TW Computing: I did a lot of work to the site and changed the features offered so go check it out and tell me what you think :)

MacRaffle web site down?: I found out what is going on with MacRaffle and its not good. They are being accused of holding a gambling ring on the web! Visit their site to read more on it. I agree with the web sites host and they will probably be found not guilty, but its too bad they have to go through all of this now :(

So until their situation is worked out, I will remove the ad to their site in the right side bar. This should help speed up the loading of my home page since the image link to their site is broken.

OS9 Helper app a great success!: Many of the people that tried OS9 Helper love it! This program makes installing OS 9.2.1 and OS 9.2.2 so easy. Below are a few of the comments I have received. Thanks.

[Hi,
I just want to let you know that I have installed 9.2.2 on my Performa 6360 with Sonnet 240 MHz G3 using the software on the OS9 Forever site. I installed the OS upgrade on another partition and so far everything seems just fine. This includes booting up, running Microsoft office and my SBC DSL software. I think that I will not upgrade my main partition for a little while just to be sure.

I really appreciate the work you have done in giving me a superb resource for my "classic" computer.

Ian]

[dear Mr. Koons; I was sorry to hear about your job situation, hope all turns out for the best. As a frequent visitor to your site I have read the posts about updating to os9.2 but felt I was out of my league as regards resedit mods and machine ids and all the rest of the tech stuff. Anyway after reading your comment about os9 helper I checked it out. I don't know if I was just feeling adventurous that night or what but I tried it. And it works perfectly. With no more than my usual "installing something new jitters", it was just a matter of following directions. I am using 9.2.2 now and find it worth the trouble. The finder is much faster to start with, apps open quicker and it seems web surfing is faster, although all are hard to quantify exactly in numbers. I ran techtool 3.06 after installation and all was well except for the system files exam which found non-specified problems but seemed to suggest that it was something that did not need to be concerned about. Probably the system patch confused it. After this I zapped pram and rebuilt the desktop just to make sure. I had to remove a lot of extensions it installed, such as for printers I don't use and suchlike. As for the actual install the only thing that bothered me was that I couldn't get it to run after starting up from my os9.1 CD as was suggested on the os9 helper website. So I just booted from the startup disk as usual, and let it do its thing. I didn't even turn off any of my extensions or anything! So to sum up, id recommend this to everyone to try. 9.2.2 would really fly with a cpu upgrade which I don't have. If you use any of this note on your website, please edit it so I don't appear so naive and 'newbie' as I am !! thanks again for a great website.]

[Hi Thomas!!
So far so good with the install of 9.2.2 using OS9 Helper from OS9Forever.com. Although I had a series of annoying Finder "Quits", it seems that I needed a PRAM zap and Desktop rebuild with each step along the way. It has only been a few days, and I am slowly moving and reinstalling software from the old 8.6 partition to the new 9.2.2 partition. I am surprised that by going to "About this Computer", the patched/modified 9.2.2 is using a little bit less RAM than the full 8.6!! Cool. System 9.2.2 does seem to be a bit snappier in command responses.
Dave
6400/200 Performa
Sonnett 300mhz/1MB Upgrade card
OrangeMicro U2W and FW card
ATI VR video card/8MB
...buncha other stuff...]

[ Hey, I wanted to let you know it installed great! I installed it yesterday on my Performa 6400/180 and everything went very well.
The only complaint I have is having to change the resolution using the monitors control panel. I tried with the control strip to switch to 1024x768 and the screen bowed. I noticed it was displaying it at 75hz instead of the 60 that it calls for. So I switched it using the control panel and all is well. (I'm using a Applevision 1710 display).
So far so good. It seems to be very stable. I haven't run too many games, just Tombraider II, and it seems to be working quite well.
I'll keep you up to date on how I do.
- Carl]

Not everyone was able to try the app though. The biggest issue is that it only works if you have OS 9.1 already installed and have the 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 .smi files located on your computer. The app will not work with updates located on CD's, full OS installer CD's, or through the Software Update Control panel. You must have the updater files on your hard drive.

[Thomas,
Just read the info re the OS9 Forever site. I'd just been looking at that myself and one thing not mentioned is that the 'Helper' only works with the 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 upgrades, not the 9.2.1 install CD. This lets me out as an 80Mb download is not on over a modem.

Regards,
Alec]

There are multiple file downloads for OS9.2.1 but not OS9.2.2 on Apples site. The 9.2.2 update is 21.3MB and the OS 9.2.1 update is 82MB or 6 smaller files.

Newers MaxPower drivers fail in OS9.2.2?: I have received two complaints so far that Newers MaxPower L2 G3 fails in OS 9.2.2. One person said they had driver version 2.0.3 so I sent them 2.0.4. I'll update this when I hear more.

PacBell DSL Enternet software issues with Opentransport 2.6 install available from my site: I reader of my site tried the OT 2.6 software I have posted that fixes a DHCP issue in OS 8.6, and said his DSL network access software no longer functioned afterwards. Later he wrote back to say that just reinstalling the access software fixed it. Thanks for the info.

[6400/g3/400/136/macos 8.6/pacbell dsl

I tried the OT 2.6 tip on the cable/dsl modems page by exchangin' the six 2.0.3 extensions + control panels for the 2.6 control panels + extensions. Restarted and everythin' but when it fully booted up .. I saw that "enternet" panel in the control strip was Xed out and not available in TCP/IP. When goin' to tcp/ip, the comp would freeze. Rebooted twice and got the same results .. It froze. Luckily, the enternet panel was available again after I exchanged the old 2.0.3 set back. Has anyone usin' prodigy DSL or any of the Bell DSL services gotten this to work ? .. I believe they all use the same Enternet scheme in TCP/IP.

I'm goin' to be moving over back to a linksys router and want to solve any router issues. Under 2.0.3 and the linksys router, I had to restart each time the connection died on me.

And are these the correct 2.0.3 extensions ? ..
Open Tpt AppleTalk Library
Open Tpt Internet Library
Open Transport Library
OpenTptAppleTalkLib
OpenTptInternetLib
OpenTransportLib

any infos/insights appreciated .]

Later he wrote back with the fix.

[All I had to do was reinstall enternet and it was restored. So anyone usin' enternet.. make sure to reinstall it after updating OT.]

Usually software like this will actually alter your OT drivers or hook into them in such away that changing the OT drivers breaks the special software. This can also happen from just upgrading your OS as that will also replace the OT drivers with new ones.

XPostFacto hack to install OSX 10.2 on alchemy based Macs!: David tried XPostFacto with a hack to make it work better on Alchemy based mother boards like the 6500 has. He used it on a PowerBase and says its working great. Thanks David.

[Just thought you'd like to know that I have installed OSX 10.2 on my powerbase w/G3 card and it is running great.... The only thing that doesn't work is sound. The powerbase is almost identical to the 6400 so it shouldn't be too much trouble to get the 6400's to work.... I used the alchemy.r file to patch XPostFacto, as was mentioned by another one of your readers, and I was able to boot off the OSX 10.2 CD and it installed off the CD just fine albeit very slowly.

David]

I asked if his G3 was running and he later replied with this.

[Yes, the G3 upgrade is (was) running along with the L2 cache with the aid of the L2cacheconfig OSX app.... The machine won't boot since I installed an ethernet driver.... Going to reformat and start over.... I'll send my patched XPostFacto once (if) I get the machine online]

The 6500 and 6400 do share many pieces but certain mother board components are very different so I don't know if this will work on the 6400? The G3 upgrade for the PowerBase he has uses the CPU slot which is more like the 8600 and 9600 Macs. It wasn't a L2 G3 so I don't expect this to make L2 G3's work in OSX now :( Also note he installed from the CDROM which is SCSI so maybe SCSI issues are fixed! He sent me the patched version of XPostFacto so if anyone tries it, please tell me how it works. Thanks.

Rage128 VR card success story: Well there aren't many 6400 users that can say they have the ATI Rage128 VR card running fine in their system but it looks like Ben can. He says the card works great for him. Thanks for the info Ben. Now this is not typical as even ATI said they had a 60% failure rate with Rage 128 cards in the 6400/6500 so don't take this to mean the issues are fixed. But it is good to hear they can work together :)

[ I use an ATI Xclaim VR 128 graphics accelerator paired with a Sonnet G3 L2 300 Mhz/512k Cache in my 6400. I also have 64 MB of RAM. The machine runs Unreal Tournament and Quake III: Arena incredibly well. It also runs Diablo II at about 90% speed. It is a bit choppy, but playable. You do have to mute it though, since choppy music can get very obnoxious. I have also found that most 3D games except for the very newest ones (released within the last 6-8 months) run very well on my machine as long as they don't require OS X. (Which I don't have.)
I bought the Xclaim VR 128 due to the bad reports that I had gotten on the Rage Orion, and this appears to be a much better card than that one.

-Ben]