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09/20/98 - Sunday's News:	Current News Page
Carmine's (MIM) [Welcome Home Kay] News Feed: Survey Says Simplicity Attracts Users to iMac (TechWeb) Apple's Self-Contained iMac Packs A Powerful Punch (TechWeb) Preview of MacOS 8.5 improvements (TechWeb) [9:00 PM Update] ATI RAVE (RagePro) Unreal.ini Files: Frank Bernier sent a set of HQ and LQ test files for RagePro (rev 2 or later Apple G3, ATI RagePro 3D/VR cards, Nexus GA) owners. I'd appreciate it if owners of these cards/systems would download the file and send comments. It's available at: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/feedback/unreal/ATIRAVEini.sit. (Note - until the next rev the HQ ini file requires the Speech extensions to be loaded - this will be removed in the next rev due today. Speech is not used in the flyby demo but the ini file includes it and will error out on launch without it loaded.) Unreal Memory Issues Explained: The Unreal Tips page has been updated with a complete explanation from Westlake on how Unreal allocates level memory and differences in Mac vs PC Unreal. I've also added the 'curved surfaces' 3Dfx problem noted in yesterday's news to the page and will repeat the Unreal Readme info here as a reminder Since curved surfaces are normally just made up of more polygons (smaller ones) this could be causing memory problems. As noted in the Unreal Readme (found in the Unreal folder), Curved surfaces is an experimental feature. 'CurvedSurfaces: Enables smoothing of monster meshes. This is experimental and very slow, and should be left off.' Frank Bernier (Creator of our FPS Toolkit for Unreal) wrote he's very happy with the performance boost he's seen in Unreal with the card compared to the 604e he had before. " Hi Mike, I got my G3 card yesterday (The powerforce 220/110 you reviewed). Awesome for the price . Was able to boost it to 330/132 . So far , it seems very stable at this speed . Had no problems playing Unreal and doing some photoshop intensive tasks for 5 consecutive hours. I also ran ramometer overnight without problems. (Macbench 4.0: CPU: 957 FP: 1047 with libmoto, no speed doubler) I put the card to the test and ran the timedemo HQ and LQ settings. The results are impressive. Find attached new graphics I did with it (the graphics compare the data obtained with my 604e 7600 before the upgrade as well). regards, Frank " I'll try to have his graphs posted tonight if I can. I'm really behind here... Unreal/Ramdoubler 2: A reader wrote that he could not run Unreal with a 48MB ram machine with Ramdoubler 2 enabled. I suggested disabling RD2 and using Apple's virtual memory under OS 8.1 instead (and getting more real ram) " Mike. . . .THANKS. I turned off RamDoubler and used the Mac VM (yes, in 8.1) and voila! it works now. Must've been a RAM2x conflict. I DO get major lag on the 3rd level due to the hard drive/RAM swapping. Time for a new 128mb DIMM! You know, I do some some freelance Graphic Design work and the reason I'm upgrading my RAM is to play Unreal. Same reason for that future G3 upgrade. Well, at least I can still write it off as a business expense. : D BTW, how do you find the time to respond to your readers individually? I'm very impressed. JP " For anyone with less than 128MB installed ram, I'd suggest leaving VM on for Unreal to avoid level loading out of memory errors, etc. Best is to add more ram - I'm running unreal with 95MB allocated and VM on in a 160MB ram G3 now. Unreal Jump Boots Info: Yesterday a reader reported the jump boots 'get used up' even if they are not activated. Frank Bernier wrote that this is not a bug and is noted in the manual: This is not a bug. It is mentioned in the manual. here is a quote: [p.23 1st paragraph] ' once picked up, the boots only last for a short period of time, so take advantage of them while you can' Eric Whitmore wrote that the snapping and clicking I reported on my VST ZIP drive (works fine, not reliability issues, just annoying noises) is due to a problem with the heads (?) " Your drive heads are bad! Send it back to VSt and they will fix or replace it for free (shipping to them is your cost). It will work great after that. My Iomega Zip did the same thing, and I got it back in a month or two. " Month or two? I hope Iomega has improved that turnaround time. Reader Request for Info: " Mike, I sell business telephone systems, and I offer CTI applications. Unfortunately all the manufacturer I deal with only develop software for the PC's, (95,98,NT). I tried using Virtual PC with the CTI Application that I have. However I need to use com port 1 or 2 and it must be an RS232 port. Is there any type of adapter or software to make a MAC emulate an RS232 port on a PC? I also was wondering it there was some good software for the MAC that would allow me to use it as a phone. I am looking for something that would allow me to program multiple buttons for call transferring, call park, call forward, paging, transferring to voice mail, etc. Thanks Norman L. Robertson " I've used a mac serial cable to RS-232 connector to run a standard USR X2 modem. These cables are available at most major dealers that sell Mac hardware (Office Depot, CompUSA, etc. - Mac to std Modem cable). [Thanks to the readers that responded with suggestions on telephony software.] Other Net News: The man behind iMac (PC World) Intel urges vendors to clean up PCs (PC World) 450Mhz PIIs get affordable (PC World) Win98 bug alert feature improved (News.com) Katmai chips aimed at video (and games) (News.com) Need Help?: If you have a tech support question (News and other items for posting should still be sent to me) please try the new Men in Mac tech support page. It's in beta form and will be improved but I urge readers to use it immediately as a means of getting some expert help on a huge variety of topics covering most every Mac ever made, upgrades, software and more. You might want to follow the tips/steps listed on the Site Guide for Answers to your Questions. A Support page is also posted that has info on the volunteers (the Men in Mac) that have offered to help provide reader support. My sincere thanks go out to each of them. Give them a try - I think you'll be impressed. Curious how a particular G3 CPU card does in your Mac model? - check the G3 CPU Card Survey Results for many owner comments on all the brands selectable by Mac model. 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.