address. When your driver fails to load on a reboot, it probably means for some reason it couldn't change. The Firebird manual does mention possible ADB address conflicts with other non-Apple devices. The solution it gives is to remove the other devices. The only advice I can give you is to check the devices' manuals. Maybe one of them has a way of changing its orig id. Steve " Another reader wrote with a tip on extension loading order: " As for the reported problem with 8.5/sidewinder/wacom - have the video startup extension load first - this caused me many problems with both the sidewinder and the wacom. Loading it first eliminated those problems. Eytan Bernet Latest Generic Voodoo II Driver Feedback: " Hi, I just bought an Arcade FXII Voodoo2 12mb, and I've been having some problems. In Myth (both multiplayer and singleplayer), when I play a map, and then try to load another, Myth crashes on me. Same problem with FutureCop Demo. I play a map, go back to the title screen, then load the next map... and my computer crashes. I was wondering if anyone else who has the same card I have has had the same problems, if not... could you give me some advice? My current setup is: UMAX C600/240mhz 603e, 88 RAM. Thanks in advance. " This and another similar report of problems has been added to the Voodoo 2 Generic Drivers Feedback page. [Update - for info/reviews of the 3dfx official Mac Voodoo2 drivers (and Voodoo3, Voodoo4, Voodoo5 cards), see the Graphics card section of the Video articles page.] MS Apps CPU hogs?: A reader note he sees much lower background apps speeds when a MS Office 98 application is running in the foreground: " Anyway, dont know if this has ever come up, but i have a cablemodedm, and basically if ANY microsoft app is the frontmost app (Word,Excel,Exploerer etc...) any background trasfers be it ftp etc slow down to a hault! Have you heard of this... I have confirmed this with some other friends on high speed lines..... This does not happen if Netscape is the front most app! " More on G3 SGram Problems: I posted a note from Kent Kanja awhile back on video artifacts with certain SGRAM upgrades for the G3. A reader sent a note indicating that his Apple supplied module had the same problem - and at a far lower resolution that Kent reported: " I found the e-mail "G3/imac 4MB VRAM Warning" you posted [in the G3-ZONE] very interesting: I bought my Power Mac G3/300 (rev. 2 w/ RAGE PRO) this summer (I got it in Mid July or early August) - it was soon after the first rev. 2 machines started to ship. I ordered it with 6 MB of VRAM. After using it for a few days I started to notice strange video corruption when running at 832x624 (I have a 17'' Mag Innovision monitor). The corruption consisted of horizontal dotted lines that would occasionally appear. What was really interesting was that the corruption occured even when no extensions were on. I experieced it with Mac OS 8.1 and 8.5. I even was able to take a screenshot of that area of the screen, and the screenshot shows the corruption! I then decided to take out the 4 MB SGRAM chip, to see if that was the problem. As soon as I removed the chip, I noticed that the artifacts were gone. I have been running on just the 2 MB's for several weeks now, and have not seen the artifacts appear again. I also noticed that my SGRAM chip is the same one mentioned in the e-mail (MT4LG51264HG83 / MT41LC256K32D4). I plan to soon just go ahead and buy another 4 MB chip to see if it works ok. I'm not even going to bother with trying to get Apple to send me replacement chip, even though it was their mistake and it is still under warranty. I attached the screenshot I took of the video artifacts to this e-mail. " OS 8.5 Builtin Graphics Extension Performance : I was getting so many mails with comparisons (enabled/disabled) that I've put them on a separate page. More on the Vision 3D/ATM/Font Cache Problem: More reader feedback on the MacTell/Formac ATM/Font cache issue noted in yesterday's news (and in my Vision 3D Pro review) " Mike, I have one of the first Imagine graphics cards for the Mac. Initially it also had the ATM/font cache problem. After e-mail exchanges with their tech support and several driver software updates the problem was fixed. The problem centered around the ATM font anti-aliasing and in my case a conflict with Timbuktu Pro. " Timbuktu Pro was not used in the other systems reporting issues. More workarounds for the problem from Mike Caplinger and MacGurus: " Also, as for the MacTell and ATM problem you noted. I enabled OS 8.5's font smoothing and turned it off in ATM and I seem to have no problems. I have the MacTell control Panel set to a 512K font cache. It is important to note that I have few Postscript fonts, so my experience may not apply to other configurations. Mike Caplinger " " we have disabled Font Caching in the 5.2.2 version of the MacTell control panel, and can attest that the 2D speed of the boards *still* blows away any other shipping video card. if you use Photoshop and Illustrator, you *must* use ATM 4.02 or later. No further problems have been noted here, and we don't consider it much of one. We just like the speed. no clue about performance in Quark or PageMaker. We don't publish for print. MacGurus " The reader report I had indicated that disabling the font cache severely affected text speed, but MacGurus did not mention any noticable performance hit. Dan Buettner has written up a tutorial on Overclocking your iMac. I've added this link to the OC section of the Links page for future reference. 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.