Report from MacWorld Expo by Ralph: Ralph sends me his thoughts and observations from this years MacWorld Expo NY. Thanks Ralph. It is rather long so I did not post it on my home page. Click here to view his report.

More info on the Geo modem drivers posted in my last update: I tried the drivers myself and found that only one is different then the extensions installed by Apples Telecom 3.1.3 software. It was the Express Modem control panel without the asterisk in the name. It is version 3.5 and is newer then the one installed by Apple installer. It can be opened in OS 9.1 but does it really work? I was able to make changes like to turn off auto answer but those settings never stuck. I don't remember if just closing and reopening the control panel reverted the choice I made but on a reboot the defaults were all selected again. So I am not sure if this new control panel is doing anything? I still welcome info from any of my readers that may have tried them. Thanks.

Sonnet releases update to Crescendo: Sonnet just released the 1.4.6 update to their Crescendo extension for their G3/G4 upgrades. I don't know exactly what all this fixes but it is mainly for the G4 Altivec issues they had. If this helps or breaks anyones L2 G3, please email me. Thanks

6400 motherboard over clocked!: McKinney sends word on his experiences on over clocking his 6400's motherboard.

[Hello everyone. I am finally moving on to a new machine and just wanted to let you know why. After "experimenting" with every upgrade that could ever work with the 6400, I finally pushed it too far. I clocked my motherboard bus to 46 mhz and overclocked my G3 Sonnet to 345mhz. This set up worked fantastic until I started having problems with the system booting up. I initially thought it was a cooling problem but after adding fans which keep the G3 cool (39c) I narrowed it down to the motherboard. To make a long story short...my advice is to leave the motherboard alone. I used the Sonnet Clocker prior to messing with the motherboard and had ZERO problems running it at 320mhz.
I have finally purchased a new computer (a new 500mhz G4 Server, 36 gb SCSI 160/10,000rpm HD, DVD, 512mb Ram, SCSI card ,gigabit ethernet from Small Dog for $1700). All my 6400 upgrades are going to my son's Performa 6360. It will make a 6 year old a damn fine machine!!!]

And later he sent this

[Tom, It did get to the point where the computer would lock up at any sign of "work" but I installed two 2" fans that kept the G3 running cool (39c). I suppose the motherboard has a heat issue because when I let it cool off for 10-15min it will restart. The only other quirky thing is that if I install software that requires a restart the machine will not reboot. I have not received my G4 yet so I am still using the 6400 and it has been on all day. It will not do any amount of hard work (videos, encoding mp3's, unstuffing a large file or games etc )without locking up. Prior to messing with the motherboard the machine would run 24/7 and memory was the only limitation. Again my advice is to leave the motherboard alone and try not to "hotrod" the 6400 to it's death. I do however think the Sonnet G3/1mb runs flawless at 320mhz (courtesy of the Sonnet Clocker). All my goodies (Ati Orion, 136mb memory,8.4g HD, comm slot II ethernet card and the Sonnet G3) are going to be transplanted into my son's 6360. Can't wait to get my G4....hopefully it will last me as long as my 6400 did (5 1/2 years!!). Can you imagine using a 5 1/2 year old Wintel machine?? NOT!! :)]

This is one reason why clocking any component on your computer should always be considered as taking a risk and you could permanently ruin your system. As always, clock at your own risk!

Temperatures of 400Mhz L2 G3 upgrades?: Bryan would like to know what the average temp of 400 Mhz upgrades are running at. I wasn't able to test any of these so if any of you could email me this info, I would greatly appreciate it :)

[Having visited your site numerous times I have come to appreciate you opinion. I would like your opinion on my situation. I recently purchased a Newer Tech G3 L2 400 MHz upgrade. The speed is phenomenal but I worry about the temperature. On the first day I watched the temp on Newer's Gauge PRO climb to 91 C. I shut down and let the computer cool off. Since then I have installed a fan on the heat sink which maintains an average between 60 to 70 C. Right now it's at 66 C.

I really need to know if that's ok for my machine. I do not want to cook anything as I've just invested a considerable amount of money on hard drive and RAM upgrades. What do you think?
Bryan]

More on USB printers being slower then serial printers: Richard sends word that he noticed slower printing with his new USB printer also. Click here for more info on this.

[For many years I had been using an EPSON 500 stylus printer (serial) and had great results but switched to an HP 648C (USB) with disappointing results.

My system: Performa 6400 with a sonnet crescendo G3 300/1Mb L2, 136 MB memory. I have an Ethernet card going to a cable modem and a USB card filling up my PCI slots. I also have SCSI scanner and zip drive, 4GB external hard drive and CDRW burner.

That EPSON printer ran great until the old girl gave up the ghost a few weeks ago trying to get addresses on A6 envelopes for wedding invitations. A few months ago I had installed a Belkin USB card which didn't work at all until I upgraded to OS 9.1. I got it for my digital camera. So when it was time to get a new printer USB was a natural choice. I choose a HP 648C because I could get it on sale for $90 before a $30 rebate and best of all it came with both a color and black ink carts.

It works so-so at best. First off, it is much slower than the old Stylus 500. I thought it was because of the driver but there maybe some USB issue going on as well. The EPSON driver seemed much better to me than the HP drivers. The biggest problem is that when I am printing a large file, such as directions from mapquest.com the print will stop just before finishing leaving the picture or text incomplete and the paper locked in the printer. The printer will continue to do this unless I reset the computer with a restart. It also takes much longer to spool large images. I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
Richard]

It is hard to judge to different printer brands and the HP he bought is a low end consumer version (the Epson 500 is to I think) so printing is not meant to be fast on these. I still welcome more reports on this topic, Thanks :)

Pencam drivers for the Mac: Clark sent me a link for Mac drivers for a type of digital camera called the pencam. Basically it is a camera in a fat pen shape. Thanks Clark.

[Hello..My name is Clark. I have a 6400/180 with a Sonnet 250 mhz. G3 upgrade card. I have 136 mb of RAM. I recently was given a NISIS USB pencam as a gift (This same pencam is also marketed under the AIPTEK name). The cam is not Mac compatible. Even the manufacturers web pages state that the cams do not support the macintosh OS. After days of digging, I found this web page http://www.greenonions.com/caf/pencam4mac.html that has a driver that works with Adobe photoshop and Photodeluxe. The driver works great! The pencam is quite handy. I thought I would pass this info on.

Thanks Clark]

Apple Video Player issue under OS 9.x fixed: Greg sends word that with help from others on this site, he was able to isolate the problem to the ATI drivers he had. He deleted them and reinstalled from the CD and now his APV sees the TV tuner just fine.

[Tom,
Yahoo! It works! Stripping out all the existing ATI and reinstalling from the system CD did the trick. The only glitch is that it resets the Sound control panel input source to "none" every time I close the Video Player. So, I have to open Sound before opening the video player each time. My meager ResEdit skills were not sufficient to figure a way to force the CD-TV-Video choice as the default for the sound control panel.
Anyway, thanks much!
Greg]

I believe the issue with the sound reverting to "none" has been an issue since OS 8.5 or maybe even 8.1 but is has not been fixed since then. If you use the Sound control panel or the input source control strip to change the source to the TV before launching the AVP, all works fine.

Possible fix for audio skipping while using SoundJam: Marcus writes that he found a fix for audio skipping while using SoundJam. Thanks Marcus. I don't know if this will help if you have an ATI Rage128 card with a G3 upgrade as that combination also causes audio skipping.

[Thought I would pass this along.
In SoundJam you can uncheck the "Use CD Digital Audio Playback" in the Player section of the preferences. Sound Input will need to be set to "CD" for the music to play through, however.
Works perfect now!
cheers, Marcus]

Issues with OS 9.1 and Apples COMM II ethernet card: Victor writes that he was unable to connect to his DSL provider with his 6400 running OS 9.1 and an Apple COMM II ethernet card. He reverted to OS 8.5 and it works fine? Anyone else have an issue like this? Is Apples COMM II ethernet card compatible with OS 9.1?

[Removed OS 9.1 installed OS 8.5 everything is AOK I have access! Now I must determine what version of OT is workable with the Apple Ethernet CS II Card/Cable Modem set up then I will be able to use OS 9.0.4 in my system with the workable OT.

Thanks for all your assistance, very much appreciated we will really teach the cable people a few things about their Mac/Cable Modem set up! Their supervisor has yet to call me, the installer was here last Wednesday and here we are Saturday already! So much for good service, any way because of your expertise I am up and running with my cable modem. Thanks again! ]

Font issues can cause the worst disasters!: Howard writes with a tale of "The Corrupted Font that caused a Blinking ?" and what all it took him to track it down. Thanks Howard.

[Two weeks ago there it was, blinking in all its glory. I Did the regular routines, rebuilt the desk top, zapped twice nothing, zip, zero,zilch. Next step booted up from the 9.1 CD. Checked system folder and it was still blessed. Tried to open the system suitcase inside the SYSTEM FOLDER and it would not open (an alert box opened stating that it could not open because it was damaged) so my attempt at trying to rebless the SYSTEM FOLDER anyway was not going to happen. OK so I bit the bullet and tried to install the 9.1 software. It would not go in. A new alert box came up saying, "I cannot find a place to put the software." Well not exactly, but words to that effect. This was starting to get serious. OK, now I really had to do the dreaded "CleanInstall." What a pain. OK so 30 minutes later I am rebooted and running again trying to get everything back together, with no idea of what caused this mess in the first place. I started dragging extensions, control panels and prefs from the previous to the new. So far so good. All is well with the world, the sun is shining again, there is peace in my office, and I have stopped yelling at my wife that I am too busy to eat dinner(She just doesn&Mac226;t understand). The only thing left to reinstall are my fonts from the previous to the new. So like some conquering hero I drag them all into the font's folder. Well done. I shut down and go to sleep.

Next day, I try to boot up and get this weird alert box, that says,‰ finder can't start up because it can't find the UnicodeConverter.‰ I am now a pro at installing the system software so I boot up from the CD, reinstall it and lo when I reboot I get the god damned blinker again. So I reboot on the CD and check the SYSTEM FOLDER, it is still blessed so I open the system suitcase, and there is nothing in it. Gone, Poof, Zip, Zero, as if by some twist of prestidigitation, it was empty. Now I am not a twisted type of person, but this kind of activity was sending me over the edge. OK so now I really had to think, and then I remembered the font reinstallation. I opened the system suitcase in the CD&Mac226;s system folder and selected all then drug them into the empty system suitcase in my New SYSTEM FOLDER. Then I opened the font's folder selected all and drug everything out into a new folder called damaged goods. Went to the CD's font folder selected all and drug them all into the now empty font's folder, closed everything up. Rebooted and prayed, chanted from the Karma Sutra, did one hand spring, with both fingers crossed, and would you believe it. IT WORKED. All is well with the world, and peace once again reigns in my office. Now all I have to do if find out which font caused all of this trouble, or which sound file that I installed in the system suitcase was responsible. This will take time, but I will track the culprits down, hunt them to the end of the earth and put them to sleep.

Tom, thanks for your page. Not sure if others have experienced this. I have a Performa Power Mac 6400/200 with maxed out ram, internal 9 gig sccsi hard drive, you helped me with that quite a while back, a stock Apple AV card, pci ethernet card, Apple scanner, Apple laser printer and an Apple Stylewriter 2500. All is working fine now.

Sincerly, Howard]

Corrupted fonts can be a real pain as they are the last thing you would ever consider checking and OS 8.6 actually caused fonts to become corrupted! Click here for more on this and for info on font fixers or corrupted font identifiers. Hopefully with this info, none of you will have a font story to tell :)

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