Apple releases OSX 10.1 update!: I know must of you cannot run this OS but I just wanted to say that this release, being a huge improvement, has still yet to address my issues with moving fully into OSX. Here is just a short list of what I would like.

1. Finder Labels - I use labels to make all my web pages as being updated or not. This makes it easy for me to see which ones need to be uploaded and which have not changed. OSX does not have this feature and I will have to use another method instead.

2. Multiple users in OSX are single users in classic - this one really hurts me as I had set up each family member with their own settings in OS 9.2.1 but in OSX running classic apps, they all use the system settings which are the owners (namely mine)! Sure the OSX native apps adhere to the MU settings but all classic apps are treated as single user mode and all share the system preference folder and documents folder instead of the pref and documents folder in each users folder. This to me is unacceptable so I cannot switch to OSX until this is fixed or I no longer need classic apps.

3. Firewire support - I know OSX has firewire support but if I try to connect my DV camera and FW hard drive at the same time, iMovie will lockup and I lose all FW use until I reboot. Also I cannot boot if the FW drive is running and it must be off until after boot. This may not affect all OSX users but it does affect me with my Oxford 911 chip based firewire case.

4. Battery usage on notebooks - OSX 10.1 has made great strides in battery drainage issues for iBook and Powerbook users but its still not as good as OS 9.2.1 and older. My iBook uses more battery power while asleep then it used to in OS 9.2.1. Apple needs to find out why OSX needs so much juice while sleeping.

5. General feel of the OS - To me, OSX just feels unfinished. I think it mostly has to do with needing the classic layer to much but it seems to fight me more then just letting me get work done. Apple has done a great job getting classic to work with more hardware items then it used to be able to but that integration does not extend into OSX native apps. Take my Sandisk smart media card reader. It did not work at all in OSX 10.0.4 but in 10.1, it runs in the classic environment but with a hitch. Since the card reader mounts a virtual disk on the desktop for you to access your pictures, this disk image is not displayed in OSX but it is mounted. Only OS 9 apps can see it and from their open/save dialog boxes. It works fine in this manner but I have to open each image in an OS 9 app and then save it to a folder so I can reopen them in an OSX app. Quite a lot of work to just get the images off the card. And then you must eject the card before removing it from the reader but OSX does not see the card to be able to eject it. Luckily, most all OS 9 apps have an eject button in their open/save dialog boxes so I can just select the disk image in one of them and eject it that way. Not the best method but it works and it's safe.

So once issues like these are fixed, I could finally leave OS9 behind. I think it will take another year before that happens :(

6400/6500 needs PRAM zapped after OS 9.2.1 install or they might not boot!: Well this letter I got from Chris pretty much says what most 6400/6500 are going through.

[After installing 9.2.1 and patching with the OldWorld patch, I had to zap the pram before the hard drive would boot up. Thanks for a great website.
Chris]

It seems most people are having to zap their PRAM after the update to boot their Macs! I just wanted to emphasize this so you're not left thinking the install destroyed your Mac :)

Update on trashing OSX to do a clean install: Patrick sent me this info on what files need to be trashed to completely remove OSX. You will need an application that can see and trash invisible files to do this. Thanks Patrick.

[Regarding some comments you made on http://homepage.mac.com/zone6400/.

Yes, as you figured, your prefs aren't trashed by getting rid of the visible Mac OS X files. Most of them are kept in ~/Library/Preferences, where ~ means the currently logged in user's home directory.

To completely trash everything, you have to use a tool that will show hidden files. I used MPW shell the other day. Here's the complete list of directories you need to trash to really do a clean install:

:.vol:
:Applications:
:automount:
:bin:
:dev:
:Developer:
:Library:
:Network:
:private:
:sbin:
:System:
:Users:
:usr:
:Volumes:
.hidden
cores
etc
mach
mach.sym
mach_kernel
tmp
var

Some are symbolic links / aliases, and some are directories.
Patrick]

ATI USB TV software install may remove OpenTransport extensions!: Vash emailed to let me know of his issue with installing ATI's new USB TV tuner on his 6400. For some reason it removed his OT extensions? (They are needed for networking) Thanks Vash. Has anyone else tried ATI's USB TV system yet? If so please email me if it worked OK or not. Thanks. I suggest you make a backup of your system folder or at least the extensions folder incase this happens to you!

Apples File Exchange control panel needed for USB camera and card reader support: Charlie had issues with his USB camera and then bought a USB camera card reader to try and fix the problem. It turns out that he had removed the FileExchange control panel which is needed for reading DOS formatted disks which camera cards are formatted with . Thanks Charlie.

[I took your advice and bought a Zio! card reader. It wouldn't work either until I read the instructions properly and found that you must have the Apple File exchange control panel active. I had disabled it long ago as it was taking up too much memory and it was suggested by Apple that I disable it. As soon as I activated it again the Flash Card Reader worked perfectly. I then tried the camera again and it also works very well using the 1.41 USB drivers. I would never have found out that the Apple File exchange control panel was necessary for this work if you hadn't steered me along the way. Everything is fine now. Thank you again.
Charlie]

I must say that it never crossed my mind to make sure the FileExchange control panel was enabled either :)

There is no VRAM on the 6400 mother board!: This might take some of you some time to ponder but it has come to my attention that the 6400 has no dedicated VRAM on the mother board. Now before you think I have gone crazy check out this link I found on EveryMac.com. The reason I searched for this info is because Endymion started a very long discussion on how the 6400 has more audio issues then the 6500 because the main memory is being accessed by to many subsystems at the same time. I didn't believe him at first until he sent me the below message which got me searching the web for more info.

[Find it on the board. You can't because it isn't there. The Valkyrie chip organises the RAM, from the main memory, used for video and directly sends it to the RGB/VGA out. The Valkyrie video processor does not contain V-RAM.
Endymion]

Thanks Endymion for not giving up on my doubts :) Most all other info I found, even on Apples web site states there is 1M of "dedicated" VRAM in the 6400. I can only assume that they really mean that there is 1M of the onboard 8M main memory dedicated to VRAM. Could this be why the 6500 has no onboard main memory? It has 2M of SDRAM for VRAM on the mother board so there was no reason for Apple to place the standard 8M chip on the mother board also. This really makes the differences in the 2 mother boards a bit more clear as to why they are different.

Main memory being used for VRAM causing the audio issues on the 6400?: Endymion also states that just by upgrading to a 6500 mother board fixed all his audio issues and that it was due to the way the main memory is used as VRAM on the 6400. I personally still disagree with this for basically one reason. The issue does not manifest itself the most until you install an ATI Rage128 card. Yes there are other reasons for the audio issue but the Raeg128 card (and specially with a G3 upgrade) causes audio issues almost 100% of the time. So this throws out the VRAM issue in cases where you have a video card since you are not using the main memory for VRAM anymore.

Causes of audio issues on the 6400/6500: I thought I would compile some of the issues that I have gathered as causing audio issues to help you make better upgrade choices.

• Rage128 card installed - Mostly the VR128 card but the Orion128 and Nexus128 can cause this to
• Firewire/USB combo cards - It has just come to my attention that some people are having audio stuttering once one of these combo cards are installed. If you remove the USB extensions then the problem goes away. But just using a plain USB card or a plain FW card does not cause this issue. But what about both cards at the same time? I have not heard from a user with one USB card and one FW card installed. If you have both installed, I would like to hear how they are working :) Thanks
• OS's older then 8.5 according to Sonnet - I have a post on my Sonnet info pages from a reader who received a reply to an inquiry and Sonnet stated that you need at least OS 8.5 to solve audio stuttering with their L2 G3 upgrade.
• OS's newer then OS 8.5.1 and QuickTime according to Sonnet - Sonnet also replied to another inquiry stating that there is an incompatibility between their Crescendo software and QT in OS 8.6 and up. I am not sure if they ever fixed this with newer versions of the Crescendo but I would use the latest version just to make sure!
• Virtual Memory in any OS 9.2.1 and older - I found this out myself on my iBook infact. My iTunes audio would always stutter when an app I was working on started to access the HD. When I turned VM off, my iTunes audio never again stuttered. I know this is not a solution for 6400/6500 owners since we are limited on the amount of RAM we can install. I had always used RamDoubler which is supposed to access the HD less then Apples VM so that may be one alternative to just disabling VM and losing VM's benefits.

As you can see, we are pretty limited to what may work 100% but even I won't guarantee that as I am sure there a some people out there with one of the above in use and not having any issues. The above are mainly some suggestions on things to look out for when upgrading your 6400/6500. I know this severely limits your upgrade ability (specially in OS's) so just remember that if you use one of the above items that you could introduce audio issues in games and audio apps like MP3 players.

The 6500 is less prone to audio issues but it has its own problems with some of the above items. Rage128 cards may not work period on the 6500 and FW/USB combo cards need a PRAM patch to work or the FW ports or the entire card may not function. From what I know, Sonnets FW/USB card and OrangeMirco's FW/USB card comes with this patch. And VM can affect any Mac not running OSX as I have found :(

5400/5500 may not be able to use Sonnets L3 G3 without some modification: Stuart has found a hardware issue with installing a L2 G3 card in a 5400/5500 without removing some little piece of plastic. Thanks Stuart.

[A few days ago I raised the question as to why Sonnet, in selling one of their G3/L2 cards on eBay specifically exclude 5400 machines from the compatibility list.

I may not have found their reason, but I've found one!

My 6500's monitor failed this morning, so I transferred first its HD, then later its logicboard and G3 card to a 5500. Problem! The logic board with G3 card installed would not physically fit, the blockage being a small plastic fastener that protruded from the metal chassis above the logic board space by about 4mm and which blocked the top of the G3 card and stopped the whole assembly being slid fully home. Cutting off the plastic solved the problem, and I'm sending this from the 5500/G3.
But surely I can't be the first to encounter this issue?
Stuart]

Now Sonnets web site does not mention this and they do sell their upgrades to 5400/5500 owners. The manual I have that came with my Sonnet G3 upgrade shows instructions for 5400/5500's and does not mention this either. Can anyone with a 5400 or 5500 and a Sonnet L2 G3 verify this issue? Thanks

Apple TIL on EDO and FPM memory and which Macs can use them: Here is a TIL I copied from Apples web site that has very good explanations of each type of RAM and what makes each better then the last.

General info from Sonnet about the 603e CPU and the Avid Cinema card: Chris wrote to sonnet about these topics and he sent me their replies. Thanks Chris.

iMovie 2.1.1 update kills dragging the preview window to add transitions!: Ever since iMovie came out, I had always added transitions and titles to my movies by picking what I wanted and then dragging the little preview window to the point on the time line I wanted to add it. Well, under v2.1.1, this is broken. Now the only way to add a transition or title is to drag the name of the transition or title you want from the list to the point on the time line you wish to add it. I think this feature worked in older versions of iMovie as well but now its the only way yo do it. This is for the 2.1.1 version in OS 9 and OSX.

Version history files from Apple or any OS company, to much to ask for?: Is it just me or do Apple and Microsoft not release version histories of their applications ever unless some big change is made that we notice and then release a TIL article on it which are hard to find? Most all other publishers release a version history so you can see what was changed before you try the update. It just makes sense to do this so people know what they are getting into. I understand that OS's are very large and come with many changes all the time but is making a history file released at the time of the OS update to much to ask for? I know that this info gets released several months after the update is out and TIL's trickle out daily, but if you don't read Mac news sites or visit Apples site everyday, you will miss them and be left in the dark! Even developers have to wait till after these updates get released to the public before they can fully test them. And they don't even know what's changed until they try it themselves.

Using the example of v2.1.1 of iMovie that just came out. Would it have been to hard for Apple to say that you can no longer drag the preview window and now you must drag the names of transitions and titles or for us iBook 2001 users that upgraded to OS 9.2.1. Would it have been to hard for them to add in the readme that we can no longer run the iBook in clamshell mode (lid closed with external keyboard and monitor)! These are major changes that could have easily been noted but they aren't. Apple gets so much backlash due to this which could be adverted if they just told people what changed and let us make the decision to upgrade or not. Now we just upgrade to find out what changed and then downgrade if it breaks a feature we liked :( Will it change? I doubt it and I was just using this space as my personal rant! Thanks for listening :)

I wanted to have more posted but I have been very busy the past week. I will hope to make up for this by making a post next week instead of waiting the normal 2 weeks. Thanks for understanding :)

OS 9.2.1 user letters: Here are a few letters I have received from 6360-6400 owners that have installed OS 9.2.1 with one of the hacks available. Thanks for the info guys :)

[Tom,
A week ago I downloaded and installed 9.2.1, patching it with Kenny's Old World patch. This is the most stable system I have ever had. It seems to be much faster and responsive than 9.1 was for me. So far, every app I have tried has run without any problems. here is my System configuration:

Performa 6400/200
Sonnet L2 240/512 overclocked to 300Mhz
104 megs of RAM
Voodoo3 2000
USR 56K V.90
Maxtor 15 Gig, 7200 RPM drive Divided into two equal partitions.

Marty

Tom,
In my original e-mail, I forgot to add some information. When I installed OS 9.2.1 and restarted, I got a totally black screen. I tried starting from the OS 9 CD and a Zip disk with OS 9.0.4 and still got the same black screen. Oh no! I've hosed my 6400, I thought. Then I had an idea. I zapped the PRAM. Fortunately it worked. The problem may have been related to the fact that I have a 3DFX Voodoo3 2000 PCI video accelerator card installed. I hope this will help others who are having problems with the install.
Regards,
Marty]

---

[I've got OS 9.2.1 up and running on my Performa 6360. I have a Sonnet L2/G3 upgrade and all seems to be working well.

I used a SCSI backup drive as the startup disk to perform the installation on the main hard drive, and had to use the resedit hacks to modify the system file, as the patch wouldn't work. Then I changed the startup disk to the main hard drive and restarted, but had to zap the PRAM before I could get the machine to boot up at all; it wouldn't even recognize the SCSI backup drive or the internal CD drive.
Don

I downloaded the "OS 9.2.1 Update .smi" file and applied the "Update to Mac OS 9.2.1" patch as instructed and it worked. I restarted and booted from the OS 9 CD and ran the "System 9.2.1 patch". When I clicked on the new installer Icon, it began to try to install, but then I got an error message that there was not enough memory and I needed an additional 2 gigabytes of memory in order to complete the installation! I checked the memory control panel and the memory allocations and couldn't find the problem. I didn't get this message when I ran the same patch to do the installation on a Lacie external drive.

Since the patch wouldn't work, I used ResEdit to hack the system file, then changed the startup disk to the internal hard drive and restarted. I got the startup chime, but the monitor screen stayed black and the green light on my Mac didn't light up. I tried to do another restart, but got no response so I unplugged the machine and plugged it back in, with the same result. Then I unplugged, plugged in and zapped the PRAM, and then it started up fine.
Don]

---

[Hi Tom,
I also successfully got 9.2 to work on my Performa using the solution of your anonymous resource. However, I have the Maxpower L2G3 card and cannot get the Maxpower extension to load due to an error message 7. This makes the upgrade unattractive unless there is a way to hack the extension to work. If you have any thoughts I would be interested. Apparently the Sonnet G3 card with associated extensions work under 9.2 per your anonymous resource. Thanks. Bill

I had downloaded the latest version of the Maxpower extension and used the space in front method so it loaded first. This works great with 9.1. When attempting to load this on 9.2.1, a message alert indicated it would not work on a "G3". I loaded it anyway and it did not work on reboot. Bill]

from reading these letters, it appears that your mileage may very with the patches. Some worked and some didn't? Also some reported having to zap the PRAM to get their Mac to boot after the install? I don't know why that is needed but remember this if you try and your Mac gets a black screen at startup.

Another thing I noticed is that Newer MaxPower owners are having issues getting their G3's to work under OS 9.2.1? Sonnets G3 seems unaffected and I have not heard from any Vimage users yet. It seems that the MaxPower installer or extension itself sees your 6400 with OS 9.2.1 as a real G3 and will not load at startup :( I asked several people to try and remove the MachID extension (which was used to fake the installer into thinking you had a real G3) to see if that would help. At least one person wrote back saying it did not help. Another suggestion would be to try MachID but type in "58" which represents a 6400. Maybe this will allow the MaxPower extension to work again. That is if it does not break OS 9.2.1 now?

Update on Firewire/USB combo cards causing audio issues: Well it seems for sure now that Apples USB drivers cause audio issues with these combo cards. I have heard nothing but success in fixing audio issues once the USB drivers are removed. I had read through my old info and found that some readers had audio issues once they upgraded to OS 8.6 and that turning off VM may fix it. Mike replied to me that indeed disabling VM had an affect but did not cure the issue. Only removing the USB drivers fixed it. Thanks Mike.

[Tom, I tried a few things with OS9.1 on my 6400/200/136MB upgraded with a Sonnet G3/400/1MB, Orange Micro USB1.0/FireWire, 3DFX VooDoo3. I disabled VM and this changed the stuttering sound to mildly garbled (like singing down a bumpy road). The true success I had was disabling all of the USB drivers (not the FireWire). I then had clean crisp clear iTunes operation. I have only had trouble since the 9.1 upgrade from 8.6. I am wondering why I upgraded. I was in it for the Multiple Users, man!!! That was a gigantic failure as well. I had all my accounts set up for the kids and it worked fine under OS9.0.4 but then I went to 9.1 (along with the MU upgrade to 1.4.1) and all of those accounts then would not let them launch any applications and would report not enough access privileges. I am very discouraged. I think I may go back to 8.6 (I used an 8.6 patch for iTunes).
Mike]

Corry tried removing only the Firewire drivers without success. Thanks for the info Corry.

[I tried removing the firewire extensions and still had the audio stuttering :( I guess this nixes the idea of getting one of those external firewire or USB hard drives and keeping my mp3's on it heh. Thanks,
Corry]

He does bring up a good point though. How would audio be affected on a firewire or USB attached HD? Assuming the issue may be related to HD access. Anybody with a combo card and Firewire or USB HD care to test this? Please email me your results. Thanks.

Update on Farallons v2.4 driver causing shutdown problems: VRic wrote me back to say he now can confirm that the v2.4 of Farallons drivers does cause a shutdown problem but only if no network connection is made to the card (at least on his system). Thanks VRic.

[I sent you this recently :

> I use a Farallon ethernet 10/100 comslot II card with v 2.4 driver on my
> 6400/Sonnet G3 under Mac OS 8.6 and have no problem shutting down.

Since then I had the problem, and I believe I found at least one reason for the inconcistencies in those reports : this driver seems to cause the mentioned problem ONLY WHEN THE ETHERNET PORT IS NOT USED. If there's something (a LAN, another Mac or a DSL modem) connected to the Ethernet port, Bob (my 6400) shuts down normally, if not it won't.

That's why I didn't see it sooner. So the fix is easy: if you have a network, plug it back! If not, deactivate the Farallon driver, since it's not needed anyway.

This looks similar to an old problem we had with built-in Ethernet under system 7.x: if the Ethernet port was empty, AppleTalk would throw an error and revert to LocalTalk.
----
VRic]

Click here to read more on Farallons drivers and the 6400.

Customer Installable Parts site from Apple: This only pertains to newer Macs like the iMac and up but I thought I would post it for all as many people with 6400 may one day want a new Mac :) This site has nice QT movies and PDF files on all the parts Apple says customers can install ourselves. Thanks Apple! To bad they won't do this with their older Macs :(

General OSX info - trashing the system folder and resinstalling is not a completely clean install?: I know most of you aren't running OSX because it doesn't work on our Macs but for those that do have a Mac that can, and is, running OSX, here is some interesting info I found out the other day.

I was trouble shooting an issue I have on my B&W G3 running OSX 10.0.4 build 4Q12 where no 3D game would run. They all crashed on launch but did not bring my Mac down. The funny thing was that these same games (Q3A, CroMag Rally, and Return to CastleWolfenstein beta) worked on my new iBook with the same OS setup. I thought that perhaps some of the third party OS tweaking utilities I had used on the B&W may have caused this so I wanted to remove any damage they may have done. I could not easily find away to remove what they did so I thought I would just reinstall the OS to get back to square one. This both worked easily and did nothing?

I booted into OS 9.2.1 and then trashed the OSX System folder, Library folder, Mach.sym file, and Mach file. I left the User folder so I would not lose my user settings since they are shared with OS 9.2.1 users and I also did not trash the OSX Applications folder so I would not have to reinstall any apps I had recently downloaded.

I then inserted my OSX install CD and ran the installer. After the install was complete and it rebooted, I was shocked to see that nothing had changed? All my settings were intact right down to who the admin user was and TCP/IP settings! Its like I didn't trash anything? I thought this was very odd and tried my games again which none worked still. So the next thing to try was to trash the Preference folder for the admin user which is found in the Library folder of the admins User folder. Yes this is complicated till you can see what I am saying. I then rebooted and it still remembered who the admin user was and still retained all network settings but this time it did default my Finder settings which is a good start. So I tried my games again and they still failed?

I then went to several Mac help sites to read up on OSX issues and on www.xlr8yourmac.com's forums, I found that OSX does not have hardware support for my Radeon card yet. This would explain why no 3D game worked as there is no 3D support for my video card. I then tried an older Rage128 VR card and each game now works just fine :) I hope that OSX 10.1 has hardware support for the Radeon or I won't be switching OS's anytime soon!

The main reason I wrote all this was to say that OSX is going to be a very rugged OS once its fine tuned and supports more hardware. I mean how many operating systems can you completely trash and still retain all their settings on a clean install. But then if you want to do a real clean install, how would you? I think there must be many invisible files, which are also invisible in OS 9, that store network settings as I am sure I trashed everything I could find that should have had OS preferences stored in. So either finding and trashing invisible files or initializing the HD will be needed to do a really clean install. This may be a good reason to install OSX on a separate partition from OS 9.x as some have suggested. Then you only need to lose data that pertains to OSX and not everything.

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