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Included in this page is the tips and tricks I have learned working on thousands of Apple PowerMac G4 systems we sell in our business. We upgrade and use Power Mac G4's in our business and for our personal machines. My hope is that you find the solution you are looking for included. Just because you have looked at this once you may want to reread it again. I frequently add new material as I learn new things or get reminded that not everyone knows something that I do. I hope you find the answers you need here. If not use the form to Contact Us and we will be happy to help. Any part in RED means you should "Read and Heed". Do this or else type topics are covered.
Here are a few tips about a Power Mac G4 Power Supply
We have OSX Tiger 10.4 & 10.5 available and include both our OSX Super Sink DVD as well as the 10.4&5 updates DVD chock full of updates, freeware and shareware! See the software section of the store. Call and ask for the CD version.
Power Macintosh G4 Overclocking - includes DUAL Info! (Optimize your Processor!)
THIS IS HARD TO DO! I don't recommend trying this unless you are willing and have the funds to replace your processor and have had experience with micro soldering.
Click here for:
- Sawtooth and Gigabyte Ethernet Single and Duals
- Digital Audio Single Processor
- QuickSilver Single Processor
New! OSX Install Notes for G4 Systems - a quick read may save you some time and trouble.
Power Macintosh G4 Upgrades Page - this links directly into our online store with links for all the goodies you will need to upgrade your system
We love this business and live, breath and eat Macs. We thank you in advance for using the tech support line for out of warranty or systems and equipment you have bought elsewhere.
405-601-5288 9-6 Central Time Monday through Friday is our NEW tech support line. Thanks for paying for the call. We need you to help us with this as our toll free lines expenses are rising far faster than our sales are. We are always happy to help and we pay for the calls on in warranty products. Please let us know that you are on your dime when you get a tech online, our phone system doesn't show this at the work stations. Use our email anytime you don't need immediate response or after hours. Make sure you identify the system you are on, the OS you are using and any other pertinent hardware facts.
Toll Free ORDER line 877-639-1543 9-6 CST, M-F (405-601-5288)
New TECH SUPPORT Line 405-601-5288
We now have lower prices on all MacBook, PowerBook and iBook Batteries
Order a Power Mac G4 Power Supply
Visit Power-Mac-G4.com for new and used Mac G4 systems and components.
Value Priced G4 Mac! Burn DVD's or CD's!
G4 Processor
$229.77 shipped!
Play DVD's*
Burn CD's
Power Macintosh G4 450*mhz
512MB RAM, 80GB HD, SuperDrive
Super SALE! $229.77 Shipped!
RUN OSX or OS9. These Upgraded Sawtooth or Gigabit Ethernet PowerMac G4/450's come nicely configured. We install our refurb Super Drive and include Toast for easy burning. 512MB of RAM Installed. We put in a refurb 80 GB Drive (Fast New Solid State Drives available call). We thoroughly clean and rigorously test each unit. Video Card: 16 MB ATI RAGE 128 Pro AGP. Built in 10/100 Ethernet, NO MODEM - add a built in 56K Modem +$10. It has a spot for the optional Airport card. Install more ram $49.77 for new 512MB SDRAM. These systems come with two each built in Firewire and USB ports. VGA out. Service manual (.pdf) on system. Aftermarket keyboard and mouse available extra. Free Super Sink DVD. Mac OS10.4.11 and 9.2.2 dual bootable. Weight: 30 lbs. Dimensions: 17"Hx8.9"Wx18.4"D. Has HD15 (PC Style) Video out. Our $229.77 includes your domestic shipping. Call for upgrades. Sell us your old unit. Call or email for custom configurations. We can install the new 120GB Solid State Drives in place of the refurb 80 for +$60 call.
Solid State Drives for Your G4!
Cheryn tells me we are having trouble finding 80 or 120GB refurbished hard drives for our older Mac customers. There haven't been new ones available for years. We know you depend on us to help keep your old gear running efficiently. These brand new digital solid state drives have no moving parts making them not only faster but more reliable. We still think you should keep your system backed up but running from these super fast brand new drives only make sense. We haven't carried SSD drives much before but we think now that the prices are more affordable now is the time. We found the right kind of adapter that allows you to configure it for Master, Slave or Cable Select depending on your needs. That makes these more compatible and easily configurable with an included jumper. We can set these up for your system or you can use copy software to move your old data. Let us know how we can help speed up your G4 system. I tested these on our servers so you know they are fast and dependable.
Solid State 120GB Drive Kit - G4 Speed up your G4 Faster Data Access No Moving Parts
Operator Headgap tested and approved! Improve Performance! Now more affordable you can move up to the latest technology on your G4 and still run OSX or OS9.2.2 and boot from either. This 2.5" SSD comes with an adapter that features the ability to be set to Master, Slave or Cable Select for maximum compatibility. The 120GB Size is the largest size most G4 can run. FASTER DATA ACCESS! This speeds up almost everything you do on your Mac! More reliable than the old conventional drives, no moving parts, no noise. We include velcro so it is simple to mount anywhere that is convenient. WORKS in ALL G4 Macs and connect to a standard IDE connector. We preformat these and can preinstall call for custom configuration. Reg.$119.77, SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE $99.77 includes domestic shipping. See the G4 Category in the online store.
Boot 9 or X
use new SATA mechanisms that come with a complete factory warranty.
Thermally cooled via the housing & external power!
Black Bullet
All New
7200 rpm
Hard Drives!
Black Bullet Aluminum
External Hard Drives
Firewire 400 & USB2
HIGH SPEED! Brand new 7200 rpm mechanisms and they are in stock now! Our Black Bullet Aluminum Drives feature an all aluminum housing with external power supply to keep the heat out of the housing. We build our external hard drives to be a fast, but affordable high capacity storage solution. They come with Firewire 400, as well as high-speed USB 2.0 ports for the widest possible range of compatibility. We install a new Seagate or Hitachi hard drive mechanism. Includes 2 Firewire 400 ports so you can daisy chain them. Includes the cables, USB 2.0 A-B cable, IEEE 1394 6p-6p cable. REQUIRES Mac OS8.6 or later, OSX compatible (comes Mac HFS Extended formatted for PPC, can be GUID formatted for INTEL on request) El Capitan tested, Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7, Firewire 400, or USB Port. Our SPECIAL 129.77 includes domestic shipping! We can install new Seagate Hybrid +$20 call.
1 TB Starting at $129.77 See the External Drive section!
FIREFOX and sites like Flicker are telling me my browser is not current and giving me annoying reminders
It doesn't matter that you are running a Mega Ghz G4 computer. When Adobe stopped upgrading Flash for Power PC processored systems that doomed a lot of people to using older web browsers. Now these annoying browsers like Firefox tell you to download the latest version that will not run on your system. I have stopped using them. I know my present computer more that meets my needs and is more powerful than many new systems. Try Ten Four Fox. We include it on PPC OSX capable systems we build and on our Super Sink DVD software collection.
TenFourFox Freeware Harness the power of a more modern version of Firefox on your PowerPC Mac.
http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ Are you looking for a web browser for Mac OS 8.6-9.2.2 (and compatible with 10.1.5-10.3.9)? Try our sister project, Classilla.
Requirements: Mac OS 10.4.11 or later Optimized for G5 PPC and for G4 and G3 optimized versions.
TenFourFox is a fast, efficient web browser based on Firefox, but compatible with 10.4 and 10.5 on the PowerPC based Macs. We love Mozilla software. We love Firefox and Camino. We think the new hot Mozilla has every possibility of kicking WebKit back into the margins where it belongs. But we were horrified when Mozilla delivered the one-two punch of dropping both support for Tiger and our beloved Power Macs from Firefox. A quad 2.5GHz G5 isn't worth using to surf the web? Really? And you guys still support Windows XP? And, of course, Apple's been giving us Power Mac users the proverbial middle digit since 2006. Remember: think different.
You can now set the preferences to have this browser report that it is the latest version of Firefox 52. This stops the web sites from telling you that you are not worthy to use them.
G5 optimized version ison the new Super Kitchen Sink DVD set. You can of course download it now from the link.
USING THE NEW OUTLOOK MAIL ON YOUR OLD PPC Tiger MAC!
Have you lost access to your hotmail account because you are on an old web brower? Safari 4 has the ability to emulate other web browers. In the Safari preferences choose Advanced and select the Develop Menu (you must be logged in as administrator to activate this menu). Now that the Develop Menu shows up choose User Agent and Opera 10.6.2 for Windows. Next add the Flash Plugin from the information below and you will be good to use your Outlook Mail. Amazing that the little Microsoft Programmer Turds did this on purpose. There was no reason you could not continuing to use your old trusty Mac they just put a gotcha in their code.
This trick works on many web sites you have been having trouble with! Just use your old Safari and have it tell the sites you are on a Windows Browser!
I had all but given up on finding a solution for many web sites that use later flash code and my trusty G5 PPC Mac. I had taken to using a Download Helper Add On for TenFourFox. That way I could download the .MP4 versions of many of the files I wanted and add them to my iTunes library. But still many of the news sites had content I couldn't view since they only offered a flash version.
I stumbled across a web site that has a hacked version of the flash plug in. Instead of the old 10.1 version you had to run on Tiger and Leopard on the PowerPC G3, G4, and G5 Macs you can now run 11.5. Not the very latest but still a substantial upgrade. You have to manually replace the flash plug in from your library but the instructions are included and easy. Save your old plugin in case you want to go back. This plug in will be used by Safari and Firefox or other Mozilla based Web Browsers automatically.
Download this file from my server: http://headgap.com/AdobeFlashPI11_5_PPC.zip
Safari and Firefox 3 or other Mozilla coded browsers will use this updated Flash. Still an older version but works with many more web sites.
2nd Quarter 2017 Edition
SUPER Kitchen Sink DVD
Just Finished and IN STOCK NOW! Install the latest updates. I added all the goodies you asked for. Now you can simply load them from the DVD. Categorized, Indexed and Described and most all include links to the download site and the authors web site so you can read more about them. ORDER NOW! Software section of the online store. If you haven't bought one in a while this is a good time to update. Have an iPod, iPad, or iPhone? We now have a directory that has all the utilities in one directory. We also created a Virus,Trojan, Worm directory to make it easier for you to feel safe and even added some Adware removal tools. Sierra compatible software now identified.
We separated the Apple Updates DVD disks to allow you to order only the updates you need. While the updates are free from Apple some are quite large and take a long time to download. Having them on disk saves you time especially if you have more than one Mac. There will likely still be some hardware specific updates you will need to download from Apple to complete your installation.
APPLE UPDATES DVD's! These DVD's allow you to update to the latest version of the OSX version you have installed. We are now selling them separately. The only DVD's that got updated this quarter are the AppleUpdates 10.9, 10.10, 10.11 and 10.12.
If you want to buy a complete set call and speak to Cheryn and she will make you a group deal price. From now on though we will be offering each disk separately at a good price and of course our pricing always includes shipping.
2nd Qtr UPDATE
OSX SUPER Sink DVD 2017 !
IT'S HERE! 2nd Quarter 2017 Edition OSX DVD! This SINGLE OSX DVD contains the very best freeware and shareware. Each section is categorized, indexed and includes a nice description for each program with links to the source and author. Chock full of the best shareware and freeware utilities, games, Internet goodies, music, graphics and multimedia, emulators, diagnostics, hard to find drivers, and more, all for OSX (everthing but the Kitchen Sink). I carry this one in my toolbox. This Mac software collection makes it easy to set up your new system or simply update your old one. Quarterly we review all programs and update them. REQUIRES: OSX 10.2 through 10.12.x, DVD Player ONLY $9.99 including domestic shipping.
The Updates DVD's are now separated and available each for $7.99 shipped
- AppleUpdates10.2-10.3-10.4-10.5
- AppleUpdates10.6
- AppleUpdates10.7
- AppleUpdates10.8
- AppleUpdates10.9 - updated
- AppleUpdates10.10- updated
- AppleUpdates10.11- updated
- AppleUpdates10.12- updated
OS8 or 9 2017 Kitchen Sink (1 CD) - $7.99
Good question and you made me look. This is just crap again. You have to install software to have anything happen to your Mac. Just don't be a chump and you are safe.
The virus (not a virus by the way), which Reuters first reported, was detected in a downloadable Mac program called Transmission, which is used to share data through BitTorrent's network. Researchers have nicknamed the ransomware "KeRanger."
This is what is called payloadware by some since you download a legit program or update and give it your name and password and install it.
I still either use the Apple Store or MacUpdate for my software downloads. If you download a program from some odd site and install it you can indeed add a TROJAN to your system. There are still no viruses for the Mac and unfortunately journalists are ignorant about what a virus is.
If you downloaded the program Transmission between March 4 and March 7 and installed it is indeed possible you installed a trojan that may allow the hackers to hold your files for ransom. Of course if you have a backup of your system before that time you can always go back to the backup and erase and reinstall your system. Highly unlikely you are a candidate though as most of the world.
You can read the Time article here http://time.com/4249413/apple-mac-ransomware-hack/
Something becoming more of a problem on the Mac scene is Adware. A group called Genieo tricks users into installing legit software and loads their system up with tracking software and other crap. Read more about them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genieo I have added the free Adware Medic and DetectX. Run both periodically.
This is Apple's page on removing unwanted adware.
K-9 Mac Optimizer? I have invented a new term "Turdware"
What there is another piece of crap program that interferes with your systems normal operation and they only charge $50 save $10 today? You can do a google search form removing this turdware. Then see my notes below on what you really need and how its free.
BOB WHAT ABOUT CLEANMYMAC? - "Turdware"
Send me the $30 and download Maintenance for free. If you really want more features the same company makes ONYX and they give it away for free. The reason I like and recommend Mainenance is that it is a do no harm utility that checks your drive each time you run it and it does a good job of keeping your Mac clean. You can run it weekly. An online reviewer made the same observation. By the way both programs are on our Super Kitchen Sink DVD. If you do like and continue to used them they do accept donations. If you need to remove applications use the free AppCleaner 2.3 FREE Uninstall your apps easily.
Maintenance freeware universal OS X maintenance utility. A MUST HAVE UTILITY
1.1.8 Tiger version, 1.27 Leopard, 1.4.1 for Snow Leopard, 1.5.6 Lion. 1.7.1 Mountain Lion 1.8.9 Mavericks 1.9.5 Yosemite
Maintenance is a System Maintenance and Cleaning utility. It allows you to run miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance: repair permissions, run periodic scripts, reset Spotlight's Index, rebuild the LaunchServices database, delete Application, Font and System cache, and check the status of the hard disk. We recommend and install this on all systems. Run weekly!!
ONYX freeware universal OS X maintenance & optimization tool. MORE ADVANCED MAINTENANCE TOOL
Requirements: Mac OSX - Versions for Jaguar through Yosemite on our SuperSinkDVD.
THIS iS BY THE SAME FOLKS WHO MAKE MAINTENANCE. It has some of the same features but allows you to change things in how your system operates. OnyX is a multifunction utility for Mac OS X. It allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, to run miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance, to configure the hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock and of some of Apple's own applications, to delete caches, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and more.
MACKEEPER - "Turdware" ! It seems I need remind you!
Not sure why but I guess people have $50 burning a hole in their pockets and don't know any better. Don't fall for the Slick Ads everywhere or the popups and other crap. Don't fall for the 50% off deals and think you need this software. If you install the demo it is hard to remove and nags you until you purchase. No one needs this. Use the free Maintenance program you can download from http://www.titanium.free.fr/index.php . It does all you need, and beside being free you can easily remove it by discarding the app. You don't know how much time I spend removing CrapKeeper from our customers computers.
When I realized they would stop making IDE DVD drives I bought up all the Pioneer and eventually the Hitachi LG drives that we could find. Many of you know that the day would come when no more IDE DVD drives would be available. We fretted over this but did manage to find a good adapter allowing us to use the SATA versions of the drives. We found a FASTER LG SuperDrive and bought a large quantity. They are even faster in the DVD Burning at 24X and CD Burning department at 48X. We are offering a special introductory low price! Upgrade your G4, G5 or MacPro Tower DVD Drive Today! These are bootable drives and are good replacements for Apple Superdrives.
Mavericks Tested!
EZ Pictured Instructions Included
New LG SuperDrive
UPGRADE NOW! 24XDVD/48XCD Burns!
Burn DVD's and CD's! Tested in OS9.1 up through Mavericks! New model supports DVD burns at up to 24X! Dual layer support. These make great replacements for G4 Towers Yikes through Mirror Doors, G5 Towers, G4 iMacs, and even eMacs! At $59.77 you can't go wrong. We include pictured instructions, Toast Lite CD burning software and patches to make it OS9 and X compatible. Close to twice the capacity (Dual Layer Capable)! Apple Bootable allows you to boot from emergency disks and any Apple install disks etc. Only Headgap offers compatibility patches and complete pictured instructions. Toast Lite Burning Software, You must supply your own version of Toast for Lion and above. Our $59.77 includes domestic shipping. See the DVD,CD,CDRW section.
BASH PROBLEMS - We added this fix to the SuperSink 4th Qtr DVD
BASH is part of the OSX operating system. There are some security issues with BASH. This patched BASH version has both the recent patches included in it. The bash these steps will install works on 10.4 all the way to 10.9 on 32-bit Intel, 64-bit Intel and PowerPC. It requires no other dependencies. WARNING: If you are not comfortable with the Terminal, get someone to help you and it is always good to have a bootable backup. Apple issued bash patches for Lion and up with an easy installer. This allows you to manually patch yours if you are on older now unsupported OS versions. It also allows you to test to see if your version is patched. Download the bash file here. 4.3.27
This information was downloaded from: http://tenfourfox.blogspot.dk/2014/09/bashing-bash-one-more-time-updated.html
The bash these steps will install works on 10.4 all the way to 10.9 on 32-bit Intel, 64-bit Intel and PowerPC. It requires no other dependencies. The idea is to replace your system bash. This is designed to accomplish that. WARNING: If you are not comfortable with the Terminal, get someone to help you and it is always good to have a bootable backup.
You can skip down to the tests first if you want to check your vulnerability.
First put the upgraded bash in your home directory. If necessary, double-click to decompress it so that you have a file in your home directory called bash-4.3.27-10.4u.
In that terminal window:
- exec tcsh
- chmod +x bash-4.3.27-10.4u
- sudo mv /bin/bash /bin/bash_old (enter your password)
- sudo mv /bin/sh /bin/sh_old (enter your password if needed)
- sudo cp bash-4.3.27-10.4u /bin/bash (enter your password if needed)
- sudo cp bash-4.3.27-10.4u /bin/sh (enter your password if needed)
Tests to see if you are vulnerable and to run after to see that you have installed the new version properly.
Test it by trying the statements in terminal:
- env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test"
- It should print: this is a test
Second Test in terminal:
- env X='() { (a)=>\' sh -c "echo date"; cat echo
- It should print date cat: echo: No such file or directory
Third Test in terminalt:
- env foo='() { echo not patched; }' bash -c foo
- It should print bash: foo: command not found
If you ever have trouble installing a program on your system here are a few tips.
- Make sure the CD or DVD is clean. A big old thumbprint can sometimes put things off. Use a little windex and a lint free cloth to shine it up.
- If the program is OSX you can hold down the shift key at startup to enter safe boot mode. This turns off things that may be interfering.
- If the program is OS9 boot into 9 if possible on your unit. If not use the classic control panel to turn off extensions. If 9 bootable start with the shift key held down.
- Lastly you can use the disk utility to make a disk image the same size. Then manually copy each file from the CD to the image. Rename the image the same as the CD. Then eject the CD and click on the installer on the disk image. You can also get info on the installer file on the image and assign more memory to it.
- One other thing prevents some folks from installing software. Sadly they fail to read the system requirements of the program. Do make sure what you are installing is supported for your system. Sometimes older versions are available or you can check with us. We have a large archive of older software and may be able to help.
I can install OS9 on INTEL systems now 7-21-2104
I finally figured out how to get OS9 to run on INTEL systems using Sheep Shaver. There are limitations though. You cannot print to anything except print to PDF, but the resulting file can be printed directly from OSX. The version of 9 that runs is 9.0.4 so some programs that require 9.2.2 will not worik. I have experimented a bit and have programs like Pagemaker, Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand etc working. I use an old TeleFinder client and it works great allowing me to contact my TeleFinder server directly from my Mac Mini running Mavericks.
DuckDuckGo.com 7-21-2104
I have recently starting installing web browser homepages on systems we sell from Google to DuckDuckGo.com. Their vision is simple. Great search results without tracking you. There searches are encrypted. You can read more about them and their goals: https://duckduckgo.com/about
Server Failure 7-11-2104
I had our main database server fail the other day. I could smell it, so I know the heat had gotten to it. While I have the room sufficiently cooled and fans blowing everywhere it sometimes just happens. Fortunately I had another unit set aside just in case. I simply transfered the drives, RAM, and processor over and was back up and running quickly. I have always installed better fans than come from the factory. On newer systems with INTEL processors there are programs that allow you to set the internal fans to a higher rate. On our SuperSink DVD we now have two programs. One is called smcFanControl 2.4 Free Control Intel Mac fans to make them run cooler. I recommend this for all INTEL Macs! Another one that is more sophisticated and you may want to consider is Macs Fan Control 1.1.11 freeware Monitor and control your computer's fans. Both are free programs and will allow you to run your fans at a higher than factory rate. Yes it does wear the fans out quicker but they are cheaper than a processor, GPU, or power supply. We also carry a 120MM fan that works well in G4 Macs up to the QuickSilver. The Mirror Drive Door has a very special fan inside and we don't have a better than factory fan for it. Do keep under the front foot clean on all MDD G4s. I would also suggest you clean the understand of your iMac and the vent in the back. They build up dust. A little work now may save you a load of heartache later. Small desk fans are okay as well especially if you have your air up to save a bucks. Just don't set them too close to the display.
Desktop Messed Up After Restart?
One of our customers, Mike Z., has a MacBook Pro running Mac OS 10.6.8. Every time he would restart his machine, the desktop icons would lose their place on the desktop and reposition themselves over on the right hand side of the screen. Turning on Snap to Grid didn't help. Doing research, he found it was most likely the DS_Store file that was corrupted. DS_Store is a hidden file. Normally you'd have to use Terminal Mode to do anything to a hidden file. He found a program called DS_Store Remover 1.5 on http://mac.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/DS-Store-Remover.shtml that worked great. Freeware, works on Mac OS X 10.5 and later. A program that works on earlier OS versions and PPC is AppleOff 1.2.4 http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/18885/appleoff
I STILL GET THIS QUESTION A LOT: Do I need anti-virus software? If so...what's my best bet? 5/5/14
I still get people who want to argue about this. Look it up! Still no viruses for OSX. There were and still are viruses for the earlier classic OS versions and of those only 3 were significant. You can use the old free program Disinfectant 3.7.1 (Kitchen Sink CD for OS8/9) to catch most all of them. Trojans (also called Malware) are always around but you have to give it your name and password to install. Just don't. If you have any doubt about something go investigate at snopes.com or securemac.com I hear rumors of drive by problems (a drive by is something you catch just by looking at a web page) with flash but have yet to see it. Always it ends up that someone installs it. Do keep your flash updated (only from the Adobe website) it still has the biggest potential for trouble. Another web site to review is http://www.thesafemac.com/mmg/
No AntiVirus software can protect you from whatever someone is cooking up. Especially if you download and install it. It is always after the fact and usually there is a free fix. Trying to catch something up front is a waste of your system resources.
The best and smartest thing you can do is visit: http://securemac.com/ like once a week or at least a month. Don't buy anything that is advertised on its site it collects advertising money from Google. If you notice they always have free fixes up for people who stupidly installed something.
I do admit these guys are getting more diabolic in the way they convince folks to install there software. The last one I saw recently tried to convince you that you had a virus and that the free software you would download would fix it. They then try to convince you to pay them for the full version. If you do you just gave your credit card to criminals.
Lastly if you must install something the FREE ClamXav (SuperSink utilities) is still supported and updated regular. It will clean out the PC only viruses that are sometime attached to emails that do your system no harm. Some mixed PC-Mac shops insist that something be run since a Mac user can accidently pass on a PC virus to a PC user. Personally I don't worry about them since their machines are already infected. PC users still can get viruses just by visiting a web site.
There are several things in the Utility section of the SuperSink for the most common trojans (malware). If you worry you can install and run them. Anti Flashback is one. Boonana Remover is another, DNS changer, and lastly Mac Defender killer. Run these if you are worried but after proving to yourself you don't have any you can simply delete them. You can also download these from MacUpdate.com
Bob, why don't you sell or recommend the new SSD type drives
Well if you haven't noticed they are still too damned expensive for my pocket. If you do decide to buy one I would recommend OWC since they have units designed for the Mac and stand behind the product. We can special order one and install it on any system we build with your request.
That being said we have started installing Seagates NEW Hybrid Drives on a few of our frequent customers custom system builds.
Seagates NEW Hybrid Drives offer the best of both worlds
If you haven't see these they offer the best of both worlds. A good size SSD is built into a conventional size hard drive giving you SSD performance and regular drive capacities.
Seagate has 1 Terabyte, 2 Terabyte and 4 Terabyte capacities in a standard 3.5" full size capacity for both G5's and Mac Pro Towers or your older G4;s if you have a SATA card installed.
Seagate also offers 500 GB and 1 TB capacities in the 2.5" Laptop sizes. The larger one will not fit in some units since it is the taller size.
While we aren't stocking these yet Cheryn will be happy to quote you a price on one delivered or installed on your system. Do remember we can do our installs (extra fee) that will get you up and running immediately and we have the G5 mounting screws in stock.
WINTERTIME COLD - how not to damage a perfectly good piece of electronics
When pulling a system in from an unheated room (or UPS or FedEx Truck) let the machine come up to room temperature before firing it up for the first time. You see moisture condenses on the little electronic components. When the unit has warmed up to room temperature that moisture evaporates. You can damage or destroy a hard drive by being impatient. I too have to wait sometimes as our storage facility isn't as warm and toasty as our office is. Carefully unpack the unit (this lets it warm up faster when you get all of those insulating peanuts etc. off of it.) and let it sit for an hour or two before plugging it in. Opening the door on Tower units help speed up the process.
The older Beige systems we have been shipping lately are more frequently arriving damaged. It seems the combination of the cold and the old brittle plastics are a very bad combination. We are packing more carefully but do be careful with your older system when it arrives especially if it is still cold. Give it a chance to warm up to room temperature before messing with it. Oh yes and the old floppy drives don't like cold at all. You may try formatting a few disks before sticking in your good disks.
Using your iPad or iPhone with your older PPC Mac
While it is true you can no longer Sync your devices with the older iTunes you can still access the contents of your device. If you are on iOS5 on your older iPad or iPhone and want to use it with your old PPC Mac then don't update. If it is already too late or you recently received a iPhone or iPad with the later IOS versions you can still access the files on your device using your old Mac assuming you are running 10.5.8 Leopard.
DeTunes v1.0.8 is a free program that lets you. Click the links below to review and download the program.
DeTune 1.0.8 FREE universal Browse the contents of your iPod, iPhone or iPad from your Mac.
Requirements: OSX System 10.5 or later
Since you can't iTunes sync from your older system you can still use your old PPC Mac. This program that will let you view the contents of your iPad or iPhone. DeTune is a powerful, easy to use tool to browse the contents of your iPod from your Mac. What DeTune does: Supports all iPods, iPhones and iPads, Copy your music back to your Mac, Includes support for music, movies, tv shows, ringtones, books and more, Simple, iTunes-like interface, Copy files to and from your iPod's file system
CHUMPWARE ALERT - BACKDOOR FLASHBACK - THIS IS NOT A VIRUS, it is a TROJAN and YOU HAVE TO INSTALL IT (probably).
They say that 600,000 people have installed this trojan on their Macs. I somehow doubt that number. I have never seen it although I have tested a few dozen machines. I did have one of our club members say he had it. They say you can get this by viewing a web page (called a drive by) but I don't know that for a fact and suspect you still have to install something. If you recently installed a Flash upgrade from some link other than the one on the Adobe Web Site you may have installed a trojan called Backdoor.Flashback. Apple has released JAVA updates for Snow Leopard and Lion (there are several, make sure to install them all) to remove the problem. Run the software update from your Apple Menu pr Preferences or download it from http://support.apple.com/downloads/ . It won't run on the PPC Macs so if you are on an older Mac you probably needn't worry. Just don't install crap you don't know where it came from. If you do that makes you the chump with the infected machine.
Just don't install crap you don't know where it came from. If you do that makes you the chump with the infected machine. Do make sure you install the JAVA updates from the Apple Web Site or from the built in software update.
YourDailyMac.net has a set of instructions for testing and removing the trojan at: http://www.yourdailymac.net/2012/04/how-to-remove-the-backdoor-flashback-trojan-from-your-mac-os-x-system/. Do know though that it requires some use of terminal.
Norton has released a free removal tool. http://us.norton.com/mac-flashback/promo. This runs from terminal automatically on 10.5 and up.
Download and run this program if you are on a qualifying system
Anti Flashback Trojan 2.0.4 - Free - Checks for the Flashback Trojan.
REQUIREMENTS Mac OS X 10.5 or later INTEL
Anti Flashback Trojan a free application that checks for the Flashback Trojan. Flashback is a variant of the Tsunami Trojan for Mac OS X, and has so far infected over 600, 000 of them. Now you can check whether your Mac is infected with the Flashback-Trojan without resorting to manual removal in Terminal. For more information what Flashback does, including manual removal instructions, see the F-Secure website. Incidentally, all my apps are free, so any donation would be very much appreciated.
Oh yes. Know now that any antivirus software you are running didn't catch this initially. You are the one who installed this Trojan. Do keep your Flash updated but only do it from the real Adobe.com website. http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html Also do understand the latest flash versions 11.2.x are for INTEL Macs only. The lastest PPC version Flash Player 10.1.102.64 is on our SuperSink DVD available from our online store or free to download from http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html
These updates and Trojan remover tools are on the 2nd Quarter Super Sink Set.
SOMETHING NOT WORKING? Resurrection may be possible
Many of you may already know this but if you don't you will find it useful. Sometimes electronic items appear dead. The new LCD monitors are a good example. Sometimes the power goes off and then when it comes back up the monitor no longer works. Try unplugging it from the source and then hold down the power button for a slow count of 10. Then plug it back in and it works again! This works on just about anything electronic you can think of. If it still doesn't work unplug it and hold in the power button again and leave it sit overnight. Try it again. If it still doesn't work it may indeed be dead but you will be amazed at how many computers, displays, printers, fax machines, etc. that we get that are dead that come back to life for us.
REPAIR PERMISSIONS WARNINGS - warning suid file has been modified
I get questions regarding these types of messages. They are true but not a problem. When you get a message like this during the repair permissions process, the smart thing to do is to type that message into Google. Generally what you will find that there is nothing to be concerned about. Apple even discusses this on there page at: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448. This page covers OSX Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permission messages you can safely ignore. These messages show up more frequently in OSX 10.5 or 10.6.
If you install and run Maintenance weekly like we recommend it will automatically run repair permissions assuming you have the box checked and you should and you can avoid seeing these messages. http://www.titanium.free.fr/index.php is the link to the main website. Go to the Downloads area and choose Maintenance for your version of the Mac OS.
What really is important about running maintenance weekly is that the program checks your hard drives smart status and verifies the directory. This will let you know early if your drive is having a problem so you can get it fixed before it fails. JUST DO IT!
This morning Cheryn was looking to restock our quickly dwindling supply of hard drives. Not only could she not find our favorite brands and sizes the prices on what was available had escalated substanially. I did a google search "what happened to caused hard drive prices to escalate" and quickly found out. http://www.techspot.com/news/46128-flooding-causes-spike-in-hdd-prices-asus-might-run-out-this-month.html is the article that showed the massive flooding in Thailand closing both the Seagate and Western Digital plants. We will be scrambling to find hard drives and our prices will reflect the increases we are having to pay. Wish I would have known this last week.
As we were eating our usual Chinese dinner and our favorite restaurant Cheryn's cell phone rang. Our daughter told her that Jobs had died. I think I will always remember where I was when I heard it. I feel like we should all be wearing black arm bands today. If we had an Operator Headgap business flag it would be at half mast.
I can't say I always agree with what Apple does but their tenacity to keep moving things up has given us a decent income. You see each time they update their hardware and software they leave behind the old software and hardware. Many people like the software they are using and have an investment both in time and money. The new Lion OS that just came out killed all the PowerPC programs. Many thousands of folks who use Quicken, QuickBooks, Corel products, and older versions of Adobe products etc. cannot use a new Mac. Good for us. Thanks Steve for leaving us alone to sell your old computers and old software. Also thanks for building long lasting and well built products. We enjoy giving them second or third lives. We will miss your "Oh Yes and One More Thing" that you always added to your product introductions. You indeed changed the world as I type this listening to my iTunes music library.
We have demand for Mac IISI, Mac IICI, Centris or Quadra 650, Quadra 800, PowerPC 7100/80. We will send you a check for your working and non working units. We will pay a bonus for extra clean, working systems. Call or use the online form for price. Let us know the unit specs and if it in working condition or not. Units should be complete. Missing parts will discount the price we pay. WE ARE ALSO BUYING Beige G3 Desktop Systems in good condition. QuickSilver and G4 Systems. Send us your list of old Mac products and we will let you know what we are buying. The information we need is mainly the Mac Model and Processor Speed, and if it is working or not. Other details are also welcome.
HITACHI/LG SUPERDRIVE - 22X DVD Burn Speeds! NOW SHIPPING!
Most of you know that I have long preferred the Pioneer Model SuperDrives. Well they are no longer being made much like many of the IDE drive mechanisms. We found a reasonable and cheaper substitute in the Hitachi/LG SuperDrive mechanisms and bought a large quantity. I tested them in all versions of the OS and in G4, G5 and Mac Pro Towers. They work perfectly and are even a bit faster in the CD burning department. They do not however work well with the Beige G3 models. You do need to run Patchburn with 10.2, 10.3 and while you don't have to it doesn't hurt to run Patchburn on 10.4 Tiger. 10.5 and above do not require the patches and read these mechanisms straight up. The drive is Apple bootable meaning you can boot from a startup CD or DVD.
The SuperDrive will read DVD-RAM disks that are out of the cartridge but will not write to them.
We also carry a reasonably priced external Firewire version with this drive in it. See the external drive section of the online store.
When a hard drive is quit improperly the next time you turn it on it goes through a validation process. When drives were 40 or 80 megabytes this was not a problem since it happened so quickly. Nowadays with drives that are in many Gigabytes or even Terabytes that process takes longer. Directories can have millions of files. An OS backup for example has between 300,000 and 500,000 files. If you turn it off or plug and unplug it while it is live it starts the validation process all over again.
Leave the drive alone until it finishes. It usually will mount right up if your connection is good.
The other problems is cheap cables. If you don't get a consistent connection spring for a better quality cable. The ones that came with the drive are usually crap.
Before you turn off or unplug a hard drive drag it to the trash and wait a few minutes so it can shut down properly.
If you don't the next time you start it up you will have to wait until it runs its validation processor before it will mount again.
If you end up having to hard shut down your computer or force quit finder do let the drive work a while before shutting down. It doesn't hurt to run the disk utility and repair the drive if you have had to force quit recently.
You probably know what happends if you pull a thumb drive out without dragging it to the trash. Sometimes you lose the entire contents. Even after you dump it to the trash in preparation to remove it you have to wait a bit for it to finish up. Now imagine how much longer it takes your Terabyte external.
REPAIR PERMISSIONS WARNINGS - warning suid file has been modified
I get questions regarding these types of messages. They are true but not a problem. When you get a message like this during the repair permissions process, the smart thing to do is to type that message into Google. Generally what you will find that there is nothing to be concerned about. Apple even discusses this on there page at: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448. This page covers OSX Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permission messages you can safely ignore. These messages show up more frequently in OSX 10.5 or 10.6.
Help Me! I can't find an OS9 capable printer - PrintToPDF is your solution
If you are running a machine that boots into OSX and you have a compatible OSX printer you can use the program called PrintToPDF. It shows up in chooser under 9 or classic and allows you to send your print output to a PDF file. OSX will load these files in Preview and allow you to print them from your OSX printer. PrintToPDF version 2.4.5 appears in the Printer Util folder on our OS9 Kitchen Sink CD or you can dowload it from the author at: http://www.jwwalker.com/pages/pdf.html
Mac OS X 10.4: "Mail cannot update your mailboxes because your home directory is full" alert
While opening Mail, you may see this alert message even if your Home is not full.
Solution: quit mail, go to your user home folder and open library and then mail and pull out the "Envelope Index". When you re-open mail it will alert you that your mail messages need to be reimported. Once it finishes and your mail is working again you can discard the old index.
My favorite little utility maintenance has an option to rebuild your mailbox. If you get lots of mail you may want to run it periodically to keep this problem from occuring.
Ever wonder why it takes 10 minutes for your system to boot and your screen refreshes have slowed down to a crawl?
I am working on a system now that has over 16GB of items on the desktop. Of course the system no longer boots. I of course added a COD (Crap on Desktop) Folder to the main drive and put all the things in it and made an alias of the COD folder and added it back to the desktop.
All Mac users, even myself will drag a few files that we are working on to the desktop. The trick though is NEVER DRAG FOLDERS and put the files away after you finish the project. Learn to use ALIASES. Select the item you want out and use the make alias command from the file menu. You can then safely drag the file or folder ALIAS to your desktop leaving the real file or folder where it belongs. You can simply discard the aliased once you complete your project and the files will be safely store away on the hard drive.
NEVER pull an Application from its folder. That changes the paths and things like dictionaries, plugins etc stop working. Use an alias instead. Still not clear on using aliases. Type alias in the Mac Help menu and read on. It will teach you.
UPDATE - Chumpware? Mac Defender Trojan
The latest group of trojans for the Mac is called Defender (or Mac Security or Mac Protector, and more recently Mac Shield). It is another that you have to install on your system to get. You visit a web site that says it has detected a virus and offers to allow you to download a free antivirus program. You then install the trojan disguised as an antivirus program on your system giving it the system password. It then says it has detected viruses and takes you to a web site where you give them YOUR CREDIT CARD to purchase the software. You then install the software which supposedly fixes the viruses. YOU JUST GAVE CRIMINALS access to your credit card and computer. There is a YouTube video showing what it looks like if you are curious. Do remember there are variations.
Apple now has a support page up http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4650. If you use Safari you should select preferences under the Safari Menu and under General uncheck Open "safe" files after downloading. This won't stop you from downloading the trojan but it will prompt you to load that program which obviously you should not install.
There are free tools (MacDefenderKiller1.1) to remove the trojan you yourself installed, but all I can say is you are a chump if you fell for this. There are still no viruses for the modern Mac. Visit sites like securemac.com if you ever worry about such things and at least keep yourself a bit educated. A little knowledge keeps you from being a chump.
I tried the free tool after downloading a later version. We had a guy bring his system by. He had Mac Shield installed on his system. It didn't see it. He got an email with a link from what he thought was Apple. He installed the attachment and what saved him was that he was cheap and he didn't want to spend the money buy the program. Really annoying little program that puts itself in your startup items and runs noisily. The other thing that really bothered him though was that it kept typing in the url to a gay porn site into Safari.
I went to the Apple support page and followed the instructions and was able to remove this new variant "Mac Shield".
I don't run any Anti Virus software on my Mac. Even if you did it will not likely protect you from you. There are still NO VIRUSES for OSX. There is CHUMPWARE like this trojan and you have to install it for it to do anything. BE SMART!
Administration Account Hosed?
Once in a blue moon my personal system after a hard lockup would lose the admin account. I would run AppleJack and or repair from the disk utility and everything would check out fine, but it still wouldn't boot up. I would then format the partition and reinstall from my backup. Well this takes time and isn't fun. I figured there ought to be an easier way to recover but after numerous searches I never could find a solution. Well a friend (Brian Akey) was by after we had a middle of the night power outage and my system was again hosed. He kept running at the problem until he found a solution that didn't require a new install. Here it is. You do have to start in Single User Mode (Apple S) and run this from there.
First open the correct directory and fire it up
/sbin/mount -uw /
rm -Rf /var/db/netinfo
rm -Rf /var/db/dslocal
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
If all goes well you will see the startup screens that let you go back and add in your admin account. You need to enter the information as you did the first time. Once I set up my admin account the system booted and I had my complete original access restoring all my prefs, apps and files. I did have to go back into Account s and set up my other account since the above commands kill all the users allowing them to be reinstalled but my Bob account is back again with all my stuff as well. Certainly less time than having to reclone my system back.
LAPTOP RESET - did yours just die and now won't restart?
More than a few times I have had people bring their iBook, PowerBook, or MacBook over for repair. They started right up to their amazement. What happens is the laptop sort of loses its mind (sometimes after going to sleep, but not always). It won't start up and doesn't respond to repeated attempts to push the start button. What you need to do is an SMC reset. If you had easy access to the little internal button you would simply press it. On laptops that isn't so easy. What you can do though if very simple and works 95% of the time. Unplug the laptop, remove the battery, push the powerbutton for slow count of 5. Return the battery and plug in back into power. It magically will start again. I generally follow up by shutting down the computer from the menu and then I zap the PRAM several times before continuing to use the system. The reason it worked when it got to us though is if you simply let it sit for a while unplugged it will usually start working again on its own. But now that you know this you wpn't have to wait.
My least favorite drive company is buying my next favorite drive brand. I personally still prefer Seagates when I can get them but substitute Hitachi's and consider them about the same. Read about the purchase at Bloomberg. The thing these days is nobody is making all the sizes of IDE drives we use on many of the older Macs we build and sell. We more recently have been having trouble finding Pioneer IDE SuperDrives.
We are already stocking up on power supplies, ethernet cards and modems! Avoid having to buy them by reading a bit more. I wan't to personally thank the state of Florida for all the business.
If you don't have your system on a new surge suppressor you are asking for it. We sell low cost and better quality surge supressors that help protect your system. If you have a modem you should buy a surge suppressor that allows you to run your phone line through it since these are probably the most sensitive item on your system. Even with a high quality suppressor unplug your equipment (including the modem from the phone line) during strong thunderstorms. No suppressor will protect you if the strike is strong enough. Take no chances. Our warranty doesn't cover damages caused from lightning or power surges. If you have frequent black outs and brownouts do be aware that the little MOV gizmo's in the surge protection units wear out. You should replace them periodically. How often I can't say but I replace mine about every 2 years in our area which has a pretty stable grid and infrequent storms. The manufacturer of your surge protector may have a recommendation.
REMEMBER that the little MOV capacitors inside these units wear out and give you no warning when they are about to go. Buy a new one each time you replace your equipment.
BATTERIES ARE BETTER - If you are bucks up or have very expensive equipment add a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) and this is really what you should do. This not only gives you spike protection it keeps your system from going down due to low power brownouts. It also gives you time to shut down if you should have a power failure. Because these weigh a lot you are going to get your best price at the local discount stores most often. Check out Costco our Sam's Club if you are a member. Watch the sale papers for the discount stores. They are getting really affordable. We don't stock these because they are heavy and best bought using truck shipping. We have larger ones on our servers and they last about an hour keeping us online during short blackouts.
I move my older surge protection to cheaper and cheaper equipment. It may be too old to risk protecting my G5, but it may offer my clock radio some protection. If you have ever suffered some hits you know what I mean. The last storm that did damage took out my garage door opener. I now have a new one and a new surge supressor on it. It probably saved me a few hundred dollars to put a low buck single surge suppressor on it to start with.
If your system works fine otherwise but the Ethernet port is fried then simply buy a 10/100 Ethernet card or Gigabit Ethernet Card. You can get away with the cheaper Realtek card but have to install drivers. The Apple card requires no drivers in 9 or X and is easier to install but it does cost a little more. I personally like and use the Gigabit Ethernet Cards we sell on all older systems on our network. They definitely provide a speed advantage over 10 base T in the old Beige boxes and even over the 10/100 in the Blue and White and early G4's, they do require driver installation but we supply them with your unit purchase. Apple's built in Gigabit ethernet however is best if yours works (later G4 and G5 systems and up). Add a network surge protector.
Tripp Lite DNET1 is a low cost ($20) Ethernet Surge Protector it is limited to 10/100 networks. If you need Gigabit 1000base-T protection APC makes one stock number pnet1gb You can find it online, we don't stock them. If you live in an area with frequent thunder storms or frequently lose power you should really invest in one. Make sure you connect the little pigtail to a good ground. Some of the new UPS units include Ethernet protection and you should use it if you have one.
Hopefully not. First try my Reset listed below on this link Reset. If indeed your unit won't start and you don't get any light from the start button, we do stock power supplies in the online store and include pictured instructions for your model when requested.
We get a fair amount of request about running the Adobe CS Suites on older equipment. Listed below are the last 3 versions. Perhaps this will help you determine which system you need. Older versions of CS are many times available used from RetroSoftware.com If you don't need the latest and greatest or can't afford it this perhaps will help you determine what software you need to run on your system.
NEW ADOBE CS5 REQUIREMENTS - Intel ONLY
- Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support
- Mac OS X v10.5.7 or v10.6.3; Mac OS X v10.6.3 required for GPU-accelerated performance
- 2GB of RAM (4GB or more recommended)
- 10GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash-based storage devices)
- 7200 RPM hard drive for editing compressed video formats; RAID 0 for uncompressed
- 1280x900 display with OpenGL 2.0Äìcompatible graphics card
- Adobe-certified GPU card for GPU-accelerated performance
- Core AudioÄìcompatible sound card
- DVD-ROM drive compatible with dual-layer DVDs (SuperDrive for burning DVDs; external Blu-ray burner for creating Blu-ray Disc media)
- QuickTime 7.6.2 software required for QuickTime features
- Broadband Internet connection required for online services*
Yes you can use your PowerPC G5 with some limitations. The minimum processor required to effectively run Adobe CS4 for Mac differs according to the version of CS4 that is being installed. Basic versions such as CS4 Design Standard can use either a PowerPC G5 processor or any of the Intel multicore processors. More advanced versions, including the CS4 Master Suite, are unable to use the PowerPC G5 and require an Intel multicore processor. RAM 1 GB, 2 GB or more for the Master collection. Requires 10.4.11 or later. A graphics card that is compatible with Shader Model 3.0 is required for all versions of Adobe CS4 for Mac. Additionally, support for OpenGL 2.0 is required in Design Standard, Design Premium, Web Standard and Web Premium. As with all CS versions you need lots of RAM and a DVD player to install.
PowerMac G4 and G5 friendly. G4 users may need to add a better video card for some features. Adobe has raised the requirements to run CS3 applications. The biggest change that effects most people is the 64 MB VRAM. We now stock 3 different Video Cards for your G4 system so that you can meet or exceed the requirements. Our new best selling 128 MB card features the NVIDIA 5200 Graphics Engine and supports CORE imaging and both DVI and VGA out. At a delivered price of less than $100 it makes it quite the buy. Of course your system will probably exceed the processor and memory requirements but from practical experience I can tell you that you will also want as much ram and you can afford and as fast a processor as you can get. These are all easy upgrades for you to perform. We generally send pictured instructions but you can always call our tech support line and we will walk you through any problems that may arise. As with all later CS versions you need lots of RAM and a DVD player to install.
If you are planning to upgrade any software on your Mac to a later version I recommend you do a Google search to find out the new versions system requirements. If your system doesn't meet these then upgrading or replacing your machine should come first. Personally I run versions much older than any of the CS versions and am perfectly happy with what it does and how it works. It is amazing how fast older versions run on G5's and I have yet to see any new features that I needed.
Microsoft Revises Computer Quarantine Proposal
Don't that beat all? The company largely responsible for the infected machines out there recommends that infected machines be quarantined and not allowed on the net. Of course they have something to sell you called Windows CardSpace identity system. I have something that costs less. Use a Mac.
I knew it was coming. It just caught us by surprise. We were down to our last few Seagate 80GB IDE Hard Drives. Cheryn went to order and was unable to find any from our usual sources. We did a thorough search and they are not be found. We will be selling refurbished drives unless we are able to locate some new units. If you are able you probably need to consider purchasing a SATA PCI card and new SATA drive. While this is more expensive you can get new larger capacity and much faster drive mechanisms giving you increased performance. See the IntDrivesSATA section of our online store for solutions. These also allow you to use larger capacity drives in older equipment as well.
WINTERTIME COLD - how not to damage a perfectly good piece of electronics
When pulling a system in from an unheated room (or UPS or FedEx Truck) let the machine come up to room temperature before firing it up for the first time. You see moisture condenses on the little electronic components. When the unit has warmed up to room temperature that moisture evaporates. You can damage or destroy a hard drive by being impatient. I too have to wait sometimes as our storage facility isn't as warm and toasty as our office is. Carefully unpack the unit (this lets it warm up faster when you get all of those insulating peanuts etc. off of it.) and let it sit for an hour or two before plugging it in. Opening the door on Tower units help speed up the process.
The older Beige systems we have been shipping lately are more frequently arriving damaged. It seems the combination of the cold and the old brittle plastics are a very bad combination. We are packing more carefully but do be careful with your older system when it arrives especially if it is still cold. Give it a chance to warm up to room temperature before messing with it. Oh yes and the old floppy drives don't like cold at all. You may try formatting a few disks before sticking in your good disks.
The fact is most people don't use the applications they have to anywhere close to its full capabilities. I had someone call recently that had a G5 Tower. Someone had told them they need to be running Aperature for there photos. Well that would be an expensive upgrade for them since the system requirements for Aperature are high as would any Pro Level Application is. They would need to replace their equipment for the latest INTEL processored Macs and fatten them up a bit with more RAM. What someone should ask themselves when making a decision like this is there a more affordable less sophisticated program that will do what I need. iPhoto fills the needs of most people and if you aren't using Pro Level Camera equipment then you would first give iPhoto a try. It is low cost (or free as it comes installed on many systems). Aperature does indeed handle RAW photo's, and is better at organizing and editing large quantities of high quality images. Lastly what you learn using iPhoto translates easily to Aperature if indeed sometime in the future decide you do need Aperature.
Other examples of this are Photoshop. If you don't know what CMYK is then try the much less expensive Photoshop Elements. Again the skills you learn translate directly to the more expensive and sophisticated full version of Photoshop. There are even free or low cost programs that do the same things like Graphic Convertor , Acorn, Pixelmator, etc. that do the same basic things you would do with Photoshop. Most have free trials so you can see if they meet your needs before spending any cash, and most all have lower system requirements allowing you to use your older equipment.
If you want to create music give Garage Band a try before you run out and plop down big bucks for Pro Tools.
The list goes on, but look at what you have and learn to use those tools before deciding you need the latest and greatest piece of software. The lower cost versions usually are easier to learn and have lower system requirements which translates to being able to work faster with your existing equipment.
The trojan is spreading through social networking sites, including Facebook, disguised as a video. The trojan is currently appearing as a link in messages on social networking sites with the subject: Is this you in this video? When a user clicks the infected link, the trojan initially runs as a Java applet, which downloads other files to the computer, including an installer, which launches automatically. When run, (it asks for your password) the installer modifies system files to bypass the need for passwords, allowing outside access to all files on the system. Additionally, the trojan sets itself to run invisibly in the background at startup, and periodically checks in with command and control servers to report information on the infected system. While running, the trojan horse hijacks user accounts to spread itself further via spam messages. Users have reported the trojan is spreading through e-mail as well as social media sites. There is a free removal tool from securemac.com http://www.securemac.com/boonana/ It requires OSX 10.5 or later
Never give a message with a video your password to install anything. Don't be a chump.
Yes you can buy it now for $279.99 plus shipping from Microsoft or Apple online. Once installed it has to contact Microsoft over the Internet or you have to phone for registration before it will work. You can only use it on one machine. For many people who live breath and eat with Microsoft Office it may be a must have upgrade. Personally though I would rather use something that only asks for a donation and doesn't require any registration and I can use it on any machine I want.
Neo Office (OSX) really does work well and if you are a casual Microsoft Office user this should work just fine for you.
Lately my wife and I along with quite a few other folks out there that actually use the software suggest Neo Office. It is donationware and is a sizable download. It works great and the price is right. I have started installing this on all Tiger and above equipped systems. It really does work well and if you are a casual Microsoft Office user this should work just fine for you. It opens and saves Word, Excel, Powerpoint files etc. It allows you to save it in the newer format or even older Office formats. You do have to do a save as and select the filetype you want if you are sharing the files with others but I don't mind doing that when I save $280 bucks. I don't like software that contacts the manufacturer via the Internet. If you don't have the ability to download NeoOffice we do make up a CD. See it in the software section of the online store. We charge $5 to cover the disk manufacture and shipping and handling.
Since there are 3 or more new Windows PC viruses released everyday, and you can pick up a virus on your Windows PC simply by viewing one of over 100,000 infected web pages yes you do need to clean up your PC. Better yet get a Mac, still no viruses. For the life of me I don't understand why people use WIndows PC's. I guess they don't mind criminals having their credit card numbers and bank information, or someone using their PC to send out spam and more viruses through your contact and address book. That being said, I get folks asking for advice. Since I don't use a PC and gut any we do get I really may not be the one to ask. Here is my two cents though after discussing this with the smartest people I know. There are free Microsoft versions of antivirus software Security Essentials, and antispyware software Windows Defender. NEVER DO A GOOGLE or anyother type of search to find these. There are twits out there that mimic the pages and give you malware infested versions. Here are the direct links directly to the Microsoft site. Make sure you stay there by checking the URL.
Install these programs and keep them updated but know now you are likely still infected since they haven't updated to handle what came out today. That goes for you Mac users who are running Windows on your Mac.
It is disturbing to me when I see lots of dough spent on TV and Web Advertising by obvious crooks. You have seen these. Joe Smo got a new Mustang for $11 or somesuch. These sites charge for each bid you make. With thousands of bids per item you can quickly run up quite a bill for nothing. You really don't know if Joe got the Mustang or not but you will get the bill for all the bids you made not to get anything. I simply can't understand how gullible people are but they must be since the companies manage to keep paying for expensive advertising. I understand what pumpkin eaters are. They are people who are so gullible they will swallow anything.
I think Speakeasy.net has one of the best and simplest testers going and it allows you to check our upload and download times to different parts of the country. http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/.
We have demand for Mac IISI, Mac IICI, Centris or Quadra 650, Quadra 800, PowerPC 7100/80 or even your old G4. We will send you a check for your working and non working units. We will pay a bonus for extra clean, working systems. Call or use the online form for price. Let us know the unit specs and if it in working condition or not. Units should be complete. Missing parts will discount the price we pay.
We sometimes have folks call who have bought a wireless card or wireless USB device and need help setting it up. If you are on an unprotected network we can walk you through the setup easily. We can also walk you through installing the software and getting the device recognized but we cannot help with your encrypted network anymore than we can guess your login password. If your router is set up with encryption then you will need to password or key. We can't guess this. You will need to talk to whoever set up your router and hopefully they do know your networks passwords.
Most routers allow you to log into them from a computer that is wired into the network. Again though if whoever set it up did so properly it is password protected. If it is not you can access it usually from an IP address like 192.168.1.1 with no user and admin as a password (your router manual should contain info on setting it up). God forbid the person who set yours up, left it as that since any 12 year old can change your settings and take over your network. You should always put in a user name and password.
You can reset most routers by holding down the reset button for 30 seconds or so (see your routers manual or look online). Doing so puts you back to defaults. You will need to set it back up again so that it connects to your ISP. You may also have to set your other systems on the network back up again. While this isn't hard, you still have to know how to do it or find someone that does. If you do have to go through setting it up again, do make sure you write down the information you need and your passwords and key information.
TIP: I usually use the screen capture command and make images of all of my routers settings. I store those images in my personal folder and even keep a copy on a thumb drive. That way I can simply pull up those images and know what to enter on each screen of the router setup for my network. Lightning does indeed strike twice in the same place and you may have to replace your router.
AppleJack FOR SNOW LEOPARD! VERSION 1.6 NOW AVAILABLE! AppleJack PREINSTALLED? IF YOU DON'T HAVE AppleJack INSTALLED FOR OSX YOU SHOULD!
There is now a version of AppleJack for SNOW LEOPARD. Version 1.6 is now on the new version of the LATEST OSX Kitchen Sink. We preinstall AppleJack on all OSX systems. This little utility (Kitchen Sink OSX Diagnostics Folder or downloadable from http://AppleJack.sourceforge.net/) allows you to repair your disk, repair permissions, validate the system's preference files, and get rid of possibly corrupted cache files. In most cases, these operations can help get your machine back on track. The important thing is that you don't need another startup disk with you. All you need to do is restart in Single User Mode (SUM), by holding down the command and s keys at startup, and then typing AppleJack, or AppleJack auto (which will run through all the tasks automatically), or AppleJack auto restart (which will also restart the computer automatically at the end of the process). Version 1.6 should be installed on all Tiger and above systems (10.4, 10.5. and 10.6). The older version 1.4.3 also on the SuperSink is still available for Jaguar and Panther (10.2-10.3)
The only gotcha I have found so far is on Beige G3 systems. If you had to borrow someone's monitor to install X, then your other adapted monitor probably will show you a black screen at startup. Since you simply need to type AppleJack auto restart, I do just that blindly and then leave the system alone. It runs through the cycles and then restarts usually getting you back up and running. There are some other warnings in the documentation so read through them thoroughly before using on your system. This is an emergency repair program and I really would not run it all the time, but it has saved me more than a few times from the hours of reinstallation.
If you don't have your system on a surge suppressor you are asking for it. We sell low cost and better quality surge supressors that help protect your system. If you have a modem you should buy a surge suppressor that allows you to run your phone line through it since these are probably the most sensitive item on your system. Even with a high quality suppressor unplug your equipment (including the modem from the phone line) during strong thunderstorms. No suppressor will protect you if the strike is strong enough. Take no chances. Our warranty doesn't cover damages caused from lightning or power surges. If you have frequent black outs and brownouts do be aware that the little MOV gizmo's in the surge protection units wear out. You should replace them periodically. How often I can't say but I replace mine about every 2 years in our area which has a pretty stable grid and infrequent storms. The manufacturer of your surge protector may have a recommendation.
Remember though that the little MOV capacitors inside these units wear out and give you no warning when they are about to go. Buy a new one each time you replace your equipment.
If you are bucks up or have very expensive equipment add a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) and this is really what you should do. This not only gives you spike protection it keeps your system from going down due to low power brownouts. It also gives you time to shut down if you should have a power failure. Because these weigh a lot you are going to get your best price at the local discount stores most often. Check out Costco our Sam's Club if you are a member. Watch the sale papers for the discount stores. They are getting really affordable. We don't stock these because they are heavy and best bought using truck shipping. We have larger ones on our servers and they last about an hour keeping us online during short blackouts.
I move my older surge protection to cheaper and cheaper equipment. It may be too old to risk protecting my G5, but it may offer my clock radio some protection. If you have ever suffered some hits you know what I mean. The last storm that did damage took out my garage door opener. I know have a new one and a new surge supressor on it. It probably saved me a few hundred dollars to put a low buck single surge suppressor on it to start with.
If your system works fine otherwise but the Ethernet port is fried then simply buy a 10/100 Ethernet card or Gigabit Ethernet Card. You can get away with the cheaper Realtek card but have to install drivers. The Apple card requires no drivers in 9 or X and is easier to install but it does cost a little more. I personally like and use the Gigabit Ethernet Cards we sell on all older systems on our network. They definitely provide a speed advantage over 10 base T in the old Beige boxes and even over the 10/100 in the Blue and White and early G4's. Apple's built in ethernet however is best if yours works. Add a network surge protector. I wan't to personally thank the state of Florida for all the business.
Tripp Lite DNET1 is a low cost ($20) Ethernet Surge Protector. You can find it online, we don't stock them. If you live in an area with frequent thunder storms or frequently lose power you should really invest in one. Make sure you connect the little pigtail to a good ground. Some of the new UPS units include Ethernet protection and you should use it if you have one.
Hopefully not. First try my Reset listed below on this link Reset. If indeed your unit won't start and you don't get any light from the start button, we do stock power supplies in the online store.
When I hooked up my new Flat Panel TV, Satellite Box, and DVD Player I realized I was short a cable. I went down to the local discounter and they wanted $39 for a 4 foot cable. Granted it was in one of those security plastic carton (you know the ones you have to open with a chainsaw) with a big label telling all the features.
I buy the same cable in an easy to open plastic bag with no label. It has the same gold plated connectors, same quality wiring etc. We sell them for $7.99 and include shipping. Buy ours and take back the overpriced cables. See the Miscellanous Cable section of the online store.
Gold Plated
6' HDMI Cable - $7.99 including shipping!
The local discounter wanted $39 per cable. I like to have crapped my pants when I needed a couple of HDMI cables to connect up our new HDTV and DVD Player. We now sell the same high quality cables for $7.99 including shipping. I use these same cables to connect high definition components with this 6-foot Dynex HDMI (M) to HDMI (M) Video/Audio Cable! This male to male cable is designed for use with high-def devices with HDMI connectors including HDTVs, Blu-ray DVD players, cable or satellite boxes, A/V receivers, game consoles, even some of the new LCD monitors, and more. Plus, it features gold-plated connectors for maximum signal transfer! Our $7.99 price includes domestic shipping
DIRECTV - you will never go back to cable once you have this!
I don't usually talk about personal things of a non Mac issue. After using Comcast for cable for several years (no digital boxes) but a couple of digital sets. I finally got fed up when they went up $5 and the last channel scan I did I had 3 less channels that I did not long before. We only got a few high def channels so I found myself switching to antenna to pick up the local channels in high def for our favorite shows and then having to switch back shortly after. I had to rescan the channels each time.
We looked at AT&T's Uverse offering since we can get it in our area and having a wire connected appeals to me. We went to the AT&T Store to give the system a look and to compare. The demo system they had set up had all the channels I wanted to view locked out. I guess they really aren't serious about their customers yet. I suggested to the sales lady that she mention to her boss they should at least have TBS, TNT etc. so their customers could compare not that it will do much good.
After looking up the DISH network in the yellow pages and finding no place I could view their systems and hardly any listings at all I decided not to look any further although their TV ads are compelling.
I went to Best Buy to look at Direct TV. They had the boxes for sale but no demo set up. The salesman apologized but then asked if he had mentioned that all of their sets were on Direct TV for display. He also said he had Direct TV at home and loved it. He said the only problem he ever had was under severe weather conditions the signal sometimes dropped but the system was trouble free. Comcast doesn't do much better in bad weather.
We ordered and had installed a DVR system and a regular system. The installer was late but called to let us know he was behind schedule. He installed the antenna on a pole rather than our roof explained that he wanted a clear show (no trees) to the satellite. He stayed past 6 to insure we were installed properly and instructed on using the system. I have been very pleased with the quality of the connection and selection of channels. The DVR is wonderful and we can even connect a 2 Terabyte ESATA drive if we decide we need more space in the future. We recently added a wireless connection that allows me to download the Video on Demand for later playback. I will never go back to cable.
Once you have a DVR system you won't often watch live TV. I find there are shows that I used to watch although I really didn't care for them. Well no longer. I can record all my favorite programs automatically and watch them on my schedule. More importantly that little 30 second jump button allows me to easily skip the commercials. Amazing how you can watch your hour long program in about 45 minutes. I can watch four of my favorite 1 hour programs in 3 hours with the commercial skip.
Perhaps the only problem is for folks who live with total tree coverage. If you live in an area with dense full size trees you may have to look for other solutions but perhaps you should consider chopping down a tree or two. I think it is worth it.
One thing I did and I am not sure if it really helps or not. I cleaned the dish with that glass treatment you use on windshields. It causes the rain drops to sheet off rather than bead up and sit there. I do think keeping it clean probably helps and it doesn't take much time.
We found several sources of G5 AIRCOOLED Towers. After some bad experiences with the watercooled units we have avoided them. We now have from the early 1.8 Ghz DUAL G5's up to the 2.7 Ghz Dual Towers at MUCH LOWER PRICES! We are putting a factory recertified 750 GB Hard Drive in each of these units (these have the large 32MB Caches for top performance). We are also installing the latest Dual Layer DVD Burning SuperDrive. We are upgrading the RAM from the stock and have matching 1GB 3200 DDR RAM if you choose to optionally install more RAM. Of course we run full diagnostics and resynch the fans on all dual units. We put in a fresh clock battery and clean the cases up. Unfortunately these Aluminum Cases don't respond as well to rubbing and buffing as the plastic units so the scuff and scratches that all used units get, and are a bit harder to clean up. We wax and polish them so they look as close to new as we can make them.
Since they are PowerPC processors they can still run Tiger 10.4.11 and classic mode and that is normally how we set them up. They can run the earlier Panther 10.3.9 with classic or the later Leopard 10.5.8 if you don't need classic.
I recently replaced my trusty QuickSilver G4 with a single processored G5 with 4 GB of RAM. I rarely need to boot 9 and we have other systems around so that I can if I need to. Since I still run many apps from classic mode though I do have Tiger installed but also set up a partition for Leopard so I can boot into it if I find an application that requires it I can't live without. Even though I have a 1.8 Ghz processor in the G4 the 1.6 single in the G5 is many times faster since the system bus, graphics and hard drive buses are so much faster. These units make a great upgrade for those of you who are still on G3 and G4 systems if you are not ready to replace all of your software. Unfortunately the new systems from Apple really require you to do that with the Intel based Snow Leopard that comes on the units.
Some of you unfortunately are stuck using modems. Apple discontinued their modems a while back so you may have trouble finding a decent modem. Zoom makes a 56K USB Modem Model 3095, that will work with your system. It works with older classic OSes from 9.2 (and probably 8.6 if you manually install the CCL) up to 10.6 although you will have to likely manually install some components. They use a CCL file that resides in the System Folder. They are available at the discount stores so we don't carry them. They have install instructions on their web site for 10.5 and 10.6. This may be the solution you have been searching for.
We did end up having to pull new CAT 5E cable for upstairs. It seems the exterior cable we used over 10 years ago was CAT 3. Now our upstairs network leg is also Gigabit speed.
While my servers have been connected via a LinkSys Gigabit Switch and CAT5E cables to our T1 since we installed it (October 2006 thanks to WorldSpice), our regular internal network has been routed through an old LinkSys 10/100 router and switches. We have now replaced that gear with all new latest LinkSys Router (E3000 Dual Band Wireless N Gigabit Router) and Switches (EG008W, and EG005W). We also installed a LinkSys WET610N that will enable my old Beige G3DT to connect at Wireless N Speeds (worked perfectly). We don't stock any of these since every discounter (like Best Buy or New Egg) in the world already carries them.
One of my goals for installing this equipment was to connect our DirectTV DVR to our network wirelessly. This will enable me to download the Free Video On Demand programs and movies. I downloaded a few free movies and a few episodes of programs I like. It works just fine. While fast the High Def movies and shows are large. I just select them at bedtime and let them download while I sleep.
LinkSys WET610N - CONNECT YOUR OLD MAC COMPUTER UP TO WIRELESS N SPEEDS
While not inexpensive I bought a LinkSys WET610N Wireless Video and Gaming Adapter (about $100 delivered from a discounter). It is now on my DirectTV Box and allows me to download Video On Demand. Once you set one of these up to access your network on a modern Mac with a modern browser you can hook it to pretty much anything with an Ethernet Port. In my case I hooked it to may bench G3 Desktop machine running 9.2.2. Set the TCPIP control panel up and loaded up a brower. I was able to surf the web and connect to my network at Wireless N speeds. I do have a Gigabit Ethernet card installed on this unit that I plugged into but the stock 10baseT port would work although slower. Performance was excellent. What this may mean to you though is you can indeed hook up older Macs to a Wireless Network. Anything that runs TCPIP and has an Ethernet port or card should work. Just be prepared to set the unit up on a system with Tiger and Safari. The included manual tells you how to set up the unit via a web brower and you have to disregard the Window Install Disk.
Always give us a call first. Many times we will have a refurb printer that may suit your needs. Since they are getting rare these days though if you must print then you may want to consider this alternative. Midwest Laser Specialists, Inc. rebuild older laser printers. While they won't know much about the Mac OS and especially the older ones you can check with the printer manufacturer site to see if OS9 printer drivers are available for that model. If so you can rest assured that the model will work. I recommend the networkable units since you can network several machines to take advantage of the laser's high capacity. These will cost several hundred dollars but should last you for years and most will also work with OSX as well.
NO MORE IMATES -Griffin's ADB to USB Adapter is a thing of the past
We sold our last one around the first of March 2010 and Griffin has no more available and will not likely produce any more. If you need one of these beasties the prices are already climbing on Ebay. Want to sell your old one that you are no longer using. Drop cheryn an email or use the online form.
SPEED UP YOUR NET ACCESS - Well Maybe
Most of you probably don't have DNS numbers setup in your Network settings. Heck it says its optional. Enter the Network Settings and tap the configure button and add 188.8.131.52 and then 126.96.36.199
Google has taken on the task of being the worlds Internet phone book. You see when you type in a URL address like headgap.com your system goes out to a DNS server and looks up the numerical address since computers don't understand headgap.com. Perhaps your ISP's DNS is faster but if you haven't ever set it up you might find that your lookups are faster. It is worth trying.
Will my Mac play Blu-Ray? Blu-Ray is not ready for prime time on the Mac platform yet. No viewing software. I think people buy external or internal players and then are really disappointed that they didn't read the product description carefully since playback of Blu -Ray Movies is not an option. (Let me know if you find a viewing solution). No blu ray mac drivers yet available.
You can't install one internally on anything except a Mac Pro Tower since the drives are SATA based (you could hook one to our SATA PCI Cards Internally). Early on they made ATA models but there are no current models with the ATA bus and my bet is that they would be too slow. They would install nicely in one of our new style housing that would give you eSATA, Firewire 400/800 and USB2 connectability in a FAN COOLED housing, but we don't make any up yet, since you really can't do anything but burn and read data. Let me know though if you are interested. I would happily put one of the new Pioneer Blu-Ray mechanisms in our new Fan Cooled housing and would suggest that if you want good longevity this one would be the one to buy.
Toast Titanium 10 supports the format for data reading and burning and you may want to consider this for backup purposes. Toast is the only blu ray burning sottware mac that I know of. I personally don't think it is a valid solution right now for most folks though. Cheaper and better to have an external hard drive. I also understand the latest version of Final Cut Pro will let you author movies but you will have to watch them elsewhere.
Jaguar 10.2.8 - Anything earlier was Apple chump practice. Runs even on Beige G3 systems up to the last of the G4's. Allows you to open classic applications if you have 9.2.2 installed. I suggest Firefox 2 as a browser for this version. This is a decent OS for earlier hardware assuming you can live with the limitations of the dated web browsers and limited software availability.
Panther 10.3.9 - Nice stable version with reasonable system requirements. Long in the tooth these days since it won't run the later browsers and flash. Will not run on Beige boxes without a hack. Allows you to open classic applications if you have 9.2.2 installed. I suggest Firefox 2 as a browser for this version. I would upgrade to Tiger if your hardware is capable.
Tiger 10.4.11 - was currently supported and runs latest browsers, iTunes version and Flash. Required build in Firewire and G3 Processor. I wouldn't run this on anything slower than a 500 mhz G3 and would recommend at least 1 GB of RAM. Allows you to open classic applications if you have 9.2.2 installed and a PowerPC processor. No classic mode for Intel at all. This is what I run personally on a souped up QuickSilver. We still sell the mac os 10.4 cd and dvd versions.
Leopard 10.5.8 - still currently supported and runs latest browsers, iTunes version and Flash. Requires an 867 mhz G4 Processor and a Quartz Extreme 32MB Video Card. DOES NOT SUPPORT CLASSIC MODE. Has Intel Support. Next to impossible to find. Call Apple and complain if you have a qualified PowerPC G4 system and wish to upgrade. We can find no Leopard software for Mac.
Snow Leopard 10.6.8 up to 10.9/2 Mavericks - latest and greatest OSX versions. Only runs on INTELbased Mac systems. This is the only version of the OS Apple stocks.
AppleWorks 6.2.9 will run on all of these systems and will load any of the older ClarisWorks and AppleWorks files and works with MacOS through 10.6.
iLife 05 was the last iLife package that would run on a system with a G3 Processor. iLife 06 runs well on Tiger systems. iLIfe 09 for Leopard.
NeoOffice opens and saves Word, Excel, & PowerPoint files and is donationware. Version 2.2.6 will run on Panther 10.3.9. NeoOffice 3 will run on Tiger 10.4.11 and up. It does what we need when dealing with Microsoft Office files. I normally use AppleWorks for word processing however.
Graphic Converter is available for almost all versions of the Mac OS including early machines. It handles lots of different graphic file formats and will open and convert formats. It even opens and repairs damaged image files. I use Photoshop for fancy stuff but find Graphic Converter invaluable and it will allow you to perform most things you would want to do with images files. It is shareware but the program works in demo mode until you decide to pay up.
Roxio Toast 6 lite or later works with all versions of OSX and allows CD and DVD burning. Toast Titanium (full version 6 or later for OSX) allows video compressions and many other things you may want to do.
Well Apple has done it again. There was evidently not many copies of the 10.5 Leopard software in the supply chain when they released Snow Leopard. We can't find a decent price on Leopard and have taken it out of the online store. I hope Apple goes back to press one more time but they probably won't.This leaves thousands of people with older Apple hardware faced with paying escalated prices or more likely to buy bootleg copies. They did it with Tiger and full install boxed new inventory is non-existent and has been for some time, yet many thousands of Macs out there can only run this version. Perhaps one of you lawyers out there will take them to court since PowerPC Macs were sold up until the middle to late 2005 and are incapable of running the new software. Many came with Tiger and now lots of folks who need to upgrade to a more modern OS have no choice with Leopard quickly becoming unavailable. Call if you need to upgrade, we can help.
I use the newsgroups to keep up with a few things, download a few binaries, etc. When my access stopped working, I called my ISP Worldspice Technologies here in Memphis (Best ISP in Memphis). I asked the young fellow that answered the phone to have someone reset the newgroup server since that is usually what is wrong on the rare occasion I couldn't access it. He asked "whats a newsgroup". It caught me by surprise at first but then I thought, folks who haven't used the Internet since its inception would not have ever been exposed. He quickly asked and I talked to someone who knew a bit more. The fellow said they were looking at trimming expenses and since only 3 users were regularly using newsgroups and they were paying a substantial fee for their feed each month, they had sent out notices that they were discontinuing the service. Evidently I missed the list since I hadn't used them in a while.
There are services out there like Giganews, Thundernews and dozens more. They provide newsgroups access for a fee, starting at a few dollars a month up to about $50 for unlimited access. Like all things on this earth some things get passed up by new technologies and I guess newsgroups are one. If you want to try newsgroups http://www.newsgroupreviews.com is a portal that has reviews and links to the providers. Some offer a free trial period if you want to find out a bit more.
I still like and use MT-Newswatcher 3.52 which is on the Kitchen Super Sink for OSX.
USING MAC OS9 & PROGRAMS FROM A LEOPARD MACHINE (Even an INTEL)
Cheryn recently decided she needed to run Leopard OSX 10.5 since the new version book keeping software she uses is Leopard only (QuickBooks). Of course I could set her up a dual boot system that would allow her to change back to TIGER10.4 so she could use classic mode for the older OS9 apps she still uses. LEOPARD HAS NO CLASSIC MODE if you didn't know. Rebooting to a different OS is a bit inconvenient since she frequently accesses QuickBooks in our day to day operation.
I set up one of our bench G4 machines with OS9.2.2 and the Applications she uses on our internal network. I installed a free program called Vine Server (OS9 Kitchen Sink Internet Folder) that allows itself to be run remotely using VNC. On our current 10/100 network (soon to be Gigabit once I can find some cheaper switches). Leopard has the built in ability to access a machine since it has VNC client technology built in. She can now access OS9 applications from her Leopard desktop. Perhaps not quite as fast as before but it certainly works well and costs nothing if you have an older machine you can run OS9 on. I did reduce the colors to 256 to speed up access, but with the Gigabit Switch I think you could easily run full color without too noticeable lag in performance. You do have to use File Sharing to move files around.
We can help you do the same. We sell Gigagit Ethernet Cards even for older Beige G3 machines and many of the other items you may need to add an OS9 server to your network.
I can install OS9 on INTEL systems now 7-21-2014
I finally figured out how to get OS9 to run on INTEL systems using Sheep Shaver. There are limitations though. You cannot print to anything except print to PDF, but the resulting file can be printed directly from OSX. The version of 9 that runs is 9.0.4 so some programs that require 9.1 or 9.2.2 will not worik. I have experimented a bit and have programs like Pagemaker, Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand etc working. I use an old TeleFinder client and it works great allowing me to contact my TeleFinder server directly from my Mac Mini running Mavericks.
Apple left the PowerPC platforms behind. Snow Leopard really is Leopard with the PowerPC code stripped out and a few optimizations for the INTEL based Systems.
It seems that Seagate is stopping production on some sizes of IDE hard drives. We can't get some sizes right now. Since most all new computers have moved to the SATA standard it may not be too long before your only choice will be to install a SATA card and run the larger faster cheaper SATA drives. Some of you don't have that choice if you or on machines like the iMacs that don't have a PCI slot to put a SATA card in. Hopefully some of the adapters out there will allow you to keep those older machines running. If you have been thinking about upgrading your hard drive in your older machine now would be the time while you still have some good choices. I keep testing SATA to IDE adapters but so far none seem to work reliably. Let me know if you have any luck.
I have had several times over a period of years, had folks send me systems that had odd freezes. Some describe it as the mouse locking up and not moving. In every case it was caused by the energy saver settings. If you install a USB2 card and many other types of accessories you need to disable sleep. You can keep your screen saver active, just don't let the CPU sleep or the hard drive spin down. If you come back to your machine after a while and find it locked up you may need to trying turning off the energy saver.
WIRELESS N - Back In Stock! Lower Prices!
Or should I really say Draft N? I thought it would be a long while before I upgraded my Wireless G components to N. Cost keeps me from running out and adopting new technology quickly and I am certain that many of you are like me when it comes to parting with cash. I have had my eyes out for a low cost alternative that would enable me to install the much faster and longer range N. Well I finally located some market PCI cards that we could get drivers for. I replaced our trusty LinkSys Wireless G Router with a refurb N unit and have started using these new cards. You get more bars at even marginal locations with these cards and the transfer rates are astounding. I can now see how video can easily be shared. Perhaps shortly I will have a Mac permanently attached to the TV. Makes it better to watch those shows I missed from online and all without stringing CAT 5E across the floor. We provide the drivers on our new SuperSink DVD (a $14.77 value) included with each USB Dongle.
Make any Mac with USB Wireless!
Wireless N Speeds!
Wireless USB 2.0 802.11N Mini LAN Adapter
Special $34.77 shippedProvides Faster Wireless N networking on iMacs, Mini's, iBooks, Powerbooks, and MacBooks or any Mac with a USB 2 Port!
New Mini SIze! Finally a reasonable cost USB Wireless solution for the Mac! Mac OSX 10.4 to 10.6 compatible! Extend your wireless coverage and experience greater speed with this Wireless N USB 2.0 Adapter! Based on the 802.11n 2.0 standard, this Wireless N USB Adapter delivers the highest wireless data rate so you can enjoy uninterrupted data streaming. This Wireless N USB Adapter features integrated antenna and is backwards compatible with 802.11b/g networks! With WPA2, WPA, 802.1x and WEP security encryption, the Wireless N USB Adapter helps keep your wireless connection secure from intruders. Transmit: Up to 150 Mbps, Receive: Up to 300 Mbps. Size 3x1x0.5-inches (HxWxD, approximate). Frequency Band: 2.4 - 2.5 GHz. REQUIRES: USB2 Port, 10.4 to 10.6 & a compatible wireless network. Includes our OSX Super Sink DVD ($14.77 value) with drivers from us DOES NOT WORK WITH OS VERSIONS EARLIER THAN 10.4. Our $34.77 price includes domestic shipping. See the Wireless section of the store.
QuickSilver Dual 1 Ghz shutting down by itself
One of our customers sent in his QuickSilver Dual 1 Ghz G4 systems for us to repair and upgrade a bit. He was having all kinds of odd problems and could not get his Leopard install to work. His graphic card was bad (if you see artifacts in the screen and your monitor is plugged in solidly it is the card) and he had a Crucial Memory 133 Stick of RAM that reported itself as PC100 in profiler (I have seen this a lot) and so I replaced both. With those fixes Leopard installed just fine.
The worst of the problems was the machine would run about 3 hours from sitting cold and then it would shut itself down. I just knew one of the processors was not getting cooled or going bad. I swapped processors with a known good dual and it would still shut down. I installed a bit more thermal paste and a full time high velocity 60MM processor fan in place of the stock unit. I got about the same. I finally put my original dual back together and let it run all night with Leopard installed under load. It ran fine.
I finally replaced the power supply on his unit and that fixed it. Oh yes I did all the usual things, like deep level resetting the system, installing known good ram, checking all the fans etc. There was nothing wrong save the power supply would get warmed up good and shut down. I probably will install a high speed fan in the "bad" 3 hour power supply and put it in one of our units we use around here to see if a better fan was all it needed but I bet some of the capacitors are going bad. I Googled the problem but only got a hint at the power supply. I have seen many systems that run only a few minutes and shut down and know to replace the power supply right off. Never one that runs for hours.
I like to have tore my hair out on this one. With the 3 hours lapses between shutdowns in took several days to finally nail this problem. I hope my notes save you some time.
HAVE YOU BEEN THINKING ABOUT UPGRADING YOUR G4's PROCESSOR? Its probably already too late! Call and check our inventory.
Do it now! The Sonnet 1 Ghz Single Processors are now sold out and they aren't being made any more. No more Mercury 1.5 ghz Singles. Freescale (was Motorola) is the manufacturer of these chips. Once they are gone they will not likely run the production line again. Already some processor types are no longer available. As these products continue to sell, eventually the supply will dwindle. Do call though we generally have one or two upgrade processors for apple power mac g4 systems in stock.
So you go to the yellow pages and pick out a company to come repair XYZ appliance. They send a guy out in a truck. He comes in and gives you an estimate about $100 more than the appliance cost. So you pay them the $75 service fee. These guys never really do any work. They just go around collecting $75 from the chumps. I suspect if you told them to fix the appliance at the jacked up price they either wouldn't or couldn't do it. DON"T PAY THEM. Better yet find a name of a reputable dealer to start with. If you don't know who to ask try a local Realtor, especially one who has rental properties.
Last night I ran the Maintenance 3.7 routine on my personal Tiger system in preparation for the latest round of Apple Updates. The routine repairs permissions(as well as a lot of other things) which I always do before I install software. The updates I needed for my system were the Security update 2009 - 001 and the Java Release 8. I never got to the Java Release as the Security update killed my system. After rebooting the system just sat with a blue screen and the little watch dial. After waiting 20 minutes I rebooted trying Safe Boot Mode by holding the shift key down. Still blue screen. I then started in Single User Mode by holding down the command and s keys and ran AppleJack (you do have AppleJack installed don't you?). I expecting this to get me back on track since it validates the drive, repairs permissions and prefs and dumps caches. Still no luck. I ended up booting from my backup (hold down the option key at startup) and using Carbon Copy Cloner to copy over the System and Library Folders only. I am back up and running this morning thanks to the backup. I checked to see where my backup was and it had everything except the security and java updates and the quicktime 7.6 update which for now I am leaving off. I checked MacFixit.com by the way and they had some reports of users having this problem but no real advice for a fix. You may not have a problem and I probably will take a run at the updates again this weekend when I have time. My point in sharing this with you is that you need to have a sound backup of your system period. If you don't plan on a lengthy reinstall process and perhaps losing lots of data. Since I only had to replace my Library and System files none of my Applications or User files were affected.
It upsets me to see equipment come in for repair that has been damaged by some "expert" upgrading a hard drive or installing an optical. We have had many of these over the years and more recently. The correct size screws must be put back in the proper positions. Certain screws are grounding screws and if not put back in place then the unit will not work. Using the wrong tools causes screws to be stripped and jamming a flatblade in a hex screw is right out. Heavy handed nitwits also break frames, damage cases and otherwise cause the unit to be expensive to repair properly. Anyone using both hands to tighten up these tiny screws should be shot. The teenager at the discount store may be a genious on full size hardware, but he may not have the tools or the training for laptops. I personally know my limitations and do not work on laptops except for the ancillary things like RAM upgrades and Wireless Card installs. We have people that have the training and the tools to do proper repair work. For board level repair we send the units out. Oh yes. Leaving screws out is bad. You can't imagine what the replacement screws cost and how hard they are to find, but I guess leaving them out rather than forcing them into the wrong size hole or through a cable is better. As Dirty Harry says "A man has got to know his limitations".
I have been fixing a lot of hard drives for folks lately. I think I need to repeat a few things. If you don't know, buying an external hard drive at the discount store is okay if you don't use the drive all the time, and format the drive for the Mac OS. If you send me a DOS formatted drive I will send it back untouched and wish you luck getting someone to fix it. I have good tools but they are Mac Tools and repair Mac formatted and partitioned drives. I will not work on LaCie External drives at all. I am not happy about working on the new Maxtor housings since many have to be destroyed to get at the mechanisms. If I sold crap like this I don't think I would want people seeing it either and I guess gluing the housings together keeps people from seeing the cheap hardware inside. I was able to recover all the drives sent to me recently and move the data to better quality hardware.
ALWAYS buy good quality drive mechanisms with FAN COOLED housing if you care about your data and run the drives all the time. The OXFORD chipsets for Firewire are a must since that is the only chipset guaranteed to be daisy chainable. (See if the kid at the discount store can tell you what chipset is used in the hard drive you are buying). You also won't have the mounting problems and less drive errors with Oxford chips. Do shut down your external drives when they are not in use. Every so often run the disk utility and run repair on the hard drive. That insures your directories are healthy and will fix small problems before they become big ones. You should also unmount external drives before turning them off but your computer probably has told you that.
I had a tech support call. The guy said he wanted to know why his email had lipstick covered lips on his emails (Tiger Mac Mail) and wondered if it was a virus. I did a Google search for lipstick mac mail and a few other variations without success. I finally got to thinking and remembered a pair of lips was a user icon. Whoever set him up as a user initially had chosen the smack.tif from the user icons and they were appearing on his mail. A quick click of the Accounts system preference and a user picture change fixed him up.
The small user pictures are in the Library/User Pictures. In this case the one chosen was smack.tif. You can easily add your own using the graphics program of your choice. Make an image 48x48 pixels and save it out as a .tif file type and add it to one of the category folders. You can then choose it as your user picture.
TROJAN INCLUDED IN THE BOOTLEG VERSION OF iWork 09
If you downloaded the bootleg copy of iWork 09 and installed it you have also installed a Trojan. Download and run the free repair utility. http://smokingapples.com/software/security-software/free-iwork-trojan-removal-tool-released/ Next time wait and purchase a legitimate copy from Apple. If you frequent the pirate sites and otherwise download indiscriminately you might want to visit http://www.securemac.com and read about the latest in trojans and other attempts to cause problems by the malware community.
I am sometimes frustrated by the fact that Apple quits producing older software versions. Generally after a new version of the OS is released their is enough old software in the pipeline to keep folks happy for a good while who are using older equipment. Not in the case of Tiger. Since there are more than a few folks who either are still using G3 or other slower G4 equipment, or still need classic mode from running older software. I personally will be running Tiger for a long time since I still have several unreplacable pieces of software that need classic mode to run.
You can't buy a genuine Tiger DVD install these days. Ebay is filled with overpriced used and or possibly bootleg disks selling for far more than the software did originally. We have been selling legit copies of Panther with legit Tiger Upgrade disks for a price much higher than I would like at a margin that is too low. This will not work for some models of G5 for example and we have no alternatives. I guess many folks are left to either buy bootleg copies or borrow someones copy. It is a shame that Apple doesn't make a small production run to supply the pent up demand instead of forcing folks to break the law. By the way if you are not using your old original Mac OS Install CD's or DVD's (NOT machine specific) and they are in good condition check with cheryn as we buy good working copies of 7.6, 8.1, 8.5, 8.6, and 9.1 as well as OS 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4.
I think it is a good idea to make a backup of your Tiger DVD and use the backup to reinstall or run repair. Keep your original in a safe place.
Making a DVD Image
- Insert the retail Mac OS X Install DVD into your drive.
- Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).
- In Disk Utility, you will notice a white pane on the left hand side. In the pane, select the Mac OS X Install DVD by clicking on it once.
- Click New Image on the Disk Utility toolbar.
- A dialog box will appear. Give the new image a name. I used 'Mac OS X Install DVD'. Select the destination where you wish to save it. Leave Image Format at Compressed (default) and Encryption at None (default).
- Click Save to begin creating the image.
- Once your image has been created DO NOT mount it. Leave the image alone and proceed to the next section.
Burning the Image
- Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).
- Click Burn on the Disk Utility toolbar (upper left).
- Navigate to where you saved the DVD image created in the previous section. Click on the image file, then click the Burn button. Do not drag and drop the image file into Disk Utility during this step.
- Insert a DVD when prompted and proceed to Burn it. (use good quality media)
This procedure also works for bootable backup CD's if you bought the CD version to start with. There is a program called Clone X 3.2 that will build you a bootable copy on CD or DVD of your system. I have not used this program personally but if it works as advertised some of you may find it useful. http://mac.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/Clone-X.shtml is one of many places you can find it if you want to learn more about it or download it. Let me know how you do.
Every so often someone writes to me asking how I can charge $39.77 for an item they found on Ebay for $20. Most of you already know this so I may be singing to the choir so to speak. The person offering that price has one good used one. If you get this one and it works good for you.
We generally buy the items new wholesale except for systems. We include shipping in our prices and you can buy that same item in quantity from us. We warranty the product and the manufacturer may offer even longer warranty. That isn't the case if you buy from Ebay most times. Don't get me wrong there are good buys to be had, and I too sometimes pick up an item or two especially if the item is no longer made.
On the downside, I can't tell you how many folks have called me trying to get parts or repairs to what they just bought. Well it only had 64 MB or ram, or it had the original hard drive that is worn out, or the optical doesn't read CD's well, and they really need a DVD anyway. By the time you buy the replacements or upgrades you end up spending sometimes more than a warranted system from us sells for. Oh yes how much shipping did you pay. Our units include domestic shipping in the price. Yes there are bargains to be had. Ebay works if everyone is honest. I guess you know that everyone isn't. Keep in mind the used system or item you are buying may be cleaned up a bit but it is not usually professionally tested and has no warranty on the majority of items you buy. Many overcharge for shipping. Many don't pack properly so your merchandise arrives damaged. Try getting a refund from PayPal. Ebay owns them you know. Sometimes penny-wise is pound foolish, to coin an old English phrase.
You may not care, but if you run an older PowerPC system or Rev A. G3 Desktop or Tower the readily available and inexpensive USB2.0 cards will not work in them. We have searched the entire world looking for a source for the 1.1 USB cards that work in the older PCI based Power Macs. There are none. What we offer these days is an extremely limited quantity of used tested pulls. If you are scrapping an old Mac make sure you pull the USB 1.1 card. We pay $15 each for working units. Please let us know if you locate a dealer with quantity.
You may notice the term " nicely configured" in the description of systems we sell. Well what does that mean really and why don't you send me a list of all the stuff you put on it? If I did I would never have time to build your system. We update our Kitchen Sink CD Set Quarterly but when I am working on your system other updates may have come out. I try to always have the latest versions of our installs on each of our systems and we frequently make improvements.
I put many freeware, shareware and open source programs on each system we sell to make it easy for you. I don't know of any other dealer out there who does this. Most install an old version of the basic OS if they even do that. I have bought "configured" machines from many of our competitors over the years, to be totally unimpressed. I am impressed by how much time I would have to spend to get a machine into a useable state. They mostly are clean but have the original battery, tired old hard drive, nearly worn out optical and some odd group of RAM. Okay it does work okay but not good enough for me. You could have to spend hours just locating and updating the OS components alone. Not one system had the scuffs and scratches buffed down and none were waxed.
Even older systems that we install older OS versions on have improvements in the OS. I use the USB components from the Apple SDK for example to update it past the 9.2.2 install and use them even on the older OS8.6, 9.1 systems. I also use the later Firewire components, networking parts and pieces, etc. This allows the system you purchased to work properly with most modern USB and Firewire devices and allows you to use even an older system on your modern cable or dsl network. I also try to make sure you have a good assortment of the basic Applications and Utilities you need. All of our systems have de-archiving softwore preinstalled for example. That way you can open most attachments and files that you may download over the net. I also make sure you have a couple of web browser choices in case one doesn't work properly with the site you are accessing. We also include our Kitchen Sink CD's appropriate for the OS you have installed with our systems. That allows you to easily locate and install many other Apps and Utils for your specific needs without having to spend time searching the net and downloading files.
There is now a version of AppleJack for Leopard. Version 1.5 is now on the new version of the OSX Kitchen Sink. We preinstall AppleJack on all OSX systems. This little utility (Kitchen Sink OSX Diagnostics Folder or downloadable from http://applejack.sourceforge.net/) allows you to repair your disk, repair permissions, validate the system's preference files, and get rid of possibly corrupted cache files. In most cases, these operations can help get your machine back on track. The important thing is that you don't need another startup disk with you. All you need to do is restart in Single User Mode (SUM), by holding down the command and s keys at startup, and then typing applejack, or applejack auto (which will run through all the tasks automatically), or applejack auto restart (which will also restart the computer automatically at the end of the process).
The only gotcha I have found so far is on Beige G3 systems. If you had to borrow someone's monitor to install X, then your other adapted monitor probably will show you a black screen at startup. Since you simply need to type applejack auto restart, I do just that blindly and then leave the system alone. It runs through the cycles and then restarts usually getting you back up and running. There are some other warnings in the documentation so read through them thoroughly before using on your system. This is an emergency repair program and I really would not run it all the time, but it has saved me more than a few times from the hours of reinstallation.
ALWAYS RUN A BACKUP WITH OSX! Lots of words here but worth reading I think.
If there is one thing I could convince folks of when they buy a system and plan to run OSX it would be this: Run a second drive or external drive with a cloned backup of your OSX install. We can do this for you with your purchase, and certainly help you install a second or external reliable hard drive. While I find OSX generally very reliable and hardly ever have to use our backups I am glad I do when it does happen.
OSX had been out a good while before I started using it. Why you ask? I will not run an operating system I can't make a bootable backup from. Until Carbon Copy Cloner became available running OSX was a crap shoot. After 10.2 came out it finally was a stable and reliable operating system, that I could run a backup for.
We operate our business with 6 systems and 4 servers and most of them have X on them these days. On each OSX system I either run a second drive or an attached Firewire Drive. I keep a cloned copy of the OS on that second or attached drive. If and when we have a system go down, we simply boot from the second drive by holding down the option key at startup and choosing the alternative drive. We are back up and operational in the time it takes to boot. I think all Mac OSX users should do the same. While I have ran for years on my personal systems with little or no problems (OSX Tiger is indeed stable), things do happen and being prepared keeps you from going through the grief many of you do when something does happen to your system.
You can then take the time to troubleshoot and repair the problem or simply replace the original install using Carbon Copy Cloner (or send it to us). I also use a program called RSYNCX to do any periodic updates to those backups, since it only updates the files that have changed. We all run weekly maintenance on our systems either using an old program called System Optimizer for Jaguar and Panther machines, and Maintenance 3.7 or 3.8 for Tiger and Leopard (all are on the Kitchen Sink for OSX). While OSX is supposed to take care of these chores automatically I find that you will do better if you use these programs to do this at your command.
Oh yes, don't forget to boot from your backup every once in a while to make sure it is indeed bootable and in good condition. The time to find out it isn't working is not when your main hard drive just died. You can then run the disk utility from your backup and run a full repair on your main drive.
I recommend to anyone running a Mac system that you replace your main work hard drive every 3 to 4 years (more often if your are a heavy user or run servers). They are not expensive these days, but having one fail with all your hard work, music, video, and photographs, can be. I relegate the old hard drive to back up duties then. We will preformat the drives if you ask so all you have to do is pop it in along with your old main hard drive and clone it to your new drive. I store my old backup drives in my underwear drawer (sealed airtight), just in case.
You may also want to start thinking about off site storage. Not too many years ago we had a break in and thieves stole some of our systems. Fortunately they left the drives in my underwear drawer alone so I was back up and running quickly albeit from dated data. I now store another copy of our important data off the premises in case of breakins, fire, tornadoes, or other disasters. It usually is a month or so old and we have started using "thumb" drives. With sizes from 1GB up to 8GB commonly available it isn't expensive to keep a copy of your really important stuff. While not bootable it is fairly simple to restore your data from these units. Periodically I will retreive them and run update the data. I don't trust online storage at all having been on the web longer than most of these outfits. I see them come and go with no warning far too often and no one really knows if they are secure or not.
Some people say well I have the software on DVD or CD so if something happens I will just reinstall. Well I personally don't have that kind of free time. An OSX install takes several hours when you consider all the updates that also have to be ran. Keeping a cloned backup is a much better use of your time in my book. A clone will usually finish while you are at lunch and RsyncX finished generally in the time it takes to pour yourself another cup of coffee.
Looking for a Good List of Open Source Software for Mac OSX?
One nicely done web site has a good list of open source software for Mac OSX is http://opensourcemac.org Of course a good bit of the programs appear on our Kitchen Sink for OSX but a few are a bit large and more special interest. This is simply a list of what is available but a good one. Most programs are Freeware or Shareware. I like and use NeoOffice these days in place of Microsoft Office and have recently added Seashore which gives you Photoshop type editing for free. I also like and use the program Unarchiver which adds itself at to finder and extends the types of files you can compress and uncompress in place of Stuffit or the built in. Before you go spending big bucks to add a program to your system, I would give some of the open source programs a try.
There are still no active viruses or spyware for OSX
There are only rumors of possible ones. If you must send $50 to someone send it to me instead of these virus software producers. Sure the programs find viruses in your email but they are PC viruses and none effect the Mac. I personally don't worry about PC users since they are already infected anyway. There is an average of 3 new PC viruses/spyware/Trojans a day. No matter how up to date the PC virus software is, they are already infected. Not too long ago CBL.ABUSEAT.ORG reported a bot army of over 300,000 infected machines sending out alarming numbers of pump&dump and pharmaceutical spam. You can thank your PC brethren for the majority of crap in your mailbox. Do keep up the Apple updates on your system, but as I always say, run repair permissions before and after installing any software.
Recently June 2008 a couple of Trojans have cropped up. MacUser reports an AppleScript called ASthtv05 and another cleverly called PokerGame are around. They require you download and install them before they perform their nasty bag of tricks. NONE OF THE REGULAR VIRUS SOFTWARE for Macs will stop these since it is an AppleScript you have to give permission to install and so far there are ZERO VIRUSES. Please note that the only place I have ever heard about these trojans from were in the same sentence with the antivirus software manufacturers that were also selling the fix for $50, which is a bit fishy if you ask me.
Okay so you work in a mixed office and your techs insist you run virus software on your Mac. Download the FREE ClamXav software. They regularly update the definitions so your Mac can kill the PC virus attachments. There is no better virus software in my book and the price is right.
AppleWorks 6
Many of you have AppleWorks 6 installed on your 9 or OSX System. Apple put it on many of their systems and I still like its simplicity and speed for basic word processing. It does much more and many folks don't realize that the built in draw program is really an advance copy of the old MacDraw program and will open your old files. It will also run on systems with X installed in native mode without having to have OS9 emulation running. This means it will even run on the newer Intel based systems (although they are slow since they run in a PPC emulation). This gives you a bridge for your older ClarisWorks files as well as the even older MacWrite, MacDraw and MacPaint files.
If your AppleWorks SpellChecker isn't working, choose the dictionaries from the AppleWorks Essentials Library!
Some of you have complained that the built in spellchecker doesn't work on your system. Some of you have a nasty habit of dragging the Application from its folder rather than using an alias (stop it). You simply need to take the time to link the dictionaries. For some reason under OSX it does not automatically link those and you do have a choice of what dictionary you want. In Word Processing mode select the Edit Menu and Writing Tools. Use the Choose Dictionaries to locate AppleWorks Essentionals/Dictionaries and select the appropriate files. Continue this with the user, hyphenation and thesaurus files. It even highlights which choices you have and most of you will want to select the english versions. Once done it will remain linked until you change it.
It is unfortunate that Apple discontinued this program and its support. They have come up with replacement programs that in my opinion are excellect but beyond the scope of many users and their needs. For Microsoft compatibility I still like and use the FREE NeoOffice in OSX. It opens and saves in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint filetypes and that allows me to open those filetypes on my system.
G4 7455 PROCESSOR SHORTAGE - Oh No! No more FastMac Processors!
One of my favorite upgrades and processor choices for me was the FastMac 1.467 Ghz Single Processor Upgrade. We have sold hundreds of these units over the time they have been available. I use them on our Servers and anywhere someone needs fast compatible processing. This same series processor was used by Apple in production and it works with ALL versions of the OS from 9.2.2 up, and that is something the 7447 series processors can't claim since they don't work at all in Jaguar and require Panther 10.3.5 or later to boot. FastMac notified us that they could no longer get the chips and that production from Freescale (was Motorola) was unlikely since the runs have to be so large. We will be substituting the same chip made by a different manufacturer who still has a small stash of these chips. They carry the same 3 year warranty. If you are planning this upgrade on your own G4 do it soon as they have a limited supply as well.
PS. I don't like the Newer Tech Processors since their firmware updates are wiped when you zap the pram. This is a deal breaker gotcha in my book, and I won't install them.
G4 MIRROR DRIVE DOOR FAILURES - Keep your vent clean!
If you are on a G4 Mirror Door system (G4MDD) the one with the Mirror Front and 4 Buick Roadmaster Vent Ports, shut down your system and look up under the front foot (you will have to pick the unit up). This is where your machine draws cooler air and it probably is packed with dust. Every unit I have checked had more lint on it than a dryer screen after drying a load of new cotton towels. No air flow means parts heat up and the fans run all the time. Eventually your processor will fail and it is even worse on the dual processor units since one is not cooled as the other. Keep it clean or suffer the consequences. Failed power supply, processors and ram are what happens. I use a dampened rag and brush all the lint and dust out and then a can of air to blow out the dust. Thanks to reader David Joern who writes: ....thank you Bob for that article detail....good god, no wonder the fan was so loud earlier today....Real quiet now.
I don't like to carry anything that won't boot into OS9 at least for now. Some of these units of course will boot into 9. My experience with them so far has all been bad. They added a faster bus (ATA100) that doesn't have the drive size limit that earlier machines had and have a 150 mhz system bus and use faster DDR ram. It does require a special version of 9 to see those drives however so if you buy one of these make sure you get the original install disks. I also recently learned that to boot from OS9 the partition size can be no larger than 190GB.
They call this one the Wind Tunnel, an appropriate name once you hear one. All the units we have seen so far are noisy to the point that I wouldn't use them, and I am hard of hearing. Apple had a deal where you could get the power supply swapped out for ones with quieter fans but that is only part of it. Many of the units coming out of the educational markets and were never updated. For now you won't find one of these units here. Who needs this kind of grief when the older QuickSilver, Digital Audio and Sawtooth designed G4's are a bit more solid and don't sound like a jet taking off. With aftermarket processors these can be made to operate at or above the performance levels and a Sonnet ATA card will give you the same or better hard drive performance levels and allow larger drives to be installed without special software. That being said though I have worked on a few systems that were quiet and worked great. If you got a good one I guess you got a good one. Do make sure you have updated it to the latest firmware as Apple fixed some noise issues via the firmware update.
Make sure you clean up under the bottom of the case. Air is drawn from under the front foot of the system and I have seen systems so clogged they overheat and shut down. You have to pick up the machine to see this, and most I have found look worse than our dryer vent after drying a new wool blanket.
Sonnet now offers faster cooler running processor upgrades which may solve a few folks problems.
Install a PCI slot fan in the last slot if you own one of these. It will draw heat that collects in the top of the case and exhaust it.
If you happen to install a second optical in the other bay available you use the option key and the eject button to get the second device to open its tray.
One oddity. Apple recommends you use Cable Select on the drives. The drive first on the chain them assigns itself as master. You should never use Cable Select on any of the earlier systems (before the QuickSilver 2002) choosing the standard master and slave settings for the devices on the IDE buses. One other exception is the later QuickSilver 2002 models. Some came with firmware that allows large than 132GB drives and you should use Cable Select on these units.
One additional note. I set up the hard drives cable select and all was well on a recent Mirror Door 1.25 ghz we recently bought and sold. I didn't think about the new Pioneer Optical I put in. The system wouldn't boot until I changed the jumper to cable select and it started working.
These units also use a special version of OS9.2.2 to work (assuming yours is OS9 bootable as some units were not). I would expect to add 9.2 for use in Classic Mode from X you would need this same special install disk. I have never seen one of these disks for sale. If you buy a used unit make sure you get the original install disks or expect trouble.
We recently had a customer who kept having trouble getting his MDD OS9 install to work. He finally reduced the amount of ram he had installed and everything began to work. He then reinstalled the ram and it continued to work. Sometimes a bit of Voodoo is necessary to get something to work. I generally simplify the system anytime I have trouble. Pull PCI cards, leave only one stick of ram and only plug in the keyboard, mouse and monitor. Zapping the PRAM or deep level resetting the machine sometimes helps as well and as a last resort press the PMU switch near the battery.
For my servers I use a small program called RsynchX 2.1. It has a decent and fairly uncomplicated interface. The scripting is a bit daunting but you can automate your jobs. I simply just do it each evening. You simply drag your source and destination to the graphic interface and select what you want to do from the buttons. They can even be a network drive you are connected with. It is free to use but I think they take donations. You can choose to make the drive or partition you are backing up to bootable and it even handles the older OS9 files if you have them on your system. It has proven reliable to me. It requires OSX 10.1.5 or later and I have used it personally all the way up through Tiger. I haven't tried it with Leopard but suspect it will work as well since it calls to the built in rsync that normally is only available to terminal users. It is on the OSX Kitchen Sink in the utilities folder, but can be downloaded from the link above or your favorite Mac Shareware site.
Cheryn said something is not right as we were about to retire last night. She noticed an odd smell in the server area. I noticed the black screen on our Filemaker server and noticed that same aroma. We quickly unplugged the unit. For some reason the power supply thought it was a good time to die. I pulled the machine down to the test bench and noticed that the power supply was extremely hot. Other components in the system were quite warm as well. I pulled another G4 DA and moved my old components over one at a time. I was back up and running in about 1/2 hour and hope it was just the power supply. Since we were on a good quality UPS I am fairly certain a power fluctuation was not the reason it decided to die. I always tell folks replacing a power supply to make sure their other components are responsible. I have been doing this long enough to have learned that sometimes dual processor systems sometimes have one processor starting to go out and they take the power supply out. Putting a new power supply in will only fix it for a while and the same problem will occur again if you don't fix the problem. I hope the processor on my unit was not responsible and it was just a fluke. In all these years this is the first time I have ever had a power supply go out. I added an upper level fan to our server rack. It has started to warm up here and perhaps that may have contributed.
A couple of times now I have had folks describe their machines as shutting down or locking up. I eventually figured out that they had USB2 cards installed and had turned the sleep feature back on. What happens is the machine goes to sleep and cannot wake up. You sit there with a black screen and have to force a power down by holding in the button before the machine will restart. If you are running OS9 you can't just turn off or discard the Energy Manager parts it leaves the preferences that were already set. You need to go into the energy manager and swing the slider to the off position. In OSX the same holds true. Turn off the sleep totally. You can use the screen saver mode on most units but do pick something simple. The more complex the screen saver the more likely you are to have trouble. A few of you may not have trouble with sleep mode in X. Apple did fix a few problems with the later software. Do be aware though that a USB2 card or even perhaps a device you have plugged in can cause sleep related issues. I choose to turn mine off totally and shut down the machines when they are not in use, since I will not do without the device or USB2 card.
Do you remember the little stickers they use to sell to extend the range of your cell phone? Those people should have been put in jail but nothing ever happened. I have talked with what I thought were intelligent people who though the little stickers actually worked. Well now there are companies selling gizmo's to extend your wireless computing range. Be wary of anyone making outrageous claims. Adding a higher gain antenna is sound science. Adding another wireless access point is also sound science. People who make networking equipment like LinkSys, Netgear and Dlink would be in this business if real improvements could be had and do make products that work. If you travel look for a directional antenna (like a cantenna) that will hook to your existing setup and enable you to point directly at the wireless source where you are at. Like anything else on this earth though look for the misdirection, there is no real magic.
OSX Tip - Stool Softener For Your Constipated OSX System?
OSX is supposed to perform maintenance automatically. They improved it in Tiger so that it supposedly runs even if your computer was off or asleep when it was scheduled but it doesn't always. You certainly want to do this if you are on Panther or Jaguar, but folks on Tiger or Leopard systems may benefit from running it regularly.
- Open terminal from the utilities folder on your system.
- Type the following in the command line and then leave the computer alone until it finishes.
- sudo periodic daily weekly monthly (you may get a warning and indeed you do not want to play around with the sudo command).
- Press return and it will prompt you to type in your password before it runs.
- Once complete you can type in exit and logout and or just simply quit the Terminal program.
This forces the daily, weekly and monthly maintenance to run on your system. Do this about once a month or get system optimizer off the Kitchen Sink CD (Tiger and below) which does more and run it weekly. NOTE THIS MAY TAKE SOME TIME IF YOU HAVE NEVER RAN IT, BE PATIENT. Prepare to be amazed on how much better your system runs if the maintenance hasn't been running!
Apple does have an Automator Script that will do this for you without terminal. It is called Maintenance and it is in there Automater Actions Section. The version is for both Tiger and Leopard. It works well and should be safe to use since it only runs the built in maintenance.
It's hard for me to think that way?
It sometimes helps if you understand how things work. This sometimes surprises me, but I guess it really shouldn't. I had a user call recently and say they were disappointed with their purchase and that many of the applications were not working. After a bit I finally figured out they were using the recent applications folder from the OS9 menu bar. Of course when I configure a system I load various test applications from attached hard drives as well as a few applications from the actual hard drive but not very many. I hope they understood but am not sure they really got it. The recent application folder (from the OS9 Apple Menu) is up to the last 10 applications loaded on the machine. I guess I should clear this folder out but in all these years this is the only time it was ever a problem. Most people have been taught to open an application you open up the hard drive and then the applications folder. Of course it is a shortcut once you have recently loaded an application and that is what makes the Mac OS great. They give you easy ways to do repetitive work. The correct way though to open an application though is to find it in the actual applications folder and open it from there. I guess the last computer they had someone had used it a bit and luckily the recent application folder was fairly populated. Unfortunately for them they may have missed dozens or more programs that may have resided on their hard drive simply by looking in the applications folder on the hard drive.
Since I use dozens of progams regularly I never go into the habit of looking for them in the recent applications folder. I do use it though when I know I was just in the application recently and it saves a step.
I also see folks pull the application out of its install folder and move it to the desktop. Then they wonder why the plugins stopped working or they lose their bookmarks or the dictionary breaks, etc. You must leave the applications in the install folder, there may be other parts that load and when you move the actual app you change the path to the accessories breaking them. You can make an alias and drag it to the desktop or in the case of OSX and the dock you can drag the app to the dock and it will automatically make an alias in the dock. Oh yes, the ? mark symbols in OS9 stand for the help files and are not a motherboard problem.
Bad News for us Mac G3-G4 users - no more 120GB Hard Drives
I had a hunch that this day would come. Most of you know that the largest hard drive you can install on a G4 prior to the 2002 QuickSilver was 132GB's. Practically that means that the largest drive you can install on the stock bus of the G3 or G4 is 120GB's. We have sold many hundreds of this size drive over the past years. It seems that everyone has stopped producing them moving up to the 160GB and larger. These of course do not format properly. We can still get 80 GB drives and a pair of them will do most people nicely but if you really needed that extra space, then your affordable option is to go to the SATA card and drives that do not have the limit problems. We are working on a lower cost solution. Watch our feature pages and store. In the meanwhile we were able to find a small supply of 120GB Reburbished Hitachi Drives. I would use these as data drives and put in a new 80 as my main drive. Oh yes, let me add that formatting a 160 or larger to the 128GB it ends up is a bad idea. The drives don't last long set up that way. I am not sure why.
Drive Formatting Safety
We recently added a gizmo to our small arsenal of tools that allows us to automatically format drives to Department of Defense level security. If you format lots of drives like we do then you might want to look into one. It is called the Drive eRazer and is available from Wiebtech.com. It really doesn't do anything you can't do on your computer using the Mac disk utilities, except that it doesn't tie up a computer to do it.
Psst, Hey Buddy, want to buy a watch?
I still have an unfiltered E-mailbox I set up many years ago. It lets me see how much spam is being produced and see what viruses and other crap PC users are getting sent. The account averages around 430 messages a day and none are to me. I haven't advertised this email address in over 10 years which is long in Net Years. What astounds me is that these guys keep doing this because idiots evidently are still clicking on the links so they are still getting paid. I am not sure about you but I wouldn't buy a Rolex from a guy in an alley, or ED medication from Russia or China, or refinance from someone who can't spell it from Zaire. If you must try the Hoodia diet aids, go to Walgreens. If you get crap like this in your email box, don't open it. It probably has an image linked that lets the sender know you are looking at the mail. Delete it without opening, and have a talk with your idiot friends who are probably still clicking. I am not sure who would buy from someone who starts out their message your Farmacy order is in, but evidently they are still out there. I guess they take the PE pills and then go gambling at the online casino's with the money they saved from lowering the Morttggage, wearing their new Raolex, and sporting their new enlargement.
Can I use Leopard's Time Machine with my non-Apple network drive?
One of our customers gave us this tip.
James Buttle writes: Time Machine
Here is the full how to and why it can work on this link http://www.macinstruct.com/node/234
To make a long story short you simply open terminal and type or copy and paste in the following:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
As you can see it simply shows the "unsupported" Network Volumes. You can even use a FAT32 volume for Time Machine using this command. Thanks James!
Power Macintosh G4 Upgrades Page - this links directly into our online store with links for all the goodies you will need to upgrade your system
Got the TurboTax Blues?
The latest version of TurboTax for Mac requires a G3 or better processor, 256MB of ram, and Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger. Let me first say that 256MB or ram is not enough really to run the operating system by itself. 384 would get you by but 512MB or more is what you really need. We carry the ram and the OSX Tiger software (see our Memory or Software section of our store) and can help you upgrade your machine or if needed sell you an affordable qualifying system. We are here to help!
We just got a better buy on both 256 and 512MB Mac compatible SDRAM. Check out our lower prices.
Do you need the CD version of Tiger?
Give us a call when you are ready to order and we will supply the CD version at your request.
I can make any Sawtooth or later G4 Leopard Compatible
I sometimes hear of a computer sales person telling a customer to forget that old machine it can't run the latest operating system. Granted these days the little $599 Mini looks real attractive. Of course you have to add a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, to the price plus tax and shipping. But it is still a good buy for many folks. For some though that need to run the odd older Mac app or already have investment in their old G4 tower like lots of ram and larger hard drive or processor upgrade. I still like to boot into OS9 to run an application or two, and that is something none of the new Macs can do at any price.
What Leopard needs that most don't have is an 867mhz or faster G4 processor. The Sonnet 1 ghz G4 Processor upgrade meets that need and at less than $175 shipped it makes short work of not having fast enough processor and of course for a bit more you can go even faster. The second thing is a Quartz Extreme support Graphics Card. Most all early G4's have the 16MB ATI AGP Graphics Card. Our NVIDIA 5200 128MB Graphics Card not only supports Quartz Extreme, its 5200 GPU also supports core video and is only $99.77 shipped. Of course you may need to add a bit more ram, perhaps a DVD burner, USB2 Card, Wireless Card etc. You can easily extend the life of your old trusty G4 for less money than buying new and run the latest operating system if you choose. You can do this yourself but if you would rather you can ship your unit here and have us install the upgrades for only a few dollars more, plus get your machine thoroughly cleaned and tested.
Do you have less than an 867 mhz G4 and want to run Leopard?
I recently added a program to our OSX Kitchen Sink 2008 1st Qtr Edition called Leopard Assist. It allows you to install Leopard on some earlier G4 systems. I know that Leopard would run okay on a iMac G4 700 or 800 for example with enough ram. Click on the link to go to the web site and download it yourself.
OSX - To Journal or not to Journal
I had someone ask about Journaling. If you run a server you already probably know about this and have it on your server since it gives you a bit of extra protection and reliability. If you hadn't noticed it became an option for your Mac Extended Hard Drive starting in Panther. Next time you repair permissions using the disk utility in Tiger look at the screen and you may noticing the Journaling option button. I have a rule of thumb about Journaling. I turn it on my boot drive and off on my data drives. What it does is keep additional information as you use your hard drive. In the event of a power dip or crash when you power back up it uses this info to restore the drive. Some folks think that everything should have it turned on but it costs speed. If you use your data drive for video project work for example it slows down the drive access enough it may cause you problems. Burning large amounts of data to an optical may be slowed down enough you may have a failure is another reason you may want to turn it off. Since the drive utility makes it easy to turn on an off you may want to use this to your advantage. Turn it off when you need max performance and on the rest of the time for safety.
We are in the process of testing all of our upgrades and equipment with OSX 10.5 Leopard. See my tech tips. Check the item descriptions for more details. Not sure if an item will work with the latest OS X 10.5, give us a call before ordering. It will be a few days before we are selling the Leopard software. Thanks.
Power Macintosh G4 Upgrades Page - this links directly into our online store with links for all the goodies you will need to upgrade your system
Leopard OSX Update 10.5.8
As usual I recommend you review the MacFixit.com Website about the trouble folks are having with the update before installing. The link to Apple's download page is here. I have tested it with our systems and things seem just fine. As always I will run the disk utility and repair permissions before installing.
Leopard OSX - Testing in Progress! Apple's Leopard requirements
I got my copy of Leopard OS10.5 Saturday morning and installed and began testing it on our equipment. My first surprise was that it wouldn't install on a QuickSilver 800 I had on the bench (yeah I read the requirements but I thought it still would let me install). The installer refused. I installed a fast 1.5Ghz and tried again. It installed perfectly from our Pioneer A12 SuperDrive unit we sell which recognizes it straight up with no patches. I installed it on the Seagate 120GB drives we sell. I tested our NVIDIA 5200 AGP card and it reports Hardware Accelerated and Quartz Extreme. Our USB 2 5 port card also reports as a USB 2 High Speed Bus and gives good transfer rates. I have since ran Leopard on a 533 mhz Digital Audio w/768mb of ram. It ran okay but was sluggish.
Leopard actually runs okay on processors slower than 867 mhz as long as you have sufficient ram. Apple put a gotcha in the installer. Get someone with a qualifying system to connect your system in Firewire Target mode and install that way, or use Carbon Copy Cloner from a Firewire drive with an installation on it.
I put back the 800 mhz Processor after some initial testing and once installed Leopard runs just fine on it. Apple put a gotcha in it that really is un-necessary in my opinion. Someone will come out with a hack soon enough to let you install it on older slower machines. Performance wasn't bad with 1 gb of memory. I guess they want to force us to buy new hardware. The Sonnet 1 Ghz and above or the fast processor is a great upgrade and it works okay with the installer. They set the minimum processor install at 867mhz and I guess it looks for that speed of processor. Do note the problem with DVD playback noted below on systems with 16mb video cards.
Password and Keychain Grief?
Download the Login and Keychain Update from the Apple web site. This has been superceded by the 10.5.1 update.
What No Classic Mode in Leopard?
One other major gotcha for many folks is that Leopard does NOT HAVE A CLASSIC MODE. If you must run an older program you can boot back into 9.2 on dual bootable machines and use your program. If your computer is not 9 bootable then you had best keep Tiger around a while longer. I think some folks will probably keep a second drive with Tiger and classic installed if they must run a classic application and they have a system that only boots in X.
No DVD PlayBack?
Unless you have a 32MB Quartz Extreme qualified Video Card, the DVD Player refuses to work. I tested a 16MB stock ADC ATI Radeon Card and the DVD player failed. It works fine with our NVIDIA 5200 Upgrade Cards or a stock 32MB NVIDIA or RADEON Card as long as they qualify for Quartz Extreme. It is kinda cool with visual image chapter markers.
I will not list the G4 Sawtooth, Gigabit Ethernet, or Digital Audio systems on our web site as Leopard compatible though many of them will run it just fine if they have faster than 867 mhz processors. The DVD playback will not work on these models without a graphics card upgrade. Any of the models with the faster processors will run Leopard and with the addition of the NVIDIA 128MB Upgrade Card will run great and allow DVD playback with the newer player.
No Modem?
I have been told by one of our customers that Leopard disabled his ability to use his modem on several of his systems he has installed on.
Leopard's Time Machine requires a high capacity second drive or an External
I tested our Silver Bullet Hard Drives during the install and successfully cloned the install using the more advanced version 3.0 of the Carbon Copy Cloner program. The Time Machine recognizes the drive straight up. We do recommend you reformat the drive using Leopard's disk utility. A large internal hard drive would also work but the early G4's have the 120GB limit. You are better off with a large capacity external Firewire Drive like our FAN COOLED Silver Bullets, or consider adding a SATA Card and one or two drive up to 1 Terabyte in capacity.
Leopard Precautions
Make sure you read MacFixit.com notes before installing. They recommend strongly new install or archive and install rather than upgrade. Also remember to backup any crucial data (or better yet keep a cloned copy of your old install). Run drive repair and repair permissions before starting the install.
Leopard INCOMPATIBLE PROGRAMS - You best check first if you work on your Mac
Before you jump out there and install Leopard, if you use your system for work, you might want to note that more than a couple of programs will not run under Leopard until the software manufacturer releases an upgrade. Adobe CS3 problems may put a cramp in a lot of peoples ability to work, as may QuickBooks Pro 2007, or Adobe Acrobat 7 users not being able to print. MacRumors.com has thoughfully put up a list of incompatible programs as well as listed some programs that just have certain issues. They also include links for many of the software manufacturers statements page. You probably will find this page helpful and you may want to hold off updating to Leopard if you are a heavy user of these incompatible programs until the companies release an update.
Add Gigabit Ethernet Speed to OS8.6 - OSX!
Gigabit Ethernet PCI Card for the Mac!
Leopard Tested! I tested this card on a G3 Desktop in OS8.6 on our own network. This card reduces latency even on slower 100 base networks. Now with OS 8.6, OS9 and X drivers! Leave it to Headgap to bring you a bargain priced high quality 10/100/1000 base-T Ethernet Card! If you are transferring lots of files across your network you may want to add this card. This card NOW WORKS IN OS8.6, 9 and X and classic mode. Folks moving large multimedia files, video etc. on a 1000 base-T network will benefit from this high performance card. This A-8110S PCI ethernet card adheres to IEEE 802.3, 802.3u, and 802.3ab standards. This Realtek Chipset PCI 10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet adapter is a high-bandwidth network adapter that auto-senses 10/100/1000Mbps connection speed, half/full-duplex modes, and supports Wake-On-LAN and remote Wake-UP support. LEDs: Four (4) Green LEDs support for display 1000Link, 100Link, 10Link Activity Status. REQUIRES G3 or G4 RUNNING OS8.6, OS9, OSX 10.2 or later with available PCI Slot Mac drivers included on CD by us. Compare at $79.99 Our $24.77 price includes shipping. NETWORKING section of the store.
Sonnet's new Encore/MDX G4 Duet 1.8 ghz Dual Processors in a Mirror Door G4
I finally got around to installing one of Sonnet's new Encore/MDX G4 Duet 1.8 ghz Dual Processors in a Mirror Door. The unit in question had a dual 1 ghz processor originally and it would work about 10 minutes before the fans would start roaring and about 5 minutes later would shut down. The guy was working by leaving the door open and laying a small 6 or 8" desk fan on the processor. The new processor went in easily with the detailed pictured instructions that Sonnet is famous for. I like to not got the firmware updated since the stock processor kept shutting down until I used his fan trick. That is definitely one gotcha in this unit. Since they use a cooler faster 7447 series processor the firmware must be updated before the Sonnet processor can be installed. Once installed the cooler and faster running Sonnet is a joy. No more roaring fans!! The fellow has been back working several weeks now and is very happy. Worth every penny he says. This may be a fix for your noisy Mirror Door and will substantially improve performance for you as well. You can order them online from the accelerator/G4 AGP section of our online store.
WORTH REPEATING - HAVING TROUBLE GETTING A USB ITEM TO SHOW UP? Large size thumbdrives, cameras etc. not working?
Some cameras, scanners and newer printers (and even some of the larger thumb drives) seem to draw more power than can be supplies via the PCI USB Card or even the built in port on some models. Some even say they will not work with a card and require "native USB". Most times it is because the device tries to draw more power than the bus can supply. The card keeps itself from damage by shutting down. Unplugging the device and restarting the machine usually fixes it but sometimes zapping the pram is required to restore a shut down port. The solution is a GOOD POWERED HUB. The hub we carry is good for both USB 1.1 and 2.0 devices and supplies 2.+ AMPs of additional power. This makes many problems go away. Don't be suckered into buying a lower powered hub at a bargain price. 450 milliamps is not enough for many high demand items.
If a device doesn't work with one of our USB2 cards and you have tried a high powered hub, most likely the problem is software related or device related. If your iPod isn't mounting make sure you have the latest iPod software installed before looking for other problems. It is amazing how well things work when the proper software is installed. See the Firewire/USB area for more tips.
They don't work. Okay well they don't work well enough to suit me anyway. I don't like things that skip and delay. They are probably okay for the net browsing etc. but if you use your system for work, I don't think you will like them either. If you find one that doesn't hiccup let me know. I would like it if they worked as well as wired.
StanStodden writes: I have been using the Microsoft Wireless 4000 set/system for about 2 months. The keyboard shortcuts and all work with a mac and flawless I might add. The set sells at Sams Wholesale for about $70. You should have someone test it out. It really works great!!
Bob: Unfortunately we don't have a deal with Microsoft so I don't carry their products, but most folks can probably buy them at the local discounter. I take it Stan is using them in OSX. I wonder if they work at all in 9 or if you can hold the shift key down and use Safeboot mode etc. Thanks for the tip, Stan we appreciate it.
Adobe has raised the requirements to run CS3 applications. The biggest change that effects most people is the 64MB VRAM. We now stock 3 different Video Cards for your G4 system so that you can meet or exceed the requirements. Our new best selling 128MB card features the NVIDIA 5200 Graphics Engine and supports CORE imaging and both DVI and VGA out. At a delivered price of less than $100 it makes it quite the buy. Of course your system will probably exceed the processor and memory requirements but from practical experience I can tell you that you will also want as much ram and you can afford and as fast a processor as you can get. These are all easy upgrades for you to perform. We generally send pictured instructions but you can always call our tech support line and we will walk you through any problems that may arise.
I assume all of you are running with a second drive or external bootable and have a cloned copy of your install. Lets say you just updated to 10.4.10 and stuff stopped working or the system is munged up period. A fast fix that won't interfere with your current files in the User or Applications folders is simply to boot from your backup and use Carbon Copy Cloner to ONLY REPLACE the Library and System Folders. You will be back up with the older working version of the OS in short order and you won't lose any changes. Make sure you run repair permissions after you complete the clone.
OSX Tiger 10.4.11 Update (or any version update for that matter) WAIT!
I just downloaded the COMBO UPDATE and will be installing it in a few systems. Remember about my rule of running the disk utility and repairing permissions before and after a major install! Also download the COMBO UPDATE rather than let the system update itself, when you decide to attempt this install or any major update. This looks like a fairly major install after reviewing the changes. I will be watching MacFixit as usual to review what problems are having before I jump in. One of our techs installed it on his personal Sawtooth G4 machine and have had no problems. I did read through the problems folks were having on MacFixit.com. I will be waiting a while before installing it on machines that we are selling. perhaps 10.4.11 will be coming soon. Too many bugs in this one.
TIP: If you aren't keeping a bootable backup of your system, you are asking for trouble. Add a second hard drive either internally or externally and make a bootable backup of your system with Carbon Copy Cloner.
Almost TWICE AS FAST as your stock IDE bus and drive! Serial ATA or SATA hard drives are getting cheaper and cheaper these days and they offer better performance. We now are offering our G4's (or any compatible system for that matter) with a Tempo SATA Card and Hitachi or Seagate SATA Hard Drives as an install option. I quickly tested copying a 60MB folder on both our regular Hitachi 80GB 7200 rpm IDE drives and the new 250GB Hitachi SATA Drive and found that the SATA was almost TWICE AS FAST. You folks that deal with large files all the time, like musicians, artists, photographers and videographers will want to seriously consider this option. Works equally well in 9 and X and no drivers are required. I have installed drive sizes up to the new Seagate 750GB and they work perfectly. OS9 users will have to remember the 190GB partition limit for bootable partitions though. See the new IntDrivesSATA section of the online store. We now stock Seagate SATA Drives from 160GB to 750GB.
New Feature - Add a 2 Port SATA Card and 1 Terabyte SATA Drive to any G4. Access your data twice as fast with drive sizes up to 2 Terabyte all internally in your G4! See the IntDrivesSATA section of the store.
When we installed our T1 for our network one of my goals was to also install a digital phone system. I can't say I did much as Cheryn picked out the phone system, figured out how many lines to add to meet our increased needs and contacted the folks at WorldSpice (Best Memphis Service Provider). We ran CAT5 cable from our rack (they split them into multiple lines) and in less than 30 minutes they had us connected. We have added a dedicated tech line with its own phonemail at 405-601-5288, but otherwise our phone numbers stayed the same. You will now get our phone mail if you call after hours. We still only answer 9 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday Central Time. I did like the answering service but they are expensive. I always though it was better to talk to a human whenver possible but the price these days is such that we really can't afford to. These new phones have a bunch of new buttons so forgive us if we accidently hang up on your while transfering calls etc for a few days. We will soon get use to them. 5.8 ghz Wireless remotes with a wired base phone on UPS backup and now with more lines to take your calls.
One note of caution: Qwest our existing provider received notice of our changeover weeks in advance. They delayed our Toll Free line rollover for 24 to 36 hours and as I understand it they are about the only ones who practice this policy. I hope you were not inconvenienced by this and thank you if you dialed our regular long distance number and paid for the call during this time.
In March of 1986 Operator Headgap BBS went online here in Memphis TN for the first time. We have been online for 21 years continously. We have always had dial up lines to access our systems. After the Internet in about 1995 we gradually began cutting down our dialup lines as many more of you started visiting via the web. After reviewing our phone bills and system I have finally decided to take down our last dialup line. At about $25 a month only 2 or 3 folks a month are using the dialup line, and even then only once in a while. It saddens me a bit but the world does change and we have to also. I am sure most of you probably didn't know you could use dialup to access most of the system features and hope you will continue to visit via TCP/IP over the Internet.
Sonnet Encore/ST G4 Duet - DUAL (or single) G4 1.8 or 1.6 GHz Processor Upgrade for QuickSilver G4 OS9 ISSUES?
I recently installed a 1.8 Ghz DUAL Sonnet G4 Processor in a QuickSilver G4 system. I had problems with OS9.2.2. The system would load about 90% and then lock up. I replaced the system folder with a fresh install etc but to no avail. I finally got to thinking about where it was locking up (it worked great in X though). I know that they use the 7447 Freescale and I used to have trouble with the GigaDesigns chips in 9. They recommended you remove the MultiProcessor folder from the 9 Extensions and only run the unit as a single processor. That is one of the reasons I quit buying them. I did pull the MP folder out and sure enough the system booted normally. I finally gave Sonnet a call and the tech told me that the install CD doesn't always upgrade the MP folder on some models. He sent me the modified file and once I put it in the extension folder in place of the old one the system worked fine with both processors once again. If you need the file download it from me at: http://resale.headgap.com/AppleCPUPlugins.sitx. Since it only affects a few models they are not going to fix the installer and wait for you to have trouble and call in. Sorry about the SITX compression making you boot into X to uncompress to install it in 9 but that is the way I received it. I had previously sent back several processors rather than mess with them for credit costing both Sonnet and me. You would think a quick note in the box might be in order but I guess it may be fairly rare.
P.S. This also applies to any Sonnet processor that requires their firmware update including the Single 1.8 or 1.6 processors.
We just got a good buy on some ATI Radeon 7000 PCI 32MB Graphics Cards. These are great for adding a second monitor in any Mac with a PCI slot including PowerMac 7200's up to the early PCI based G5's. In the G4 and early G5's these cards are great for adding a second pallet monitor. In the Beige G3 and Blue and White G3 they are a great card for your primary monitor. They work straight up with the built in ATI drivers in the classic OSes and perfectly well in all versions of X. They can be set up to display DVD movies with the appropriate DVD drive and drivers even on the older Beige G3's. See our monitor/video section or call and ask.
With Tiger Apple introduced Core Support. Not many older graphics cards have Core Support even if they do have a lot of memory. It takes one of the newer Graphics Engines to handle it. We now stock a few replacement cards that offer this feature and they really make a big improvement in high end programs. OSX offloads its graphics handling to the GPU of these cards allowing the processor to do its job and letting the graphics card do what it does best. See our monitors/video section or give us a call.
Another lower level of graphics support is called Quartz Extreme. They say that OSX speeds up 10-15% with a Quartz Extreme enabled graphics card. The requirements are much less (32MB of VRAM) in a normal AGP Graphics Card will do the trick. Unfortunately there were lots of G4 machines sold with the 16MB card. These work fine but for less than a $100 you can pick up a bit of speed in OSX if your card is enabled.
Unfortunately for Mac users there are not too many choices out there when it comes to these cards. You might be able to find a good used pull from a later model G4 that meets the Quartz Extreme requiresments but they aren't usually cheap. Finding a Core Enabled Card means you shell out over $250 for an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition which are in short supply. Check with us we may have alternatives that are more affordable and will meet your needs.
Power Macintosh G4 Upgrades Page - this links directly into our online store with links for all the goodies you will need to upgrade your system
If you don't have a Pioneer SuperDrive you can get one from us. The latest Dual Layer DVD Burner is now in stock. I have been doing this in OSX 10.4+ since the best tools these days are for OSX. I am not sure how far back you can go but suspect this would work well even in Jaguar. I use a program called Mac The Ripper 2.6.6. This version might even be on the OSX Kitchen Sink in the Utilities folder. Run this program to pull your movie to your hard drive in what they call a Video TS folder. Once you have that done load up Toast Titanium 7 or later and select Video (one gotcha on Toast 7 is that it requires a G4 processor). Make sure you select compress to fit. I recommend you use DVD-R media. The +R media doesn't work on many of the older DVD players. The -R is better supported.
You can also play the ripped Video TS folder on Apple's DVD Player via File - Open Video_TS Folder and then navigate to the ripped folder. This is great if you want to leave a video on your PowerBook so you don't have to risk carrying the DVD's around.
Handbrake is another DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter for OS X 10.3.9 and later. You can use this to rip MP4 files and use them in the movie section of your iTunes. Since you can compress the devil out of the files using this program it would enable you to store a library of Movies on your system. My tech Scott tells me that he doesn't like Handbrake since there are too many options and it is difficult unless you are an expert on how to set them up. Instant Handbrake is suppose to be setup for us less brainy types but he says he prefers iSquint. After using it I have to agree and particularly like the help file. Believe it or not you can get full length movie down to a gigabyte or less and still have decent viewing quality.
Since your Video TS folder has multiple VOB files you may want to join them all in one file (after compressing them with iSquint) so that you can place your movie in your iTunes Movie Libary. I use Ajoiner http://www.digicowsoftware.com/detail?_app=AJoiner
Just imagine having all of your kids favorite movies in your iTunes library so all they have to do is point and click to play there favorites.
If you are running OSX you likely downloaded the update to take care of the early daylight savings time issue. For OS8 and 9 you will need to turn off the set daylight savings time automatically and turn it on manually from the Date & Time Control Panel.
PROCESSOR UPGRADES & FINAL CUT PRO - Compatibility Issues?
My favorite new processor and I think the best value for the money is the 1.5 Ghz Mercury Processor. It is a 7455 series chip (same as Apple used in many later models only faster). It has 2 MB of Level 3 Cache making it almost as fast as Sonnet's 1.8 ghz which only has Level 2 cache. The gotcha though is some programs like Final Cut Pro actually call to the built in reporting software to check the processors speed to insure it qualifies to run the program. The Fast Mac and some other processors sometimes do not report their speeds properly even though they are running it. Apple System Profiler may show 0 or some odd number. This keeps Final Cut and other software from running. If you download GigaDesign's GigaMeter 1.01 for OSX and run it this problem will go away. http://www.gigadesigns.com/eproducts/Giga_Meter_1[1].0.1.zip
Another patch available that lets you circumvent this if the above solution doesn't work for you. http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Tips/fcp/fcp.html will give you the skinny on the patch and a download link for it. This may also be causing other high end software programs not to work properly and is worth trying before giving up on a processor upgrade.
IN OS9: To view the processor type, processor speed, bus speed, Level 1 cache size, L2 cache size/speed, and L3 cache size/speed (displayed only when L3 cache is present on processor upgrade card) I like and use a utility from Sonnet. It is called Metronome and I usually place it in the Apple Menu Item folder inside the system folder for easy menu access. http://sonnettech.com/downloads/software/metronome_v30.sit
If you install the G4 Firmware Update from the Encore install software it will even report the clock speed properly in Apple System Profiler. There is a bug however and you will have sound problems on Digital Audio Systems when you have more than 1 gb of ram in which case I wouldn't install the Firmware update. It doesn't bother any other G4 system and works just fine even on the digital audio units if you keep your ram under 1 GB.
WINTERTIME COLD - how not to damage a perfectly good piece of electronics
When pulling a system in from an unheated room (or UPS or FedX Truck) let the machine come up to room temperature before firing it up for the first time. You see moisture condenses on the little electronic components. When the unit has warmed up to room temperature that moisture evaporates. You can damage or destroy a hard drive by being impatient. I too have to wait sometimes as our storage facility isn't as warm and toasty as our office is. Unpack the unit (this lets it warm up faster when you get all of those insulating peanuts etc. off of it.) and let it sit for an hour or two before plugging it in.
Most of you know what PHISHING is. If you don't you may be a victim. Mostly they work by email and it may look like bank or credit card company has sent you an important notice about your account. The link takes you to a web site that looks your bank or card company, but that is the deception. The site is hosted most likely on some out of the country server. They ask you to confirm your information. Your real card company or bank would never do this.
The latest phishing scam I have seen is a bit more diabolical. Say you are in a discussion group, or chat and are discussing a piece of software or hardware you have been eyeing. Someone in the chat sends you a link to where you can save 15 or 20 percent on the purchase (sounds reasonable doesn't it). Again the link goes to a place that has nothing to do with legit sales. They get your card data and you get nothing but a lot of illegitimate charges to your account. Don't be a phish. Always be suspicious if you don't know the person giving you the link. Even if a friend sends the link, it doesn't hurt to do a bit of additional checking before making a purchase.
If you just got one of the new iPods for Christmas you might notice they don't have Firewire connectivity. I got an iPod Shuffle and I can't use it with my older version of OSX. It requires Panther 10.3.9 or later and you really need a USB2.0 connection unless you have a lot of spare time to wait for your files to transfer. The good news is we sell a couple low priced USB2.0 cards that will work in any open PCI slot on B&W G3 and G4 Towers, and it works perfectly with your iPod. We also sell the OSX software should you need to upgrade your version. Let us know if you need to upgrade your system and we will be glad to help.
BURN DVD's IN OS9 (Oh Roxio why haste though forsaken us?):
You need the full version of Toast Titanium 5 if you can find a used copy. It is also required for making VCD's and other exotic formats. This runs in both 9 and X but obviously doesn't have some of the advanced features and support the 6 version does which is OSX only. They appear to have removed the link, and I cannot find any information at all about version 5 any longer. It seems Roxio has abandoned the OS9 market.
It looks like Charismac's Discribe is the only OS9 compatible DVD burning software available these days. http://www.charismac.com/discribe/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=79&Itemid=62 You can download a free demo and it costs $69.95
Operator Headgap has moved!
After 26 years in Memphis Tennessee we have moved to new facilities in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. We are back in operations and shipping again Wednesday January 2nd. Our toll free number will remain the same 1-877-639-1543. Our direct phone lines will be 1-405-601-5288 and you will need to use this line for technical support or if you are in Canada. Our new fax line will be 1-405-445-0796. Please make a note of these changes. It will take us a while to change the dozens of web pages we have with the old numbers so bear with us.
In January 2013, we were able to upgrade and are now offering our services at a higher rate of speed. We are now at 20+ MBPS up and down via Cox.net business in OKC, OK. Much thanks to WorldSpice.net who still handle our DNS and mail. They are without a doubt the best service provider in Memphis, Tennessee.
I think Speakeasy.net has one of the best and simplest testers going and it allows you to check our upload and download times to different parts of the country. http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/.
OSX Tiger 10.4.x Update (or any version update for that matter)
Just downloaded the COMBO UPDATE and will be installing it in a few systems this week. Remember about my rule of running the disk utility and repairing permissions before and after a major install! Also download the COMBO UPDATE rather than let the system update itself, when you decide to attempt this install. This looks like a fairly major install after reviewing the changes. I will be watching MacFixit as usual to review what problems are having before I jump in. One of our techs installed it on his personal Sawtooth G4 machine and I have since installed it in a Digital Audio and we have had no problems. I did read through the problems folks were having on MacFixit.com. Apparently is can break some of the Wireless connectivity. Generally most problems can be fixed by deleting the associated plist file and resetting the preferences.
iTunes 7 Tip
I have heard that if you have aftermarket visualizers installed in your iTunes you need to remove them before upgrading to iTunes 7. If not you may have to reinstall your X.
WHEN BOOTED FROM 9 do not throw away or move the little files that OSX puts on the desktop! I thought most folks knew that you should not mess with those files, but we have had several neatniks decide that it would be a good idea to put all of that stuff in a folder named OSX. Imagine their suprise when OSX failed to boot and they had to reinstall X. We named the problem after the first person to do it that we had to fix. Chucking your OSX install is now part of our vocabulary.
Many times when you are ready to upgrade your old system may not be worth much, especially to a dealer who is used to buying in quantity at wholesale prices and has the units shipped in bulk truck freight. Boxing and shipping your old system costs a few dollars. Here lately we have been having more trouble locating older systems people are still buying. We will begin offering trade-ins for certain older systems. The following are on the list: PowerMac G4, iMac G4, QuickSilver G4, Blue & White (REV 2 Only), G3 Desktops, PowerMac 7300, Quadra or Centris 650, and Mac IICI's. The units need to be cosmetically in good condition and working (at least chiming). Trade in value will vary from the top price for extra clean, that exceed stock configurations and down for less that prime units. Email: email@example.com for quotes.
We are also purchasing good used Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II ADB Mice, working StyleWriters, and Zip Drives.
One of my servers processors failed over the weekend. The symptoms were odd leaving me to think the hard drive was corrupted but after replacing the file with a backup I had the same problems. Changing out the processor fixed those problems even on the earlier system folder. The room this unit resides in was getting over 76 degrees. While I have many fans in place I can't help but think this may have contributed. WIth things running a bit warmer, make sure your computer has plenty of ventilation around it, and move any objects that may block airflow. A small desk fan nearby blowing over the system is a good idea especially if you are turning up the thermostat to save a buck or two.
We recommend and use a program called ThinkFree. It opens and saves .doc, .xls, and .ppt files (word, excel, and powerpoint), allowing you to open and work on Office files without having to shell out the big bucks to Bill. Here is a link to the software archive page so you can download the versions for the older OSes including 8.6 through 9.2. http://product.thinkfree.com/download/dl_download_arch.html
TIP: - you can open the .doc file using ThinkFree and then save it out to .rtf format if you want to use the information in other word processors like Appleworks.
We have had so many folks ask why we didn't carry any of the new Flat Panel LCD type monitors for Macs. Frankly the Sunday Ads should tell you why. There are dozens on sale with rebates every week at most of the major discounters. What we didn't really think about though is that many of you don't have easy access to the discounters and also you don't have the knowledge on which one is a decent quality unit that will work with your Mac. When we needed to replace some of our aging CRT monitors we checked the wholesale market and found several with decent specs at reasonable prices. We presently have picked out two units that I consider deluxe models. We are pleased with our selections, and both units exceeded our expectations. We have priced them sharply and include shipping in our price. Some of the bargain units out there are dim and or fuzzy and have slow response times. These units are sharp, bright and fast and we think they are a good value for your dollar. They both have standard 15 pin HD15 VGA connectors so they work straight up with Blue and White G3's and later. With our adapter they will even work with the early PowerPC's although you may want to up your video ram.
Cheryn chose the 19" WIDE SCREEN model to use with her system. The extra real estate lets her have several applications open at once and she can easily display program pallets along with her work. If you have the scratch we think you can't go wrong with this unit. I chose the more conservative 17". It took me a while to get used to how bright it is but then I realized that as sharp as the images and text are an work in the maximum 1280 x 1024 and now I have a lot more space on my screen as well.
One of the other benefits of these units over CRT is that they draw MUCH LESS POWER and don't generate near the heat. Since we leave our systems on 24/7 it may not take so long to recover our investment in power savings not to mention how much cooler they run. You don't really think about that until you have 3 monitors on your server rack with a small fan blowing the hot air out during the summer. What also pleases me is that I will now have more battery backup time should our power drop.
Sonnet Encore/ST G4 Duet Dual Processor Card GOTCHA! - and fix?
We have built a few systems with the new and lightning fast Sonnet Encore/ST G4 Duet dual processor card. If you are installing one you realize quickly that the motherboard screw near the socket is too tall and interferes with the cooling fan connectors. Initially I just left out the screw since the motherboard is in there pretty solid, but after a problem or two I realized the extra weight of the processor causes a lot more pressure on the socket. I have since learned to replace the screw with a flat head variety. I think Sonnet should include this with the processor.
The real problem though is that the heat sink of the processor contacts the optical housing. I learned to remove the zip screw and cover the aluminum of that section with a small strip of packing tape. It insulates if the heat sink should make contact with the housing with the door closed. I spent a lot of time testing the systems with the doors open and would have no problem. After closing the door the system would refuse to chime. For whatever reason I expect it is not a good idea to ground the heat sink against the chassis. The tape solves the problem. Sonnet could have helped if they would have shaved a 1/16 off of the heat sink, but I expect having a little more mass for cooling is a good thing. Maybe they will send a little vinyl label or something to insulate the housing. I have only experiencedå this in the Sawtooth, and Gigabit Ethernet G4's. I have not installed one yet in the Digital Audio, or Quicksilver but now I know what to watch for and so do you. Perhaps this will help you if you are having trouble.
About the only tax program for the Mac requires OSX. It was bound to happen. Many of us have had to start running X to be able to access certain web sites, or use some program or other. If you own a G3 or better you are in luck. We can easily help you upgrade your system to X and still enable you to boot back into 9.2 (or older). We can sell you the software and you can install it yourself or we can preinstall it on a replacement hard drive so all you have to do is install the hard drive. This isn't as expensive as you might think. Give us a call.
Way too many of you call after you have munged your OSX system up by running the automatic updater. You can get away with this if you have a second drive with a cloned backup that you can use to restore. Most of you don't, so heed my warning.
ALWAYS RUN THE BUILT IN DISK UTILITY OR SYSTEM OPTIMIZER AND REPAIR PERMISSIONS BEFORE & AFTER INSTALLING UPDATES. I never do a major OS update from the built in updater and always download the COMBINED UPDATE instead. Even at that I wait a few days and visit MacFixit to see what problems folks are having. If you do this you will have less trouble. The small Application updates, security updates etc. are fine to run from the updater, but again always always run repair permissions before and after installing software. If you do kill your X then be prepared to reinstall from the installer disks. Run the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu of the installer disk and run Disk Repair first though.
There are still no active viruses or spyware for OSX. There are only rumors of possible ones. If you must send $50 to someone send it to me instead of these lying, cheating virus software producers. Sure the programs find viruses in your email but they are PC viruses and none effect the Mac. I personally don't worry about PC users since they are already infected anyway. There is an average of 3 new PC viruses/spyware/trojans a day. No matter how up to date the PC virus software is, they are already infected.
As far as I can tell the only way to keep viruses and spyware off your Windows PC is to never plug it in. The less you use it the better off you are.
Not only can you not boot into 9, you cannot even use classic mode with the new Intel Macs. If you are using old software you will want to pass these systems up. If you are new to Mac or never use old software then they may be the system for you. Keep in mind while Apple says they are 2 times faster that is only true if you are using Applications that are optimized for theIntel processor. Most Pro Apps like any Adobe Product will be slower, until they release an Intel optimized version. If you work for a living you may want to avoid buying one until the software catches up or locate one of the remaining real G5 processored systems.
Power Macintosh G4 Upgrades Page - this links directly into our online store with links for all the goodies you will need to upgrade your system
Most of you that read my tips know that I am a Hitachi fan and until something changes they will be my hard drive of choice. Maxtor was always second on my list, with Seagate always 3rd. Western Digital sucks period. The reason I think my opinion should count is that out of the 1000's of systems we get per year we pull and test the drives out of each one. I see what goes out in the trash. I felt about the same way when Maxtor bought Quantum, which was my old number 2. I hope Seagate keeps the quality control that Maxtor had and continues to produce at least that quality of mechanism. I shudder to think about web access to jumper charts and other drive info during the changeover. Some folks look at the specs on how a drive is rated which are made up by the factories and are meaningless. Other site the warranty, and those with the longest being the best drives to have. Not with my data. What good is a warranty when my server is offline and I am losing business, or I have to spend half a day recovering my personal system.
Apple's new iLife and iWork 06 require a G4 Processor and a DVD Player
Before buying the new iLife 06 package for your trusty old iMac you may want to just stick with your 05 version. It seems the new iLife won't let you install it on a G3 system. The new software is also on DVD which leaves out a few folks as well. If you have a G4 Tower, iMac G4 or G4 PowerBook that is otherwise qualified but without a DVD drive and would rather have an external DVD drive call Cheryn and tell her you want the FireWire External DVD Drive for $69.77. We will build you one using a good new Firewire housing and a genuine "Apple" 8X DVD refurbished drive. You will be able to boot from your Tiger OSX Install DVD. This only works on FIreWire equipped systems. This will not work for the Blue & Whites or early Yikes G4's which have a known boot problem with Firewire. We also stock the Pioneer SuperDrive's and include pictured install instructions for all G3, G4 and G5 units capable of taking a full size drive. We include all compatibility upgrades for OS9 and all versions of X above 10.2 as well as Toast 5.2Lite for CD burning. Burn Dual Layer DVD's with your software.
I recently install a 1 Ghz Sonnet G4 Processor in a Sawtooth G4 system. I had problems with it. After a short period of warmup time the machine would make a small hash noise and freeze at random. We do this all the time so I was stumped, trying different processors, ram, etc.
We finally tracked it down to the MACOS rom file. We were installing a version of 9.2.2 that had the MACOS ROM version 9.01. When I went back to my older 8.7 versions the problems went away. The later version of the file works fine with the stock processor. Somewhere in the later rom is a gotcha. If you are having trouble get with us for a fix.
I am not a prophet and Apple doesn't check with me all that often for my opinion these days. That being said I think the conversion to Intel will be much like when Apple went from the 68K processor chips to the PowerPC chips. The operating system changes will be gradual. For a time there will be both types of code in the operating system (they used to call them fat binaries). Eventually though as the line completely changes to Intel the code will be leaned down at some point to only support the new style processors. When this happens classic mode will most likely be gone. If you haven't noticed Apple is already moving this direction not installing classic mode for you on the new machines these days leaving it as an optional install you have to make. Eventually they won't even include the software and the new machines will not even support classic mode.
Apple sure did make a big deal about the G5 being 64 bit and didn't mention the new Intel chips are only 32 bit.
Rumor has it that at some point the new Macs may be able to run both the OSX and Windows as well as Unix all on the same computer allowing you to use most any software package on one machine.
So should you buy a new machine or wait? I think of computers a lot like cars. If your old one is getting you there then why change. If your old car isn't getting you there, you look for a new one or at least a later model in good condition.
When you buy a new Mac these days you have to make choices on what technology you want to leave behind. I can't tell you how many folks have written or called me asking how to make there LaserWriter 300 or their Stylewriter work with their new $1300 to $3200 Mac. To me thats like pulling the old floormats from your 10 year old car and putting them in your new one. Doesn't make sense to me. You can do it if you spend $70 for a serial port adapter and can find a driver or find an old discontinued adapter that allows you to put your printer on the network but you still need a driver and the price for that gizmo many times is almost as much as a new printer. Brother makes new affordable USB printers in both Inkjet and Laser. Buy one when you get your new computer. Sell me your old one and I will refurb it for someone who needs a serial printer to use with their old system.
Not being able to run your old software is why we are still in business. From us you can get a fairly late model computer that has been nicely refurbished and many times updated with faster processors, faster hard drives and better optical drives so it runs close to what a new one will and yet it still allows you to run your old software as well as the new.
If you just got one of the new iPods for Christmas you might notice they don't have Firewire connectivity. I got an iPod Nano and I can't use it with my older version of OSX. It requires Panther 10.3.4 or later and you really need a USB2.0 connection unless you have a lot of spare time to wait for your files to transfer. The good news is we sell a low priced USB2.0 card that will work in any open PCI slot on B&W G3 and G4 Towers, and it works perfectly with your iPod. We also sell the OSX software should you need to upgrade your version. Let us know if you need to upgrade your system and we will be glad to help.
APPLE RELEASES X 10.4.X - Update TIPS
After reviewing Macfixit.com's list of problems that people are having I decided that most of the problems are minor. The list of improvements are many and this is a fairly major update. I still recommend you study up on the problems before starting however.
As always before installing a major update like this instead of using the built in updater I do a few things different. I first check with the suppliers of the aftermarket equipment I run and download any patches or updates. I then download the combo update. To prepare my system I boot from the install disk and run the disk utility from the menu and tell it to repair my drive. I also run repair permissions once that finished.
I then unplug any attached peripherals and take out all media from the optical or zip drive. I then restart and zap the pram twice by holding down the command option and the P and R keys until the system rechimes twice. I then run the combo installer and when it finishes I restart and run the disk utility and repair permissions once again. I then install any updates or patches for the equipment I run and repair permissions again.
Many folks will tell you they just let the Apple Update program install it and had no problems. These people have never had to recover a drive after a bad or aborted install. Take these few extra steps on major system changes or even large application installs and perhaps you will never have to recover a drive either.
TIP: If you aren't keeping a bootable backup of your system, you are asking for trouble. Add a second hard drive either internally or externally and make a bootable backup of your system with Carbon Copy Cloner.
Add a Sweet Multiport to any G4 System Purchase in place of the Zip Drive
for $30
Limited time offer, when you call in your G4 System Order!
Sweet Multiport now available! Add the convenience of ports at your fingertips. The Sweet Multiport installs in the second bay of your G3 or G4 with your system order. Add these ports and have them available at your fingertips, 2 FireWire ports, 1 USB port, 5-in-1 memory card reader, PLUS 2 more ports Firewire and USB available in the rear! Works in 9 or X! Fits in the second front bay (in place of the zip drive if you have one). This kit includes: Sweet Multiport front panel card, Sweet Multiport PCI card, Sweet Multiport inter-connect cable, Mounting bracket and screws, Front faceplate, FireWire and USB cables. The Memory Card Reader supports: CompactFlash, IBM Microdrive, Memory Stick, Secure Digital, MultiMediaCard. No longer available for QuickSilver models.
I recently noticed a "new" Mac dealer selling new Mac units well below market price. I don't know what their scam is but don't be sucker. We at Headgap don't sell new products so we don't directly compete with them, but scamming people hurts all of us. What we offer is upgraded refurbished machines at a fair price. There are plenty of legit dealers (if you are looking for new products) out there and most of you know their names. When you see a web site selling new Macs $100-$200 below what every real dealer does, then you should realize they won't be there for long. Just long enough probably to swindle a few folks and duck out or until they get caught. Perhaps having the server out of the country prevents them from being easily dealt with by the law.
External Firewire & USB Drive Formatting
When you buy external hard drives from us we always format them for Mac OS Extended. This does keep you from connecting to a PC. If you want to use a drive both on a PC and a Mac you need the drive formatted for DOS. I don't recommend this unless you have to work back and forth. The reason is there are not good drive recovery utilities for DOS FireWire/USB Drives (some of you may argue that but our experts can't fix them easily). A photographer friend of mind recently picked up an External Maxtor FireWire Drive at one of the discounters. He put his entire photo shoot on the Maxtor. As things sometimes happen the drive refused to work after he got it back to his studio. He brought it by since I usually recover his drives if he has a problem. I couldn't help him. You see all the Mac drive utilities are for MacOS formatted drives. He took it to a PC shop and spent some money and if anything they probably made things worse. Our resident PC expert was out but when we reached him he was unable to recover it either. He ended up using one of our Silver Bullet Hard Drives and had to reshoot the entire job.
I am fairly certain that if he would have formatted the drive Mac OS Extended before using it I could have easily and quickly fully recovered the data. You see programs like Norton Disk Doctor and Disk Warrior or even Tech Tool Pro can work magic on these external units. If you don't need the PC compatibility make sure you format your external FireWire and USB drives with the Mac OS before you start using them.
We have sold many of our upgraded G4 units that folks use with Final Cut Pro. Keep in mind though that the later versions of Final Cut require a Video Card that supports Quartz Extreme at least and core support is better. That means if you buy one of our units and plan to use it for this program you need to replace the Video Card. The ATI9000 will work perfectly in place of the stock ATI Rage Pro that comes in our basic unit but they are only available used these days. We can also special order the more expensive ATI9800 (core support) which is the ultimate graphics card update for your G4. When you order the card with your system we preinstall it (they require a driver upgrade both in classic and X). We also flash the cards to the latest ROM update if they require it. We then thoroughly test the card to insure it is performaning at top levels.
It is amazing how well software performs when your system meets and or exceeds its requirements.
BOB'S SOFTWARE RULE: If you plan to use a piece of sofware on any computer you should first check the system requirements of the software and make sure your system has the qualifications. If it doesn't upgrade it so that it does.
GIGADESIGNS GOTCHA? Now out of business.
I have been very happy with the price and performance of the GigaDesigns Processors we have been installing in our upgraded G4's. The new 2.0 Ghz Single Processor gave in excess of 6000 in the CPU section of Norton's SysInfo program in OS9.2. The machine averaged over 4000 in the combined tests making this the fastest G4 we have ever sold. There is one gotcha though that I didn't expect. Under OS9.2 when booting up you get an error message about a cache error and it tells you to notify your service technician. Come to find out it is looking for an L3 cache that this chip doesn't offer and you can really simply disregard the message. It doesn't do this in OSX 10.4 or when running 9.2 in classic mode.
The other gotcha on their Dual 1.8 GHZ based on the 7447A Freescale processor is that they will not support dual processor mode in OS9 or in classic mode. It needs 10.3.5 or later to operate which means you can't boot from a 10.3 install disk. We are now only selling these chips on systems with 10.4 preinstalled.
If you want fast dual mode (with no gotcha's) order Sonnet's dual 1.8. These run dual in both 9 and X (10.4 Tiger) and don't require any special operating system.
CLASSIC MOZILLA TRICK - need a browser that works well in 9?
The old Mozilla Web Browser program (v1.2) that runs in 9 is a little long in the tooth. I prefer it since it allows tabbed browsing, plus it crashes less often than Explorer. I accidently discovered that if you install Netscape 7+ for 9 the installer actually replaces parts of the old Mozilla, giving you many updated components. This allowed me to use some web sites that had updated their security to continue to use Mozilla when accessing them. Can't find the old Mozilla? It is on the Kitchen Sink CD in the Internet/Browser folder as is the Netscape 7 installer. If you are installing it for the first time install the Mozilla first, then install the Netscape 7 after restarting so that it will do the same trick on your system. I have almost quit using Explorer, but sometimes have to resort to it if a web sites JAVA causes the Mozilla to lock up. I also install iCab for those web sites that Mozilla hickups at, but day in and day out Mozilla with the Netscape pieces is my web browser of choice. Try the version at http://wamcom.org
Why Don't You Carry an External DVD Burner? WE DO NOW!
HEY CAN"T A GUY CHANGE HIS MIND? We found a DVD Movie Player patch that allows you to play back movies in OSX. The new version of iLife's iDVD allows you to burn to a disk to an image so you can now use iDVD with an external burner. The main reason though is the SuperDrive bare mechanisms have come down in price so that we can now offer them in our Silver Bullet Housing for less than $150 including shipping. This ain't a bad deal even if you use it mostly for CD burning.
You will want to buy a full version of Toast 5 for DVD burning (for OS9 & X) or Toast 6 for X only. The lite version of Toast we include works natively in both 9 and X but allows CD burning only. As always we include compatibility patches and other needed software on a CD including with your unit.
You still are better off installing the SuperDrive A10 internally whenever possible (we include pictured instructions for G4 and G5 Towers and if you can handle a phillips screwdriver you can do this). For Firewire iMacs this isn't a bad deal though since it is cheaper and faster than anything you can install internally. Movie playback does require the appropriate graphics card to work even with the patched player however and that goes for external or internal.
By the way. I have had numerous calls from owners of the new LaCie external DVD players. They don't work and when you call them they blame your G4. Tell them where to stick it, take it back and buy one of our units.
TIP: When buying DVD media make sure you stick with the -R media and not the +R media. Some of the older DVD players in older Mac systems out there will not read the +R media, and that goes for older DVD Players as well.
Recently we have had a rash of calls from different folks across the country asking about why their Cable or DSL service providers are requiring OSX. What the deal is if you have to configure your own cable modem or the one they provide, they don't have software or instructions to configure the DSL or Cable Modem that works in the earlier OS. If you are like us and the company sets up your modem you can run anywhere from OS7.6 and above and use the installed network. The Cable or DSL Modem once connected to the company doesn't care what OS or brand of computer you use. It just sits there waiting for someone to ask for an IP address so that it can start communicating with the attached system. If you are in the situation to where you need to set up a Cable or DSL Modem that requires OSX perhaps you can borrow a friends laptop or iMac and configure your Modem. If the instructions are browser based you can use any late model browser most likely from OS9 even if the instructions are for a PC or OSX. Once set up you can attach any system capable of TCPIP over Ethernet. Some may offer to set up your modem for you for a fee. I would recommend this if you can afford it.
We have been running DSL for several years now and before that ISDN. Our modems came preconfigured. We hooked our own Routers up and none of this ever used OSX. Only a few of our systems on the network are running X. Most are on 8.6 through 9.2.2.
Cheryn and I both have observed over a long period of time most problems and solutions occur somewhere between the keyboard and the chair when it comes to Macs (thanks to Reader's Digest). If you wondered what Operator Headgap means, well if it is not a hardware problem, or a software problem, then it is operator headgap. We chose that name for our BBS over 21 years ago because we felt like a lot of folks struggled to learn this technology just like us.
If you purchased a system from us we include a Troubleshooting Guide in .PDF format on most systems. Check there first. Mac systems have a powerful help system built in that even includes tutorials on how to do different things. Give it a try. It is in the menu bar at the top of the screen. Try typing in your question. It will try to give you an answer and does a good job most of the time.
When you need us try using the email form: Contact Us first. You will get your answer faster most often as we answer emails frequently and off hours. Make sure you include what system you have and what OS version you are running. We accept technical calls during business hours on equipment that we sell and if your system is down we realize this may be your only way to reach us. 1-877-639-1543 Toll Free 9-6 CST Mon-Fri. If you want advice please call on your dime. Our tech support number is 405-601-5288 and we answer this phone 9-6 Mon. - Fri.
There is no need to be afraid to add programs to your system. When I add a new program I run Disk First Aid from the utilities folder and get a clean bill of health on the drive before proceeding. If you are installing from the Kitchen Sink or one of our other CD's it is a good idea to copy the archive to your hard drive before unarchiving and installing. The program will install faster from the hard drive. You would not do this for OS or large program or game installs however since the components may take up most of the available hard drive space. READ THE INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS if they come with the program. Make sure your system meets the requirements, and that they apply to your system.
When installing printer drivers make sure they are current versions. Don't assume the latest version if the one on the CD that came with the printer you just bought either. Check the manufacturers web site. Don't stick a 5 year old disk in your drive and install a printer driver unless you are sure it will work with the version of the OS you have installed.
WHEN THE INSTALLER WON'T INSTALL - If you try to lauch the installer but after starting it simply hangs up and does nothing, you most likely have something running that the installer can't quit. Try restarting the machine and then installing. If that doesn't work try installing after restarting with the extensions turned off. If you have an HP printer and have installed the drivers for it an extension called HP Background may be causing your hangups. Disable it from the extensions manager. On some programs you may simply want to copy the installer from the CD and place it on the desktop. Some programs will not install from a CD. I sometimes notice folks trying to install to the CD. The CD is a locked volume. You must select a hard drive to install to.
Remember if you use Adobe Type Manager (ATM) that versions earlier that 4.5.2 will not work with OS9 and will lock up your system on reboot if you do.
LOW COST EXTERNAL DVD DRIVE FOR YOUR TIGER or LEOPARD INSTALL:
If you have a G4 Tower, DV iMac or Notebook that is otherwise qualified but without a DVD drive and would rather have an external DVD drive call Cheryn and tell her you want the FireWire External DVD Drive for $69.77. We will build you one using a good new Firewire housing and a genuine "Apple" 8X DVD refurbished drive. You will be able to boot from your Tiger OSX Install DVD. This only works on FIreWire equipped systems. This will not work for the Blue & Whites.
HEADGAP'S SILVER BULLET DRIVES TIGER & Leopard COMPATIBLE: Our Silver Bullet line of External Hard Drives have been thoroughly tested in Tiger & Leopard, including both in Firewire, USB1.1 and USB2 modes. Our low cost WEGO backup drives also work perfectly in both USB1.1 and 2.0.
The early Yikes G4 systems are NOT FIREWIRE BOOTABLE. Don't purchase an external DVD or CD unit and expect to be able to boot from it. If you need a DVD/Player or Burner see our web site and install it internally. We include pictured instructions and it is easy to do. We have the stock DVD Player mechanisms in stock for cheap. If you want the best the Pioneer A10 SuperDrive will be bootable and allow DVD movie playback with our patched player on systems with ATI16MB Graphics cards or better (most had these).
WHAT ABOUT COMPATIBILITY WITH YOUR MODIFIED G4's?
It took 35 minutes to install Tiger on one of our SuperBubbaG4 1 Ghz Models. The Sonnet processor was no problem during or after the install. While Sonnet supplies a Tiger patch it really isn't necessary since the processor and both caches are recognized straight up.
Since we are presently including the new A15 Pioneer SuperDrive on our systems you will be happy to know that no patches are required. Tiger & Leopard recognizes the mechanism straight up.
I had an opportunity to preview Tiger live with an Apple Engineer a while back. Spotlight, Dashboard and some of the other features are really nice. Spotlight in particular will probably revolutionize the way many work with a computer and Windows has nothing like it (and likely never will unless they start over again, although something that looks like it may appear).
One thing I heard is that the Iomega Zip mechanisms are not working under Tiger. When I checked he drives in my systems mount disks just fine.
Will you be able to run Tiger? If you have a system that will run Panther with a minimum of 256MB of ram (really you should have double that) and 4GB of drive space, the answer is yes. You can check Apple's listed system requirements here.
Apple has stated it does not support aftermarket processors but that is really kind of goofy since the aftermarket processor chips are made by IBM and Motorola and are the same chip series that are in the stock systems. Apple never really supports products installed that didn't come with the machine so don't get tense.
Folks like Sonnet (they already have a patch up), fast, and GigaDesigns will be testing there products with Tiger you can bet. There may be a new patch or two but my bet is that most of them will run straight up with no other changes.
If you have a heavily modified system, or any system for that matter, my suggestion is that you wait a week or two after Tiger is released before installing it. Stop by web sites like MacFixit.com and see what problems others are having and if there are any tips and tricks that may help your install go smoothly. Apple has already released a 10.4.2 update.
Before beginning your install check with any of the aftermarket devices you have installed on their web sites. ATI for example already has updated drivers for Tiger for most of their Radeon Graphics cards.
We have Tiger on order and will be checking it with our systems. We have Tiger available in the software section of the store.
NO LONGER AVAILABLE NEW - Need to hook up a dot matrix printer to your G4 or any PC printer to your Mac? Try Strydent software's PowerPrint program. They offer both a serial and usb version. Includes drivers for many PC printers. http://www.strydent.com/strydent-software-products/powerprint-products.html
BOB'S PRINTER RULE - never buy any printer without first checking the companies web site to see if they have drivers for the version of the Mac OS you are running.
Is UltraWide SCSI Faster Than IDE?
We are in the process of adding an additional server and I was prepping the G3 Beige Box. I am running a G3/450 mhz processor overclocked to 466. I need two drives in the unit one to serve and one as a backup drive. I have been using UltraWide SCSI drives 10,000 rpm Cheetah models to serve and a simple Hitachi 7200 rpm IDE drive as a backup. I decided to using Norton's Sys Info to see which one was the faster. I started with an Adaptec 2940 and the Cheetah and got a score of 747. I then tested the Hitachi IDE drive on the stock G3 bus and got 1489. That meant the IDE drive was roughly twice as fast at performing the Sys Info drive test. I also tested a JackHammer UW Card, and an ATT0 card and got roughly the same results and even tried a different SCSI drive. The ATTO UW Drive was fastest wtih 839 on the SCSI side. From the results in the future the SCSI drives will be the backup drives and the Hitachi 7200 drives will be my main server drives. I had suspected this but didn't have any real numbers to back it up. A higher performance SCSI UW Card may have performed better but the built in bus with a new high speed Hitachi does the job and the drives are ultra dependable and long lasting, not to mention more affordable. These results may not mirror what would happen on a faster bussed machine like a Blue & White, but perhaps someday I will get around to checking the perfomance levels on them as well. Of course the Sys Info test may not be the ultimate in drive tests either.
I hear that accelerated Macs aren't as dependable?
I will answer that simply. Our companies entire livelihood comes from web servers. Our web servers are Apple Power Mac computers. We have 3 (now 4). One of them is running a stock Apple processor overclocked (450's bumped to 500). A second is running a G3/500 Sonnet Processor. Our database is run on a system with a 1 Ghz Sonnet Processor. If they were unreliable would I be running them? We not only serve our business but many other business web sites, online stores and mail all on accelerated or overclocked (optimized) systems. They are online 24/7 and have been for years. Even our daily work machines are either accelerated or run stock bumped up processors. Why do slow if you can dependably run faster. Could Sonnet stay in business with a liberal 3 year warranty if their products were shoddy? I think not and I suspect most of you don't either but you know how rumors are, usually started by some salesman trying to get you to part with a lot more money on something new rather than upgrade your existing or buy a much less expensive upgraded system from us.
One thing about accelerating any system though is a machine with bad or questionable ram or otherwise has problems will have those problems accelerated. A system in good condition with good ram and a good system install though will run fantastic though once bumped up.
A little further down read about optimization.
I know that to most folks who read this, I am singing to the choir. Someone I know applied to work at a firm here in Memphis that does a bit of graphics for advertising and web sites. They sent their portfolio over in PDF attachments. The personnel person at the company could not receive the attachments, because they were blocked by their security software. They went through and resent with the PDF's archived and tried again. The person could not receive the attachment again. Fortunately the firm had a Mac user who could download them from a web link and print them. When will people get a clue. If they were all on Macs that could turn all that CRAP protection software off and use the Internet as they should. Having your users so protected they can't receive PDF's is absolutely nuts. Half the world uses PDF's to transmit graphic oriented material these days. Forrest's mom was right. Stupid is as stupid does.
I completely recovered another Firewire Hard Drive today, over the years I have probably recovered thousands of hard drives. Want to know one of my secrets? For external mechanisms, Zip, Jazz, and other removeable mechanisms there is nothing better than Disk Warrior. The TRICK to using it is to load Disk Warrior before turning on the mechanism or inserting the media. Wait for it. Eventually it will show up in the menu allowing you to rebuild the directory. NEVER LEAVE A ZIP DISK IN THE DRIVE IF IT IS HAMMERING THE HEAD. UNPLUG the drive or whatever you have to do to stop it. If you leave it hammering be prepared to order a replacement mechanism since you will have trashed your old one. Oh yes, once you have recovered the hard drive backup the data and reformat the drive before using it again. If the recovery was on external media move off the data and discard the media.
We run 3 servers in our office (our 4th is located at our ISP), all Macs of course. We have two large UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supplies) that provide backup power and surge protection. An important thing in this stormy season here in the South. The other night I noticed something that smelled like a permanent (you know those kits that women put on there head to make there hair look frizzy). Since Cheryn's hair is too short to perm, I really couldn't think of why someone would be giving a permanent in our server area anyway. Later on Cheryn grabbed me and asked me if I noticed a strange odor. The "it probably is your upper lip thing never works on women". I mentioned the permanent. She said she didn't think that was it. I turned off the venilation fans and finally pinned it down to one of the UPS units. It was very very hot. I shut down the servers and moved all of them to the other UPS and unplugged the offending unit. I took it outside since it didn't seem to be cooling off, it of course eventually did once the power was removed. The next day we ordered a replacement battery for the unit and a few days later I pulled the old leaking one out (we shipped ground those things weigh a ton). Of course a thunderstorm took the power down the very next day after I removed the unit and we only got about 45 minutes backup on the single unit. Fortunately the power was only off a little over an hour, so we were not offline for long. I am hoping for about 90 minutes of backup power from the two units since this is about what they did in the past. Rarely do we have an outage any longer than that.
The only reason I am telling you this is that I am not sure if that unit would have caught on fire or not. I hope never to find out that they will. I expect there would be more information about it happening if it was a common thing. I would however recommend that you check your UPS by touching the exterior of it to make sure it is not running hot every so often and take notice if something smells bad. Also the good news is that most name brand units have replacement batteries available. I Googled up a few and found one that was pretty reasonable. It was less than 1/2 the cost of a new UPS. They also include drop off points for recycling the old ones.
We love this business and live, breath and eat Macs. We thank you in advance for using the tech support line for out of warranty or systems and equipment you have bought elsewhere. 901-591-1543 is our tech support line. Thanks for paying for the call. We need you to help us with this as our toll free lines expenses are rising far faster than our sales are. We are always happy to help and we pay for the calls on in warranty products. Please let us know that you are on your dime when you get a tech online, our phone system doesn't show this at the work stations. Use our email form anytime you don't need immediate response or after hours. Make sure you identify the system you are on, the OS you are using and any other pertinent hardware facts.
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Have you gotten the one with the worm in it yet? Yes there are bargains to be had. Ebay works if everyone is honest. I guess you know that everyone isn't. Keep in mind the used system or item you are buying may be cleaned up a bit but it is not tested and has no warranty on the majority of items you buy. Many overcharge for shipping. Many don't pack properly so your merchandise arrives damaged. See if you can hold your breath while the shipping company pays your claim. Try getting a refund from PayPal. Ebay owns them you know.
QUESTION: Is there any way I can get a barebones Mac system from your company?
Sure but I will not ship anything that will not run. We can't warranty a non working unit. I get requests sometimes for units without hard drives, ram etc because the user wants to put in their own. I repeat I will not ship a non working unit. On the other hand I will put in the original HD size, original ram etc and price out a unit. Keep in mind whatever we do will not be that much less than one decked out. The parts are usually fairly inexpensive. What is expensive is labor and all machines get time spent on them. We put a lot of value in the units we sell by buying parts wholesale and using them to refurbish. It actually is cheaper many times to use a new part than to test the old parts. You can save money (maybe) on buying someone elses untested and uncleaned unit. Let me know what system you are looking at and I will price out a minimum spec unit. Even on our stock spec systems though we clean and thoroughly test all of it. Also remember the extra's we include like new mice etc. and the freight is always included in our botton line prices.
Why Don't You Carry an External DVD Burner?
We have one of the best Firewire/USB housings on the market and we also carry the SuperDrive 22X DVD Drives. I could easily build and bundle these two items together. Why don't we? Most people who buy an external DVD think they can play movies through them. You can't. The software for DVD Playback requires an internal mechanism and a qualified video card. You can't use Apple's iDVD Authoring Software, and you can't burn via iTunes. You can't make backups of your movies. You need OSX and special software to make movie backups and even then you need to do it with an internal mechanism. With Toast Titanium 5 or 6 you can burn data DVD's or use the Toast's authoring feature. If that's all you want to do then I will build you one. I know a lot of folks have bought an external Firewire DVD Burner and once they received it and realized what it wouldn't do they were extremely disappointed. I don't like disappointing people.
If you want to burn DVD's then buy our INTERNAL SuperDrive and replace your old INTERNAL optical. It is easy to do, and we will even walk you through the procedure. We include the software patches so that Apple software recognizes your drive as a factory install. That means you can use Apple's iDVD for authoring, use iTunes to burn regular CD's, and of course use your copy of Toast Titanium to burn data DVD's as well, besides saving the cost of the external housing. WIth the proper copy software you can even back up those movie DVD's. Assuming you have a 16MB Rage PRO Video card you can also use the mechanism to play back movies on your system.
When buying DVD media make sure you stick with the -R media and not the +R media. Some of the older DVD players in older Mac systems out there will not read the +R media.
If you haven't noticed the largest bare drive we presently stock (ATA) is 120GB's.
WARNING: If you are planning on buying a large-capacity 3.5" internal hard drives above 137GB, you need to be aware of this issue, in case you are not already:
The ATA controllers in Macs up through the PowerMac G4 Quicksilver 2001 models cannot properly format a drive larger than 137GB, and entire drive will not be recognized. For example, when upgrading a G4 Quicksilver 2001 with a 160GB hard drive, only 137GB of storage will be recognized if using the native ATA controller. Sonnet's Tempo line of products are the solution for this issue. QuickSilver units with the 4.33 Boot Rom Version will take larger drives. You need to set them as cable select.
Sonnet Tempo ATA133 controllers (and the new ATA 150 Serial Controllers) allow large capacity hard drives to be formatted for their full capacity, even in systems where this was not natively possible (Quicksilver 2001 and earlier).
External Firewire drives do not have this limitation assuming you bought a quality housing with good firmware.
Remember OS9 cannot boot from a partition larger than 160GB's.
Most of you probably know about the limit on the size of drives installed in PowerMacs. Only the Mirror Door G4 or above can handle drives larger. That is why we normally only carry up to 120 GB drives for internal installation. One way around this is with the Sonnet Tempo ATA133 card. You can install any size drive internally with the Tempo installed in one of your PCI slots. THE GOTCHA though is you can't have a partition any larger than 190GB's and expect to boot from OS9. Of course I never run across this before since the affordable 160GB drives don't have this problem. I just installed a 250GB drive with the Tempo and while the machine booted nicely into X, I could not get it to boot into 9. After tearing out my hair and a few reinstalls, I finally dug down into Sonnet's tech notes and they pointed this out. Would have been helpful if they would have added this little gem in the product description since drives up to 400GB's are more affordable these days don't you think? They do advertise breaking the 137GB barrier but they don't mention that 190GB OS9 barrier until you hunt it down.
Some folks would say wait until your hard drive dies to replace it. With drives as inexpensive as they are why not replace your hard drive before they die and you lose your work. I take good care of my drives running repair at least quarterly and optimize them a few times a year. Even so I replace my drives about every 3-4 years (think of them as a car battery in terms of longevity). Usually I am about ready to have more space anyway and some times the new drives are substantially faster than the old ones. Retire the old drive or relegate it to use as a secondary drive. It is a lot easier and usually cheaper to move your data from a working drive. Don't misundertand, I have Mac drives here that are over 10 years old running just fine. It is just that economically it is cheaper to replace them early and keep your data safe. Remember that old car battery. It worked fine all the way up until that one cold morning and I bet you were in a hurry too.
Shut down your machine immediately. If you let the drive head continue to damage itself your chances of recovery are substantially reduced. Send us the hard drive. We will see if we can recover the data. If so you pay a $35.00 bench charge (large full drives may be more) and we will put your data on a replacement drive (you pay for of course). If we can't recover it you only pay return shipping for your drive back. You can then deal with the high end drive recovery people. Be cautious though many are worse than Automatic Transmission Repair Shops. They charge you $XXX.XX and then after you pay they say it will be $XXX.XX dollars more to get your data and drive back. Best you have backups.
Good for you. I just hope you didn't succumb to buying the El Cheapo special at the discounter. These units many times come back to bite you. I respect Maxtor, and Seagate mechanisms. The best are Hitachi and that is what we mostly sell. The worst is that other brand that starts with the initials Western Digital. It seems like I spend more time recovering stuff from them that any other brand.
You can only put two devices on one IDE bus (unlike the SCSI of old which 7 different devices fit on one bus). You don't have to worry about numbers but one must be set as MASTER and the other SLAVE. Your boot drive and it should be your fastest should be the MASTER. The slower older device should be relagated to SLAVE. There is no such thing as CABLE SELECT on a Mac, disregard CS or CABLE SELECT. Most drives these days come with a diagram on the drive showing you how to configure the drive jumpers. If yours doesn't go to my other web site http://drivejumper.com. It has all the good links to where to look up the jumper info. Also we carry drive jumpers. I think jumper is a good name for them since everytime I pull one off of a drive it jumps out of my hands into the great unknown. It doesn't hurt to have a few spares around.
On Maxtor and Quantum you make a drive MASTER by installing an upright jumper on the two pins furthest from the power plug. To make it a SLAVE take all of them off. Some models vary so look it up but if you can't find info try it. If you did it correctly both drives will show up in Apple System Profiler. Any device uninitialized may then be formatted by Apple Drive Setup. On modern systems, you want to make sure and format them HFS+ or Extended Format. SEE MY NOTES ON MIRROR DOOR UNITS.
Beware of Substandard Batteries
I was looking at some of the pram batteries sold by our competition. No one sells batteries for less than we do, and no one sells fresher batteries that we do. I saw a couple who advertised lower prices but by the time you paid shipping and handling you end up paying substantially more. What really bothers me though is some of these low priced specials were lower milliamp batteries. Before buying any 3.6 V Lithium Battery that fit in most of the Macs make sure the batteries you are getting are 1200mah. Remember we import these batteries direct and they are not made before we order. While lithium batteries have a long shelf life, most batteries in the states these days are several years old. Ours are no more than 4 months from the date they were created.
The batteries we stock have the date of manufacture stamped right on them!
When pricing laptop batteries you should always compare the milliamp hour rating (shown as mAH). Sometimes a bargain is not a bargain if it doesn't last long in your laptop. More is always better. Remember also that our price includes shipping and you are always buyint new batteries from us. We do not handle refurbished laptop batteries.
Work for Microsoft, buy a PC
We had an Apple Engineer visit our local Mac User Group a short while back. He said that SARC.com reports that there are over 71,000 known computer viruses. Of those 26 affect the Macintosh, and of those only 3 do anything significant, most are simply nuisances. I am glad that I don't have to download virus updates and system updates every other day. I wonder when a PC user has time to do anything other than work on getting the viruses off or updates loaded to his system. Wouldn't you rather buy music in the iTunes store (or whatever you enjoy doing) instead of spending money on Anti-Virus software?
LaCie - Case Design by Porsche, Electronics by Mickey Mouse
A fellow brought his 400GB Lacie Firewire Drive in. He was very upset since all of his commercial clients' images were on this drive. I was able to get the drive up and got Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory. He was very happy. The next day he brought it back saying he couldn't get it to mount on his system. I couldn't either. I had about given up and was preparing to take the drives out of the housing to mount in one of our bullet housings. When I opened his up both Firewire ports fell out into my hand. They were surface mount soldered with no other support. Once you see how they are fixed to the board it is hard to believe anyone could keep from tearing up the plugs simply by using them. I couldn't believe something as shoddy as this was in this expensive housing. After I showed the guy the problem I microsoldered one of the two ports back on and put tape around it to support it. We were able to move all of his files to two new 250GB Silver Bullets. After I moved his files over I pulled the two Maxtor drives and formatted them in two separate Silver Bullet housings. He is happy as a clam. I asked him what he wanted to do with the LaCie housing. We both knew where it belonged. Out in the trash. Ask him how much he saved buying what was supposed to be the best. If you own one of these overpriced pigs be extra careful plugging and unplugging the firewire cables.
BOB'S PRINTER RULE - never buy any printer without first checking the company's web site to see if they have drivers for the version of the Mac OS you are running.
When I am out of them my price is 1/2 of what theirs is ...
Every so often someone will call and ask if I will match prices on an item. The latest item is the Pioneer SuperDrive. The prices are being footballed a lot. He said they had the same drive for about 1/2 what I sell them for. Of course the price he was quoting was before shipping, transaction fees, and possibly taxes. Many of the vendors have some rinky dink store front and only take PayPal which gives you little protection against fraud. On top of that while it may have been the identical drive it was just the bare bones unit with no software. I told him if he was going to buy or already had all the software and drivers needed then it was probably a good buy and that he should order it. He said that was the problem, they were out. Well when I am out of something my price is 1/2 of what their out of stock price is ;-)
We work hard to keep our prices sharp but also we want the items to include what you need to make them work with your system. We also understand you may have to call or email us a question or two. That bargain price usually ends up costing you many times since you may have to pay someone to help you install it or buy the software and drivers that were not included with that bargain unit. I know more that a few of you have bought that bargain and ended up sending it back and had to pay excessive restocking fees. Also remember Operator Headgap has been in operation for 19 years, and our retail Mac store has been online over 6 years now. You can call and talk to us during business hours and email us 24/7. How many places can you call and have someone that knows Mac's answer the phone?
TIP: Many external devices like USB hard drives etc. as well as programs like Quickbooks and many more, use the Carbon Lib for operation. Make sure you have Carbon Lib 1.6 installed on all 8.6-9.2.2 systems. This is on the Kitchen Sink CD in the Apple File Folders. The Carbon Lib resides in your extension folder. Remember even if you are running X this is used by programs in classic mode.
Our G4 Towers a good buy or not?
I had a fellow write me that he had recommended us and that they had responded we were a rip-off. That we took old G4 Systems and put upgraded processors in them (of course that is exactly what we do). I hope that you read the descriptions on the products we sell. I NEVER WANT ANYONE TO THINK THAT COMPUTERS YOU ARE BUYING ARE NEW. They are used refurbished units. If you want new then go to Apple or one of the authorized dealers out there. Folks like MacMall, CDW etc. are all happy to sell you a new Mac. What we do sell and I hope is apparent to all is a thoroughly reconditioned system at a good price. We, unlike most others usually install brand new hardware into these USED REFURBISHED COMPUTERS. We warranty our systems for 90 days. For example all of our G4 Towers we sell have new Hitachi 80 GB Hard Drives in them. They have a full 1 year manufacturers warranty. All have new SONY Combo Drives in them (or you can optionally get the New Pioneer DVDRW/CDRW unit installed) that carry their own 1 year mfgs warranty. If they have the Sonnet processor in them, you are getting the 7455 G4 Chip with the 2MB L3 backside cache just as Sonnet describes it. It has a 3 year factory warranty. These components far exceed the original performance and we even advertise the systems SYSINFO ratings on our chart. These systems also all still run the older OS version. For many it keeps you from having to upgrade a lot of additional hardware and software.
Most of you know that you could chase down an older G4 Tower (hopefully with all the parts and working) and could buy a new drive, a new optical, new ram, new clock battery, new processor, install all these things and could you yourself could thoroughly clean the system and polish and wax the case and you might save a buck or two if you are able to do this type of work. We think it is nice though that you are willing to pay us a bit to do this work for you. Since we buy in bulk and at wholesale prices and price our units as sharply as possible I think it would be hard for anyone to build a system and offer the performance for the delivered price we do with a warranty, phone and email support. Apparently most of you do as well as we have been hard pressed to keep up with demand on these units.
We appreciate your business and support and thank you for recommending us to your friends.
When I was 16 I bought my first car. It as an old Ford 6 cylinder. I was tuning it up putting in new plugs and points and a friend stopped by. He said we need to check your pedal. I didn't know what he was talking about. He told me to hang on to the throttle cable and got in the car and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The throttle as about a 1/4" from being totally open. He helped me optimize my carburetor. He said that most car makers never give you all the pedal. I never did know why but perhaps they had their reasons. From then on each new or used car I bought got optimized. I want all the pedal.
Computers have processors and that equates to an engine in a car. The manufacturers have to make sure your computer runs under a wide ranges of circumstance and that sometimes they compromise reliability over performance. Now I don't know about you but I don't run my computer in a 100 degree room. If I did I might have problems bumping up the processor speed. Some of the units we sell have had their processors optimized. We note them in the descriptions if this is so. We test them to insure that they are reliable at the higher speeds.
Motorola (Freescale), and IBM manufacturer the processors. Apple many times set the speed levels at a very conservative level. We sometimes bump those processors one notch and thoroughly test them and check temperatures at the next higher rating. If they aren't rock solid we don't sell them. Many very possibly would be stable at even higher ratings. We also make sure that your heat sink is in solid contact with the processor and in some cases use a silver heat sink compound to insure your unit is running as cool as possible and many times cooler even at the higher ratings than the stock unit was running. Some of our servers and many of our work stations which run 24/7 for years have done so with optimized processors.
I think you deserve to have all the pedal your computer has to offer without sacrificing reliability.
If you want to buy G4 processors that have been optimized at great pricing click here.
We provide a bit more information on our site http://mac-batteries.com. Also try Apple's Customer Installable Parts Page at: http://www.info.apple.com/usen/cip/
How To Change Your Clock Battery
Changing out a battery is not difficult on most Mac systems. Simply pry off the retainer and pull the battery out.
Reverse the procedure with the new battery making sure the + is positioned correctly.
Restart your system and reset the date and time and other control panel settings as needed. Note 4.5V Batteries are small square and black. They are stuck down with Velcro. Simply pull up the old battery and unhook the cable. Reverse the procedure. There is only one way the cable plugs back in. Press the motherboard reset while you are in there.
We have illustrated instructions available for iMac Trayload and Slotload systems, available on request with purchase. Call and ask about iMac G4 Flat Panels. We now have backup batteries for iMac G5's, Mac Mini's! G5 Towers & Mac Pro Towers.
How To Change Your Coin Cell Clock Battery
Changing out a battery is not difficult on most Mac systems. Simply pry off the retainer and pull the battery out.
Reverse the procedure with the new battery making sure the + is positioned correctly.
After powering down and unplugging your system, open your computer and locate the battery on the motherboard. It may be easier to set the computer on it's side.Slide the battery out from the holder. A small screwdriver may help but use caution, the pro's use a small plastic non conductive tool. A plastic knife or ice cream stick would be a decent and safer substitute for a removal tool.
IMPORTANT: Slide the new battery in, making sure the + POSITIVE symbol shows up. While extremely rare, it is possible for an improperly installed battery to explode.
Button up and restart your computer. Using preferences, reset the clock and check your other settings.
Batteries contain chemicals that may be harmful to the environment. You should dispose of used batteries at one of the recycling centers.
Read about proper battery disposal
Once you've replaced the battery, you will want to reset several settings. If you're on a network, you'll want to open the Chooser and enable AppleTalk. Note some Macs may not support all these control panels (preferences in OSX). These are the control panels you'll need to use:
- Startup Disk. Always reset your startup disk. Your system may not boot well or give you the flashing question mark if it gets confused. SET THIS ONE FIRST IT IS IMPORTANT.
- Date & Time. First, choose your time zone, then set the date and time. SET THIS ONE SECOND IT IS IMPORTANT.
- Memory - Mac OS 8.5 and later will usually set this automatically. Set your cache to a Meg if you have plenty and 1 meg over on virtual.
- Network or AppleTalk. If you're on a network that isn't LocalTalk, you will need to reset your network connection on any Mac with a LocalTalk port.
- Mouse and Keyboard. You'll need to reset the mouse tracking and double-click speeds, as well as setting the keyboard delay and repeat.
- Energy Saver or Auto On/Off. Energy saving settings, power-up time, etc. are stored in PRAM and need to be reset.
- Monitors and Sound or Monitors & Sound. You need to reset speaker volume and monitor bit-depth -- and possibly resolution.
Slot Load iMac's EZ BATTERY SWAP - while the official instructions have you take the machine apart my wife's hands are small enough she changes them out from the memory access port. I do it the same way using a pair of forceps. Tray Load iMac's require you take the machine apart. We have illustrated instructions available for iMac Tray load and Slot load systems, available on request with purchase.
More information is available at our site http://mac-batteries.com
SPECIAL NOTE ON IMAC FLAT PANEL BATTERY REPLACEMENT - The newer Desk Lamp iMac's are starting to have their batteries go out. Replacing them should really be handled by a service center. You have to remove the entire base of the unit which requires special tools and when replacing the base you have to clean off and reinstall thermal paste (we have it in stock). Not tightening the screws properly and not applying the paste can critically damage your system and most of all probably void any warranty. We will sell you the battery but if you change it yourself make sure you have the proper tools and thermal paste before starting the job. You do this at your own risk. While you are in there why not install a larger cheaper ram chip. I would put a 512 MB chip in and the ram is right next to the battery. I also recommend a larger faster hard drive and a faster optical drive like the Pioneer unit we sell if you are upgrading. For not a whole lot of money installing a large new hard drive and DVD burner takes very little additional work once you have one this far apart.
Mac Batteries
We know that many of you rely on us for the freshest highest quality 3.6 Volt 1200 mAh Mac PRAM/Clock batteries. We are now buying our 3.6V cells from ABLE Battery as they make a top quality product. Our battery specs meet or exceed system requirements. We think you will be very happy with our new label. Remember nobody sells fresher batteries that we do. The manufacture date is stamped right on the battery.
Beware of Substandard Batteries
I was looking at some of the pram batteries sold by our competition. No one sells batteries for less than we do (delivered price), and no one sells fresher batteries that we do. I saw a couple who advertised lower prices but by the time you paid shipping and handling you end up paying substantially more. What really bothers me though is some of these low priced specials were lower milliamp batteries. Before buying any 3.6 V Lithium Battery that fit in most of the Macs make sure the batteries you are getting are 1200 mAh. Remember we import these batteries direct and they are not made before we order. While lithium batteries have a long shelf life (up to 10 years), most batteries in the states these days are several years old. Ours are no more than 6 months from the date they were created. The manufacture date is stamped right on the battery.
When pricing laptop batteries you should always compare the milliamp hour rating (shown as mAH). Sometimes a bargain is not a bargain if it doesn't last long in your laptop. More is always better.
Battery Safety
I recently had someone ask if we had the safer Lithium Ion Batteries in the standard 3.6V 1/2AA configuration. He wondered why Apple hadn't moved to this configuration. Here is my reply:
After handling many many thousands of both old and new 3.6V Lithium batteries, and pulling them from 20 year old machines up to today's latest, I can't say I have ever worried about the safety and reliability of the Lithiums. What amazes me is to find batteries still holding the proper charge after all that time. I read almost as much about Lithium Ion batteries exploding as I do the regular lithium. It seems that if you expose batteries to high heat, certain types of punctures, or shorting, you can expect bad results not matter what they are made of. I know of no one who makes a Lithium Ion of the proper size. It seems like whatever physically is close to that size is only 3 Volt and any with the proper voltage are twice that size. It may be the nature of the materials but I am no engineer.
Good rule to live by: I highly recommend you not puncture, heat up, or short out any type of battery.
The new Mac Mini, iMac G5's and certain G5 Towers use a different style clock battery. We stock the lithium coin cell batteries for these units. Some folks have had trouble finding these and when they do find them they are sometimes really expensive. We carry these and have them at a fair price $7.44 including shipping. As always from us they are factory fresh and high quality. Our low price includes printed instructions for your model. It is sometimes difficult to tell unless you really know what model your G5 Tower is. Take a look inside your G5 Tower if you are in doubt and see if you can see the regular 3.6V that Macs have almost always used, or if yours takes the coin cell style.
Coin Cell Lithium
- Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) Single 2.0, Single 2.3, Dual 2.5\
- Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) (Single 1.8 Ghz) (600 MHz System Bus)
Half Height AA 3.6V Lithium
- Power Mac G5 (G5 - 1.6, 1.8, Dual 1.8-Dual 2.0) (800, 900, or 2x1.0 Ghz system bus)
- Power Mac G5 (June 2004) (Dual 1.8, Dual 2.0, Dual 2.5)
- Power Mac G5 (Early 2005) (Dual 2.0, Dual 2.3, Dual 2.7)
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More about Power Mac G4 Power Supplies
Usually the last thing I will try when having trouble is zapping the pram. Zapping the pram forces the machine to relook at all the hardware devices and restores the machine to factory defaults. You will need to reset the clock, possibly network settings, memory and mouse settings, and most importantly identify the startup device after zapping.
To zap the pram: restart your machine and hold down the command key, option key, and the p and the r key. COPR (say the word copper) is how I remember which keys to hit.
The system will chime, keep holding down the keys until the unit chimes three times.
There is small program called Tech Tool. It is shareware and related to its costlier big brother Tech Tool Pro. It actually ZAPS your PRAM at a deeper level than ordinary keyboard zapping and is easy to use. I usually install it on G3 or better systems we set up in the utilities folder. It is also a better way to rebuild your desktop.
If your computer takes a long time before the screen changes from black to white you might want to zap the pram once to see if it shortens the boot up time. This occurs more frequently on the G3 or better systems. This could also be a symptom of ram not being seated properly though so If it doesn't improve try reseating the ram chips or taking out that one you recently installed.
ANYTIME YOU ARE HAVING TROUBLE BOOTING UNPLUG EVERYTHING FROM THE BACK OF YOUR COMPUTER except the keyboard and monitor and of course the power cord. Fix one thing at a time.
The CUDA or motherboard reset switch is a last resort. If your computer doesn't come up at all before replacing the power supply usually pressing the switch will restore life to your dead computer. If you don't hear a chime after that then it may be Power Supply time. If your computer fails to come up after a processor swap, overclock, or ram install then it may be time to try the CUDA switch. The CUDA switch looks like a little gray (sometimes red) doorbell button. It is indeed a momentary switch like a doorbell button. This is always done with the POWER OFF!
Where is the CUDA (PMU) Switch?
- ON G4 systems it in in the right rear of the motherboard near the battery.
Hold it down and count to 5, button up things and push the restart while crossing your fingers.
HELP! I NEED A NEW POWER SUPPLY (probably not):
Try the CUDA (PMU) switch first. The Power Supply is sometimes fused and while difficult to work on you can usually get to it after removing it from the unit and taking out most of the apparent screws. I usually pry the power supply apart slightly and remove and install the fuse with forceps. Buy the replacement fuse at Radio Shack and try it again. Most techs won't tell you this and will sell you a refurbished power supply and give you a bit for your old power supply when they sell you a new one. They will simply replace the fuse and resell the unit again. Some of the later model G4's don't have a readily identifiable fuse. It is worth checking for though if you have the power supply out of the box.
Help! I pushed the CUDA (PMU) Switch on my G4 and it still is not working
Sometimes computers lose their mind. Don't ask me why or how it happens but it does. Sometimes you simply have to totally discharge the computer. One thing I have learned about the Blue and White G3 and The Gray G4 computers is that sometimes pushing the CUDA is not enough. If your machine still is dead, then try the following.
- Unplug the Unit
- Remove the Battery
- Push the CUDA Switch (count to 5 slow)
- Push the Start button on the front of the computer (count to 5 slow)
- Let the unit sit for 15-30 minutes
- Replace the Battery
- Plug it back in, and push the start button
Amazing! It works again!! If it doesn't I usually repeat the steps above, pull the ram, and let it sit longer. If it doesn't work after this it is take it to the shop time (or ship it to us).
DEEP RESET TIP: On G3 and G4 Machines especially when aborting an OSX install really scrambles the computer. You can super reset the computer by Zapping the PRAM 3 times in a row. Then move your fingers from the P R keys to the O F keys (in other words Command - Option - O - F). COOF will bring up a machine language screen. <return> means press the return key you don't type the characters out. At the prompt type the following:
reset-nvram <return>
set-defaults <return>
reset-all <return>
I ALWAYS run Disk First Aid (or Norton Disk Doctor) before rebuilding the desktop. This insures that your desktop will be written to a healthy drive. I know people who have never rebuilt the desktop after using the system for years. It is like flossing, you may get away with not doing it but you really should do this regularly. You should do this monthly or after installing new programs or deleting a lot of files. To accomplish this restart your machine and hold down the command and option keys. I dead giveaway is when you have generic icons showing up where regular icons should be showing up.
Use the Classic Preference Advanced in X to rebuild your OS9 desktop, it is much faster.
Tech Tool (Kitchen Sink Utilities) is a small program that deletes the desktop files allowing a complete rebuild. It does a more thorough job. Just make sure you run a drive check before running it.
You may know how to curse the computer but blessing the system folder is something you may have to one day do. If you install a new drive and copy your system folder from the old drive, you may have to bless the system folder. A System Folder must have a System File and a Finder File in it to be blessed. If a System Folder is blessed, there will be a tiny MacOS logo on the folder. If it is unblessed, it will be a plain folder. To bless the new one open the folder and double click the Finder File. It will tell you something stupid, but just close the folder back and notice how the MacOS logo has now appeared on the folder. Use the Control Panel's Startup Device to choose the new drive and restart. It is a good idea to rebuild the new desktop after making installations. To unbless (or make inactive) a system folder simply pull the Finder File out of it.
You probably know that holding down the C key will force your system to boot from a CD. What if you wanted to boot from a Zip or an External Drive? CODS is the answer. Just think greasy fish. Command - Option - Delete - Shift.
Never DEFAULT install Norton Utilities on your system. The default install puts what I consider crap all into your system. Crashguard, Filesaver, and Disklight cause far more problems than they are worth. If you have already done this disable from the extensions manager: crashguard, filesaver, disklight, and the auto update features. I love Disk Doctor and Speed Disk but I run them from the CD when needed on systems with OS9.2 or below. NEVER ON AN X SYSTEM!
NEVER RUN NORTON 3.5 or earlier on an HFS+ Formatted Drive. It will destroy the contents of the drive. You may be able to recover it with the patch someone put out for Norton called drive fix 1.1. A proper version of Norton 5.0 or later will probably fix it as well.
NEVER RUN NORTON Disk Doctor 6.0.2 or earlier on an OSX system. Norton 6.03 or later for OSX systems is okay and it has to be run from OS9 or by booting from the CD. Use the Get Info from under the file menu after selecting the Disk Doctor icon to see what version you are running. After using even the later versions of Norton I would not run it at all on any hard drive with X installed. Use the Apple disk utility by booting from your install disk. It that doesn't work Disk Warrior X is the only thing I can say works safely most of the time.
Before getting up from your computer make a copy of the files you just worked on to another media, before quitting! Zip or CDRW it matters not. JUST DO IT.
There are two types of computer users. Those that are going to have a hard drive crash and those that have had a hard drive crash. Everyone should back up their work. Retrospect is the premier backup utility but really requires a supported Tape Drive or some type of external hard drive to be all that useful. Backing up with an automated program and a CDRW is a ludicrous idea. They are not dependable enough and Retrospect may not support your CDRW. Even if it does it is not dependable enough to automate. I use CDRW's to make backups but I use Toast and only do it periodically and I sit there while it does it. If you are a large business you should keep and offsite copy of the CD's in case of major catastrophe. I back up everything frequently to an external hard drive using Retrospect.
Simply making a copy to a Zip Disk of your work is what most people need to do. Simply drag and drop and copy to a Zip Disk periodically. We include a program called SilverLining on the Kitchen Sink CD, that will help if you want to back up more than that.
We now carry a small low cost USB drive that makes it cheap and easy to back up your files and or move them around. Check the external drive section. Use the free SilverKeeper utility (Kitchen Sink Utilities Folder) to make backups. Even easier simply drag and drop the files you want to back up. Any version of Retrospect that will work with your OS version will allow you to compress files backups on the fly.
Cheryn and I both recently purchased USB Memory Chips. They plug into an open USB port and mount on your desktop like a hard drive. We use this for quick backups and to move files around the office. They come in 32, 64, 128 and 256 sizes (probably even larger). While I have a 64 MB unit in the store, the discounters have been almost giving them away with rebates. We use these to move large files around to other machines rather than tying up the network and we copy and carry any mission critical data with us in our pockets.
FOR OSX - I recommend a second or slave drive it can be slightly smaller but should be as fast as the one you are using. Maybe put a new larger fast drive in and use your old drive for backup. I use Carbon Copy Cloner (OSX Kitchen Sink) to make a complete bootable copy of my system installed on the other drive. Use it to move your X system to your new drive and then make the new drive master and the old one slave and reboot from your new faster drive.
If you don't have the money or room for a second drive at least burn your user folder to a CD.
Power PC users (this includes G4 machines) your system is designed to run with Virtual Memory ON (1 MB over the installed ram). Leave it on unless the program you are using absolutely requires it to be off. If I have trouble burning a CD sometimes I will turn off Virtual Memory. Some games also run faster with it off. If you have 1 GB or more memory installed virtual will not turn on and the Memory control panels tells you so.
Remember this stuff is sensitive to static discharge and always take precautions. Wear a wrist strap or at least touch the machine before you start handling the ram. It is best to leave it in the anti static bag until time to install.
FOR HOW TO INSTALL MEMORY on G3 and later systems try Apple's Customer Installable Parts Page at: http://www.info.apple.com/usen/cip/
SLOWER STARTUP? If you have added more memory to your computer, the startup time can increase substantially. This is because the machine is performing memory tests. You can bypass this memory startup test by disabling it in the memory control panel under Mac OS 8.6 and up. To do this open your control panels folder, and press the command and option keys while double clicking on the memory control panel. At the bottom of the memory panel a hidden command will appear that will allow you to disable startup memory tests. Turn it off and will boot more quickly. Turn the test back ON if you add more memory to your system to check the new memory and then disable it once things are working smoothly.
Even turning the test off your system will still require more boot time. If you think it is an inordinate amount of time you might try reseating the ram. Ram not making good connections will slow the startup process to a crawl.
While we all like to have the most ram possible, sometimes keeping that older small chip in with the newer large chips you installed slows them all down to match the speed of the slowest chip. Leaving that old small chip out may be the best thing you ever do it terms of improving your performance.
Use Apple System Profiler to determine what size chips you have installed and in what slots they appear (OS8.6 or later). Guru or MacTracker are both excellent resources for finding out what size and how many and what type of ram your system uses. They are both on the Kitchen Sink CD.
Put your largest chips in the first slot that appears in Apple System Profiler.
If you are having trouble getting ram to show up, and you are sure that it is seated properly (because you did this twice already), you may want to clean the contacts (only on older ram). I use a paper towel dampened with alcohol to clean the oxidation and oils from the gold contacts. I always hold the chips by the chip surface and never touch the contact surfaces. Skin oils are acidic enough to cause oxidation. If the sockets are oxidized I use a piece of small card stock and slide it back and forth in the slots to remove oxidation. Use caution since these are delicate and static sensitive areas.
If it still isn't showing up, zap the pram.
BAD RAM or improperly seated RAM, causes all kinds of grief. If your machine crashes frequently and you have nothing external hooked to the machine, begin taking out one ram stick at a time (assuming your unit doesn't require pairs) and restarting. If your unit straightens up you probably have located the problem. Don't assume the ram is bad at this point though. Try the chip in a different slot. Still bad? Try cleaning the contacts. If it still doesn't work with that chip installed retire it or return it if it is a new purchase.
TIP: TEST YOUR NEW MEMORY: There is a small utility called Test Memory 1.0 (Tucows has it) and of course it is on the later Kitchen Sink CD's in the Diagnostics folder. Use it to run multiple tests to see if your ram passes. This is not a definitive test but since it is repeatable it will allow you to hammer on the ram for a few hours or even all night to see if it fails after warming up. If the tester slows down or hangs for a good while during part of the test it may be that one of your chips has some damage. Try pulling it out and see if your testing speeds up. You may be better to live without one of those old chips.
TIP: Many external devices like USB hard drives etc. as well as programs like Quickbooks and many more, use the Carbon Lib for operation. Make sure you have Carbon Lib 1.6 installed on all 8.6-9.2.2 systems. This is on the Kitchen Sink CD in the Apple File Folders. The Carbon Lib resides in your extension folder. Remember even if you are running X this is used by programs in classic mode.
If you don't have your system on a surge suppressor you are asking for it. Have at least a low cost and better quality surge surpressors that help protect your system. If you have a modem you should buy a surge suppressor that allows you to run your phone line through it since these are probably the most sensitive item on your system. Even with a high quality suppressor unplug your equipment (including the modem from the phone line) during strong thunderstorms. No suppressor will protect you if the strike is strong enough. Take no chances. No warranty likely covers damages caused from lightning or power surges. If you are bucks up add a UPS. This not only gives you spike protection it keeps your system from going down due to low power brownouts. It also gives you time to shut down if you should have a power failure. Because these weigh a lot you are going to get your best price at the local discount stores most often. If you have a fairly big investment in your system and or use your rig for production spend a few dollars more and get a UPS Battery Backup.
If you are using AOL simply install the software and follow the directions. I put AOL 5.0 on most systems in the Internet folder which is the latest Mac version that will work with system 8 and 9. Don't go downloading or installing from their CD what you already have. If you have trouble call their support line, they have a good one and usually the folks who answer can help. Their installer puts the right pieces on your system automatically. Once you are connected to AOL you can then launch a REAL BROWSER like Internet Explorer or Netscape and use the AOL connection to surf the net.
If you are using other software be aware that Apple Remote Access is preinstalled on most systems we sell. You may need to turn on the components in the Extensions Manager since we usually disable it.
IF YOU ARE USING ARA (Apple Remote Access) to connect with your Service Provider you may need to turn on these extensions in the extensions manager. On many models we ship the units with them disabled. There are several control panels and several extensions (usually 3 of each). Simply open the extensions manager from the control panels and click the appropriate box to select them and turn them on. Restart.
ARA conflicts with FreePPP and some Fax software. If you decide to use FreePPP or your Service Provider requires it you may have to disable ARA extensions and control panels.
If you are having trouble getting your modem configured try the built in help file! It will walk you through setting up Apple Remote Access (ARA) and configuring TCPIP for your Internet Service Provider. It has tips for helping you work through any problems you may be having.
We like and use FreePPP to connect to the Internet via modems. It is usually in the Internet folder though not installed and it is on the Kitchen Sink CD. If you decide to use it make sure that the Apple Remote Access extensions and control panels are turned off. Check with your ISP though to make sure they support using FreePPP.
I thought everyone in the world knew by now that if you have call waiting on your line to add a *70, before the prefix on the numbers your modem dials. This temporarily disables call waiting so someone won't call you while you are cruising the web and knock you offline. Dialing manually *71 reenables it if you think it got hung while using your modem. It normally resets itself.
No I am not talking about the 1-900 lines. If you pick up your phone and hear someone talking to their Aunt Jessie or pops and clicks in the background you have a dirty line. Your telephone service is required to give you a clean signal up to your box. I never tell them I am using the line with a computer. Just tell them you have interference on your voice line if you call to complain. You are responsible usually from the box into your home. I check my box a couple of times a year and clean out the creepy crawlers and make sure it isn't full of water etc. You might also check the connections in the box to make sure they are clean and tight.
Not too long ago I had someone buy a system from us and they could not get the modem to work although they could hear it dial and it would ring a voice line. We shipped a second modem and that modem would not work either. The guy finally took the system to another house and it worked fine. While they could not hear any trouble the line was dirty enough to keep them from getting a good connection with their ISP. Sometimes you just have to call the durn phone company.
Did you take your system to the office and plug your modem into the companies digital phone line? Had to buy a new modem didn't you? I almost hesitated to tell you this because we sell more modems this way..... '-)
If you own FAXstf then install and use it with your modem. If not we include ValueFax (under Telecom) on the Kitchen Sink CD. It is a shareware program that works well and it is easy to use. We paid the shareware fee and it is the fax program we use in our daily operations. If you like and use this program make sure you register and pay the shareware fee. We all benefit if the author can profit from spending time keeping the program updated.
If you are hooking up an internal network spend a few dollars more and get 10/100 SWITCHES rather than hubs. They look the same but a SWITCH handles the traffic like a stoplight rather than a stop sign. If you are on a budget and speed is not a real issue we have some bargain 10BaseT products available and these will work as fast as the internal Ethernet on most PowerPC or older systems.
We like and sell a 10/100 PCI Ethernet Card (8139C or D Chipset) that fits into a PCI slot on any 7200 and up PowerPC. These also work in PC's and are OSX compatible when you install the required driver! If you are on an internal network or a cable or DSL modem and have a PCI slot open you really should invest the less than $20 bucks it takes to upgrade your machine. Our genuine Apple 10/100 Ethernet Cards require no driver in 8.5-OSX. Your iMac and Blue & White G3 or better have 10/100 Ethernet built in. The Ethernet cards are simply to install, simply place it in an open PCI slot, and add the driver (from the Kitchen Sink CD/Ethernet Drivers folder into your systems extensions folder after unstuffing it. Restart your machine and choose the Ethernet slot in your TCPIP control panel and you are now working at 100baseT speeds!
We now carry a great little 802.11B Wireless Router. Buy this one even if you don't need the wireless. It is a bargain at the price. You can also check the discount store ads in the Sunday paper. Find a LinkSys 4 Port Cable/DSL Router (about $39-$60 after rebate, Radio Shack actually carries them as well). You can also use the slightly more expensive Wireless LinkSys 4 Port. It will work in place of an Airport for much less (currently around $40 bucks for the 802.11b and more for the faster 802.11g model) if you think you might want Wireless access down the road or already have an Airport enabled machine. Other router brands may work but we know these work reliably. It is what we use! Order your Ethernet Cables from us. The discounters stick you on them after saving you on the LinkSys. Follow the instructions that comes with the LinkSys. Set your LinkSys to serve DHCP and then change your TCPIP settings on your Mac to DHCP. Your router will automatically assign your machines IP addresses then. This router has the added benefit of providing some protection against hackers. Install 10/100 Ethernet cards for faster access. By the way NETGEAR sucks. I am not real happy about DLINK either but you already know this if you tried to get product support from them. LinkSys probably doesn't have any better support but you won't need it since the product works.
If you have no need for a regular network but just want to hook up two Macs that both have Ethernet connections, to move files or whatever simply purchase a CROSSOVER CABLE from us. We also carry a CROSSOVER COUPLER that allows you to use two normal Ethernet Cables to hook two Macs directly to each other. Set up File sharing and have at it. If you don't know how the Mac OS Help includes a tutorial and will actually walk you through setting file sharing up. We also stock an item called a Dayna Print-T that allows you to use a PhoneNet connector to hook up an AppleTalk capable Printer (or small PhoneNet network, including your old classic Macs) to your Ethernet network to share resources. If your old Mac doesn't have Ethernet you can use this with a PhoneNet connector to hook up to an Ethernet network. We also carry the PhoneNet connectors, terminators and phone cables for connecting older equipment together. Turn on file sharing and start moving files etc.
If your PowerBook has an HDI-30 SCSI connection (almost square with lots of pins) you are very lucky. By using our SCSI BUDDY you can use this to connect a 25 pin to 25 pin cable (like a zip drive uses) from your PowerBook to your Desktop system (as long as you have SCSI out). Your PowerBooks hard drive will appear on the Desktop when in buddy mode after you connect and restart both machines. This allows you to synchronize files easily or to run Norton Repair , or Speed Disk, or backup, or install new software using the horsepower of your desktop unit to drive it. We use this to set up and test PowerBooks.
I Sometimes things get fouled up and all you get is an assigned 22.214.171.124 self assigned IP address or perhaps your Airport stops working. When this happens you might want to write down the needed info before blowing away the files and recreating them.
When you are ready do the following:
We sometimes sell low cost Wireless Routers. Check our wireless section. Check the discount store ads in the Sunday paper. Find a LinkSys 4 Port Cable/DSL Router (about $39-$60 after rebate, Radio Shack actually carries them as well). You can also use the slightly more expensive Wireless LinkSys 4 Port. It will work in place of an Airport for much less (currently around $80 bucks for the 802.11b and more for the faster 802.11g model) if you think you might want Wireless access down the road or already have an Airport enabled machine. Other router brands may work but we know these work reliably. It is what we use! Order your Ethernet Cables from us. The discounters stick you on them after saving you on the LinkSys. Follow the instructions that comes with the LinkSys. Set your LinkSys to serve DHCP and then change your TCPIP settings on your Mac to DHCP. Your router will automatically assign your machines IP addresses then. This router has the added benefit of providing some protection against hackers. Install 10/100 Ethernet cards for faster access.
TIP: Turn Filesharing off when you are not using it. There is a bug in the software that causes ocassional lockups. Apple knew this and chose not to do anything about it and now that they are not supporting the classic OSes anymore it will never be fixed. Besides that, it slows down rebooting the machine depending on how much you are sharing. Also Filesharing only has to be turned on the host machine. The other machine(s) that are used to access the host does not need Filesharing turned on. This probably is fixed in OSX, but still leave it off when you are not actively using it.
I like and use Linksys Routers for my Mac network. They are relatively cheap these days and since even Radio Shack carries them we don't bother. Buy the LinkSys Wireless G (regular only not the Turbo crap). Hard connect via ethernet one of your systems to set up the unit. First thing put in a password. The default password will result in every 12 year old on the internet taking over your router. Second put in a network name. Make it simple so you can remember it but not too simple. No spaces. You will want to enter that name on each system you have accessing your network so that it doesn't try to roam. That way your connection is solid since you have told your unit to hook directly to that network.
802.11G is equivalent to Airport Extreme and is the faster. 802.11b is your regular Airport connection and usually is available at a bargain price and is fast enough for most folks.
Airport cards for older Macs are no longer produced. That is why the price is higher today on those units than they were new. I never used Airport choosing instead industry standard items where possible (I'm cheap).
I hate DLINK. While some of their stuff is advertised as Mac compatible I have always had trouble. Perhaps you haven't and I guess good for you.
I am still looking for a good OS9 USB or PCI 802.11G solution. If you have any suggestions let me know. For OSX Orange Link software allows you to use many 802.11G PMCIA cards if your PowerBook is equipped. Sonnet makes a PCI card for OSX that fits in a PCI slot that we keep in stock.
Check our Wireless section for lower cost solutions.
Want to make your G4 PowerMac connect with your wireless network? We have finally found a solution with Wireless PCI cards that work with Airport Extreme at a good price!
Power Macintosh G4 Upgrades Page - this links directly into our online store with links for all the goodies you will need to upgrade your system
Ben Dittman (a Headgap reader) writes: If a person uses a PCI based wireless card that uses the Broadcom chipset in a Sawtooth G4, it will often work using Apple's Airport Extreme drivers since Airport Extreme cards are based on the Broadcom chipset. One card in particular that I know works is the Buffalo WLI2-PCI-G54. I have personally seen it in action in a Sawtooth. Theoretically, any Broadcom based card should work, but I definitely can't guarantee that since I haven't tested them all. 802.11g speeds for less money than an Apple Airport (802.11b) card. As long as you have a free PCI slot this is a great option. That is a tech tip from me.
I might add that Sonnet makes a card that we sell that works great. The above tip should save you some money though since the Sonnet item is a bit pricey.
I think Speakeasy.net has one of the best and simplest testers going and it allows you to check our upload and download times to different parts of the country. http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/.
But why would you want to? Yes you can hook up your PC and your Mac using an Ethernet network or CROSSOVER CABLE but the PC won't talk to the Mac or vice versa. DAVE from Thursby is software that enables your Mac to communicate with a PC. It is expensive however. Check their web site http://www.thursby.com for a demo version. Connectix makes software for working on a PC network. "DoubleTalk" (no longer made) revolutionizes Mac-PC networking by enabling Power Mac users to connect to PC network servers and printers from within the familiar Mac interface - not in a Windows environment. No network reconfiguration is required - you can set up your own Mac and connect to a PC network right away. OSX Panther RENDEZVOUS allows to see and connect to PC networked systems and printers.
We used to stock and item that allows a USB capable Mac and PC to communicate and exchange files. We don't stock it anymore but can special order it. It runs about $35 or so and comes with the software for Mac and For PC's. You can send data to and from any combination using this connector. I had someone email and remind me of this and it certainly is an easy and affordable way to exchange files. Give us a call or drop us an email if you are interested.
Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac allows you to connect to a Windows-based computer and work with programs and files on that computer from your Macintosh computer. To connect to a Windows-based computer, you need network access and permissions to connect to the computer, and the computer must be running Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Services. The following Windows products support Remote Desktop connections:
Ben Dittman (a Headgap reader) writes: If a person uses a PCI based wireless card that uses the Broadcom chipset in a Sawtooth G4, it will often work using Apple's Airport Extreme drivers since Airport Extreme cards are based on the Broadcom chipset. One card in particular that I know works is the Buffalo WLI2-PCI-G54. I have personally seen it in action in a Sawtooth. Theoretically, any Broadcom based card should work, but I definitely can't guarantee that since I haven't tested them all. 802.11g speeds for less money than an Apple Airport (802.11b) card. As long as you have a free PCI slot this is a great option. That is a tech tip from me.
I might add that Sonnet makes a card that we sell that works great. The above tip should save you some money though since the Sonnet item is a bit pricey. I also sometimes have cards that we have tested and generally supply any special drivers required etc. at a much lower price. See our Wireless Section of our online store.
The old Mozilla Web Browser program (v1.2) that runs in 9 is a little long in the tooth. I prefer it since it allows tabbed browsing, plus it crashes less often than Explorer. I accidently discovered that if you install Netscape 7+ for 9 the installer actually replaces parts of the old Mozilla, giving you many updated components. This allowed me to use some web sites that had updated their security to continue to use Mozilla when accessing them. Can't find the old Mozilla? It is on the Kitchen Sink CD in the Internet/Browser folder as is the Netscape 7 installer. If you are installing it for the first time install the Mozilla first, then install the Netscape 7 after restarting so that it will do the same trick on your system. I have almost quit using Explorer, but sometimes have to resort to it if a web sites JAVA causes the Mozilla to lock up. You can also try iCab. While it is slower it also emulates Windows Explorer 6 if you set up the preferences that way. Free download from http://www.icab.de
I don't like Outlook Express. It keeps all of your messages in one file. If you save all of your old messages this file gets humongous, and then it craps itself. When this happens you probably are going to lose everything. Your prefs and the files you need to back up are in the Microsoft Folder inside the Documents folder. Most people don't know this and end up without a backup. If you get into trouble try starting Outlook Express and hold down the option key. It should ask you if you would like to rebuild the database. Say yes. This may fix it. If you would have done this periodically you may not be having this trouble. I like and still use Eudora which keeps its messages separate.
Be aware that USB2.0 devices are not normally supported by the older Mac OSes. OSX is required for USB2.0 support. Some devices may work if they fall back to 1.1 mode. Don't buy 2.0 USB devices thinking they will work, as they probably won't unless you are running OSX. If you happen to have a USB 2.0 device you might try it with 9 to see if it works. While the USB2 specs are better than Firewire, rarely if ever do they perform as well as a Firewire device. If you have a choice between Firewire and USB always pick Firewire. USB uses packet transfers while Firewire uses streaming. Streaming is always better and it is why it has become the standard for digital video.
Headgap stocks a good low cost 5 port and now 2 port USB 2.0 Card that used thes good NEC Chipset. This will fit into your G4 tower but remember that USB2.0 pulls more power for the higher demand devices. It will disable low power mode when installed. It fouls up sleep mode under 9. X was setup for it to start with and sleeps just fine on most systems.
NEC Chipset
There are cheap ones and there are good ones. Find one with a GOOD power supply (LIKE THE ONES WE SELL) if you expect to run external hard drives, CDs, Scanners, Printers etc. from it. We carry a good powered hub. Simple lower power requirement items like mice and trackballs don't have to have a powered hub and we carry the inexpensive non-powered hubs for that purpose. Also purchase from a reputable dealer. A bad hub can take our your root ports and destroy either the card or your computer if the USB is built onto the motherboard (always look for the words overcurrent protection in the description).
If you are having trouble with a USB device plug it directly into the root port of the computer and see if the problem goes away. If it does then your hub is either defective or simply doesn't carry enough juice to power the item. If you start having problems with items on the hub simply unplug its power supply and replug it back in. Many times simply powering on and off is enough to reset the items. Apple System Profiler under devices and volumes has a command menu. Pull it down to Show USB Alerts and events and then choose Show all USB Events. Sometimes it can help you identify the problem.
A customer recently shipped us his system and camera. He had tried everything but just couldn't get it to work. I tested it on his system and then on a couple of ours. It would not work on a system that had the card installed but would work on a native USB system. I had Cheryn pull a powered hub we sell and put it back on his system via the hub. It works perfectly. The camera was drawing more juice that the card could supply and in this case a good hub with its own high capacity power supply was the solution.
TIP: Apple System Profiler under Devices and Volumes in the Command menu has a selection called Show USB Alerts and events has a button that says show All USB Events. It may help you trouble shoot a problem. If it shows shutting down port it means that the device you are attaching may be defective or drawing more power than the bus can supply.
Some cameras, scanners and newer printers seem to draw more power than can be supplies via the PCI USB Card. Some even say they will not work with a card and require "native USB". Most times it is because the device tries to draw more power than the bus can supply. The card keeps itself from damage by shutting down. The solution is a GOOD POWERED HUB. The hub we carry is good for both USB 1.1 and 2.0 devices and supplies 2.6 AMPs of additional power. This makes many problems go away. Don't be suckered into buying a lower powered hub at a bargain price. 450 milliamps is not enough for many high demand items.
TIP: Many external devices like USB hard drives etc. as well as programs like Quickbooks and many more, use the Carbon Lib for operation. Make sure you have Carbon Lib 1.6 installed on all 8.6-9.2.2 systems. This is on the Kitchen Sink CD in the Apple File Folders. The Carbon Lib resides in your extension folder. THIS IS USED BY CLASSIC MODE ON YOUR OSX SYSTEM!
Firewire Cards and Devices are fast and reliable once they are set up properly. Sometimes though you may have trouble getting a device recognized. It seems that once it recognizes it from then on it magically works from then on. Sometimes I think the machine purposely does this just to get you irritated. We highly recommend OS9.1 or later. While Firewire works on 8.6, use the files on the Kitchen Sink to install the Firewire Drivers. Apple finally got things right in OS9 and later. If you are on 9.0 or 9.04 upgrade to 9.1. It is a free update and the Firewire Drivers are much improved. If you have 9.1 installed no additional software is necessary to enable the card. It should show up in the Apple System Profiler.
MAKE SURE THE FIREWIRE EXTENSION ARE TURNED ON! Firewire Enabler, and Firewire Support must be enabled!
Depending on the device you are hooking up, you may or may not need to install specific drivers for the item. I usually simply plug in the device, power it up, and restart the machine. If it doesn't show up, then install the drivers for the device. Restart again. If it still fails to show up try rebuilding the desktop. Last resort, ZAP the pram. This forces the machine to look at all the hardware again.
If you have discarded the original Firewire extensions you can use Tome Viewer (from the Kitchen Sink/Diagnotics Folder) to pull just those pieces from the installer tome archive on your install disk or one of the OS upgrade tome files and yes the 9.1 Firewire Enabler and Firewire Support drivers work on 8.6.
When buying DVD media make sure you stick with the -R media and not the +R media. Some of the older DVD players in older Mac systems out there will not read the +R media.
In Toast under the Edit Menu select preferences and set your ram cache to 64 MB assuming you have that much memory available. Giving Toast as much memory as you have available will help insure fast consistent burns.
If you have a zip disk plugged in and try to burn a disk I will guarantee that you make a coaster instead of a copy. The Iomega software really interferes with the bus when a disk is mounted.
ALWAYS Eject all Zip media before burning!
I usually restart before making disks and don't run anything else. I also buy good media if I plan on high speed burns. You can save money by buying the cheap stuff but plan on only burning at 24X.
Compressed graphics or a lot of files? Slow down. Burn 24X or even 16X. If I have only a few files to burn and good media I run 40X. Toast will many time suggest a slower speed after you insert a disk. I guess it knows you bought cheap CD media.
TIP: Still having trouble? Use the TEST BURN feature to see how well your system is communicating with the drive. If the files you are burning are dipping down slow set your burn speed to match. I sometimes set up a disk image using disk copy (in your utilities folder) and copy the files to it. You can even use Norton's Speed Disk to optimize the disk image before burning.
Still having trouble. Try turning off virtual memory. If I have a near full CD to burn and have trouble, I turn off virtual memory in the control panel and restart. A bad or old style ram chip can slow down your performance. It you have an older 32 MB chip filling up that empty slot try pulling it and running your test burn again and see if you don't get improved performance. If you happen to have one of the old style 16 MB chips in your G3 definitely pull it.
The built in Toast Help files can also be useful. Give them a try. See the Help menu at the middle top of your screen?
TURBO MODE: Not getting the full 48X or 52X burning speed on SONY mechanisms? Better CD's sometimes are required. If you are buying the 48X name brand then your drive may not be "Turbo Mode" enabled. Put a good already recorded CD in the drive and let it mount, press the button once and let go, then hold down the button and count to 20 (if you can see the drive light it will flash). Your next burn you should have the top speeds available. We set your system up before it left here with "Turbo Mode" enabled but aborts and pulling the system plug sometimes cause the setting to be lost. If you have trouble booting and the system hanging on reboot put a CD in the drive and restart. You may have to restart again with the CD out but it should straighten up. Last resort, unplug the power to the CDRW and reboot. Once you get things working okay again replug the power in.
Remember though if the files you are burning are compressed and spread around the drive you may not be able to burn at top speeds. If I am not sure and have many files to burn I run the Toast test burn feature to help me choose the speed for mixed file types. The faster your hard drive, the faster your processor and adequate ram all play parts in burning. You won't usually get full 52X burns unless you have a fast drive and a fast processor in your machine. That's okay though, 40X is still plenty fast for most folks, and even having to slow down to 24X on occasion when you burn compressed and mixed file types filling up a disk is still fine.
Are you on a G4? We test your unit with a DVD Movie before your system leaves here. Sometimes when you plug a movie in and you get an error from the software it is because of region codes that are imbedded in the DVD itself. The easiest fix is to install Apple DVD Player 2.7 which is available as a download from Apple or on our Kitchen Sink CD in the Apple files area. Throwing the prefs away would have likely worked as well but hey you needed the later player installed anyway.
After you install OS X, you'll need to run Patchburn to create a driver for the Super Drive.
If the version says it is expired go to http://www.patchburn.de and download the latest version listed for your OS.
Here's what you do on the Jaguar version (the Panther & Tiger version does it for you).
I had someone else call and said they bought a SuperDrive (not from us) and installed it with the patches on a G4 and could not get the DVD to play movies back in OSX. My guess is that they installed the mechanism and didn't have the DVD Player installed since the OSX install doesn't put the player on the system if a DVD player is not present during the install. If you just copy the DVD Player from someone elses system and add it to your system it will not work. You need to use a program called Pacifist (on the X Kitchen Sink/Diagnostics folder), This will allow you to install parts of the OSX software (much like Tome Viewer does in OS9). Use it to locate the DVD player on the original CD and let it install it with all the parts and pieces. Run the disk utility and repair permissions always before and after installing software. Out of the dozens of A09's I have installed in both 9, Jaguar and Panther, I have never had a problem. Of course we sell brand new drives with our 30 day warranty and the full 1 year factory warranty from Pioneer, beside including the 9 and X patches so that all Apple software see's the device as a fully recognized drive.
Internal Apple DVD RAM Drive DVD-ATAPI require an ATA systems with an open IDE port. NOT FOR SCSI machines. Great replacement for G3 Desktops and Towers. These work straight up with Beige, B&W, and G4 Towers. These use the DVD RAM media for recording up to 4.7GB per disk (or side on double sided media). Great for backup! Just plug in a cartridge, format the disk and use it like a hard drive. Low cost media available at most all office supply stores! They do require an ATI Rage Pro 16MB Card or better and the appropriate player software for DVD playback. They also read and play CD media. We tested these on a Beige Desktop with 9.2.2 installed and they worked straight up! On the G3 Desktops you may have to put a shim at the top of the drive to help the slightly taller drive door clear the case.
You need the full version of Toast 5. It is also required for making VCD's and other exotic formats. This runs in both 9 and X but obviously doesn't have some of the advanced features and support the 6 version does which is OSX only. Roxio.com has made it a bit harder to find. Here is the link: http://www.roxio.com/en/products/toast5/faq.jhtml
Click the buy option of your choice. You can download it for $79.95 or get a boxed version for 99.95.
Go to the extension manager in the control panels select energy saver. Turn it off!!! Problem solved!
Oh yeah, if your computer doesn't wake up politely don't put it to sleep from the menu either.
Sometimes you can have it turn off the display but leave the hard drive running. You have that option in the later energy saver versions. Just click the show details button and change the settings.
What the real problem is, is you have installed software or hardware that isn't compatible with the sleep function. If you really want to fix it then try the following. Unhook everything but the keyboard, mouse and monitor. Manually put the computer to sleep using the sleep selection in the menu under special. Wake it up. If it wakes back up okay then it is one of the pieces of hardware you unhooked. Add one back at a time until you find the culprit. Internally it could be a card. You may have to pull all the cards and test it that way.
If it fails to wake back up with the hardware test, then it is a software conflict. Turn off half of the extensions and try it. If it fails try the other half. By process of elimination you can eventually discover the culprit. Most likely it is something you want so you should have just turned off the energy saver selection off to start with. You can then either leave the computer running all the time like we do or you can simply shut it down until you need it again.
The USB2.0 cards we carry including the Combo card do not allow full sleep in OS9. They allow full sleep in OSX (on most machines). If you want a USB2 card then live with it, nobody elses cards do either. USB 2 specs require more power for the device.
Different models and hardware combinations make this a tough thing to troubleshoot. I personally don't waste time trying to figure it out. I have spent a few hours only to discover it was the CD Rom Driver on one unit for a guy that insisted that he needed it. I eventually found a patch for a G3DT 24XCD mechanism from Apple that fixed it. Generally though it will be something there is no fix for and is caused by something you can't live without.
John Kasper writes that the Apple support site recommends this: I trashed the Energy Saver and Finder Prefs and that has fixed the problem. At least it seems so.
Try deep zapping the pram. Don't know how. Type zam pram in the Mac OS help menu.
We have had so many folks ask why we didn't carry any of the new Flat Panel LCD type monitors for Macs. Frankly the Sunday Ads should tell you why. There are dozens on sale with rebates every week at most of the major discounters. What we didn't really think about though is that many of you don't have easy access to the discounters and also you don't have the knowledge on which one is a decent quality unit that will work with your Mac. When we needed to replace some of our aging CRT monitors we checked the wholesale market and found several with decent specs at reasonable prices. We presently have picked out two units that I consider deluxe models. We are pleased with our selections, and both units exceeded our expectations. We have priced them sharply and include shipping in our price. Some of the bargain units out there are dim and or fuzzy and have slow response times. These units are sharp, bright and fast and we think they are a good value for your dollar. They both have standard 15 pin HD15 VGA connectors so they work straight up with Blue and White G3's and later. With our adapter they will even work with the early PowerPC's although you may want to up your video ram.
Cheryn chose the 19" WIDE SCREEN model to use with her system. The extra real estate lets her have several applications open at once and she can easily display program pallets along with her work. If you have the scratch we think you can't go wrong with this unit. I chose the more conservative 17". It took me a while to get used to how bright it is but then I realized that as sharp as the images and text are an work in the maximum 1280 x 1024 and now I have a lot more space on my screen as well.
One of the other benefits of these units over CRT is that they draw MUCH LESS POWER and don't generate near the heat. Since we leave our systems on 24/7 it may not take so long to recover our investment in power savings not to mention how much cooler they run. You don't really think about that until you have 3 monitors on your server rack with a small fan blowing the hot air out during the summer. What also pleases me is that I will now have more battery backup time should our power drop.
Power Macintosh G4 Upgrades Page - this links directly into our online store with links for all the goodies you will need to upgrade your system
We recently started carrying some of the LCD type monitors. We look for bright sharp units at good prices and personally test to see that they perform well with the Macs. These monitors feature the regular VGA HD15 connectors that hook right up to most Macs. We have adapters even for the old Beige Macs but you may also need to upgrade your video ram a bit to be able to display on these larger units. We stock both vram upgrades and graphics cards if you are in need.
We don't carry much in CRT monitors. You see old Apple Monitors out there are 6-13 years old now. They are heavy to ship and the larger ones are subject to damage in shipping. If you can dig up a 15 to 17" CRT PC monitor we recommend you use our low cost Mac to PC monitor adapter (see our monitor section). Easily adapt most any PC monitor to your Macintosh including flat panels LCD's that use the HD15 VGA connector. Compare at $24.99 to $44.99 our Special Price $14.99 includes domestic shipping.
There are some PC monitors that simply will not work with a Mac. Some of the bargain 14" simply will not support a standard sync rate. Beware of any small OEM PC monitor. Get permission to return it if it doesn't work or don't buy it.
Older Macs normally had a 2 row 15 pin connector called a DB15. PC monitors use a 3 row 15 pin setup called an HD15 and are sometimes referred to as VGA.
Yikes G4's only have an HDI connector, early Sawtooth G4's have both HD15 and DVI. If you are bucks up buy a DVI capable monitor or LCD flat panel since these use the straight digital output from the card without having to convert the signal to analog of the older style HD15 connections.
Early G4's have both HD15 and DVI. If you are bucks up buy a DVI capable monitor or LCD flat panel since these use the straight digital output from the card without having to convert the signal to analog of the older style HD15 connections. The later G4's have ADC which work nicely with the older Apple Cinema Displays and with an adapter will connect to a DVI monitor. All also have the HD15 connectors though that are common to the PC market.
I don't like talking about ADC. Even Apple finally gave up. Their newest Cinema Displays are all DVI. ADC requires additional power to the monitor via the ADC connection. You will find this on later model G4's and some G5's. Personally if you have an ADC model computer I would buy a DVI adapter (from us) and a DVI LCD Display from one of the discounters.
If you have an ADC Cinema Display and an ADC supporting computer good for you. They go together and work wonderfully.
If you have a DVI system and need to hook up your ADC display, we do carry an adapter to supply an ADC Style Cinema Display. This has its own high quality power supply and runs around $100.
By the way, you can't just stick an ADC card in your unit and have it work. The internals are different since ADC requires additional voltage. That goes for the ATI cards that feature DVI and ADC on one card. It will not work via ADC since the voltage is not there. I learned this one the hard way! Read that ATI fine print.
Move the fan dummy. Any device that has a small motor in it can cause monitor interference.
If you select Help from the Mac Center in the menu bar at the top at type CONTROL STRIP it will tell you to move the control strip use the option key and move it by the tab at the end as well as a bit more information about using it. Always try Help from the menu bar anytime you have a problem.
Anyone running OSX may eventually see this appear on the screen. The first thing to do is try following the instructions. If it restarts and everything works again it may just have been time for you to restart your machine. If it does it again, I usually zap the pram and try it again. Some times machines get a bit crazy and zapping the pram restores their minds. If that fails I then simplify the machine by unplugging everything save the keyboard, mouse and monitor. If it repeats again, I go a step further and remove all but one stick of RAM, and all PCI cards. I then do a deep level reset.
If that fails I startup in single user mode by holding the command and s keys down at startup. If I get that far, I then run AppleJack and set it to Auto and Restart. If you don't have AppleJack installed (you really should) then you can type in FSCK and it will do a file system check on your hard drive and may allow you to get back up and running. Typing the word AUTO in all uppercase does a deeper level of cleaning in AppleJack.
If that fails I restart from my backup. Once I identify the problem I start putting things back. Many times it appears to be nothing more than your computer punishing you for some unknown reason. Once I have everything running again I run Maintenance.
Since OSX is a user based system designed around BSD Unix, there are a few things that most Mac users haven't had to contend with. One of which is permissions. When you install software or fonts that you intend for everyone on your system to use you need to install them from the main user which is sometimes called Admin or Adminstrator account. It was the first account you set up when you first installed your software. If you install it from one of the user accounts it will only be accessible by that account.
BEFORE AND AFTER YOU INSTALL SOFTWARE and on a regular basis run the Disk Utility (in the Utilities folder) and repair permissions. You have to boot from the first install CD to run the disk repair feature (you should do this several times a year).
WHEN BOOTED FROM 9 do not throw away or move the little files that OSX puts on the desktop! I thought most folks knew that you should not mess with those files, but we have had several neatniks decide that it would be a good idea to put all of that stuff in a folder named OSX. Imagine their suprise when OSX failed to boot and they had to reinstall X. We named the problem after the first person to do it that we had to fix. Chucking your OSX install is now part of our vocabulary.
A list of
required firmware updates is listed on Apple's web site.
this before installing X.
If you are installing OSX for the first time:
Another handy program is System Optimizer X. It is on the OSX Kitchen Sink in the Diagnostics folder. It runs all of the maintenance on your system on demand. It is a $12 shareware program but the demo works fine until you decide to register it and this one is well done, so try it and register your copy. Donationware? Try AppleJack. A bit geekier it does a fine job of running your OSX maintenance also in theOSX Kitchen Sink Diagnostics folder or available for download http://applejack.sourceforge.net/ Read the installation instructions and understand what it means to boot up in single user mode (still no Leopard Versions of either program).
We recently started preinstalling AppleJack on all OSX systems (No Leopard version at this time). This little utility (Kitchen Sink OSX Diagnostics Folder or downloadable from http://applejack.sourceforge.net/) allows you to repair your disk, repair permissions, validate the system's preference files, and get rid of possibly corrupted cache files. In most cases, these operations can help get your machine back on track. The important thing is that you don't need another startup disk with you. All you need to do is restart in Single User Mode (SUM), by holding down the command and s keys at startup, and then typing applejack, or applejack auto (which will run through all the tasks automatically), or applejack auto restart (which will also restart the computer automatically at the end of the process).
The only gotcha I have found so far is on Beige G3 systems. If you had to borrow someones monitor to install X, then your other adapted monitor probably will show you a black screen at startup. Since you simply need to type applejack auto restart, I do just that blindly and then leave the system alone. It runs through the cycles and then restarts usually getting you back up and running. There are some other warnings in the documentation so read through them thoroughly before using on your system. This is an emergency repair program and I really would not run it all the time, but it has saved me more than a few times from the hours of reinstallation.
NOTE: It will take longer for your system to boot and synch with your monitor when booting into X. Be patient.
Boot up from the first OSX install CD by placing it in the drive and holding down the C key. When it comes up choose Reset Password from the Menu and follow the instructions.
I can't recommend Norton for OSX. You certainly don't want to boot into 9 and run a Disk Doctor version older than 6.03. Earlier versions will trash the drive since there are many changes to the drive format that X adds. I have used Tech Tool X and Disk Warrior but my best advice at this time is the use the disk repair program when booted from the original X install disk at this time. Do this periodically and it will help keep your drive healthy. Disk Warrior is the only OSX utility I ever use these days and then only for recovery. Never as maintenance.
I had someone ask about Journaling. If you run a server you already probably know about this and have it on your server since it gives you a bit of extra protection and reliability. If you hadn't noticed it became an option for your Mac Extended Hard Drive starting in Panther. Next time you repair permissions using the disk utility in Tiger look at the screen and you may noticing the Journaling option button. I have a rule of thumb about Journaling. I turn it on my boot drive and off on my data drives. What it does is keep additional information as you use your hard drive. In the event of a power dip or crash when you power back up it uses this info to restore the drive. Some folks think that everything should have it turned on but it costs speed. If you use your data drive for video project work for example it slows down the drive access enough it may cause you problems. Burning large amounts of data to an optical may be slowed down enough you may have a failure is another reason you may want to turn it off. Since the drive utility makes it easy to turn on an off you may want to use this to your advantage. Turn it off when you need max performance and on the rest of the time for safety.
Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html) is on the X version of the Kitchen Sink. This puppy allows you to backup your OSX drive to an internally connected drive or an external Firewire drive. This will make a bootable backup! It can also be used to recover parts or all of your X install. This solved one of the main objections I had to X and why I was not an early adopter. Version 3.xx runs in Tiger and above and work with Leopard. It has more features and is more flexible if you are on Tiger or above.
If you don't have an internal second drive or an external firewire drive consider purchasing one. We will talk you through the install if you need help.
BEIGE G3 CLONER TIP: On older systems like your Beige DT and MT's and early iMacs you have to use a command in the menu of Carbon Copy Cloner called Bless Old World Target Drive. This is not well documented and is absolutely essential. If you don't bless it your drive will not appear and will show up as damaged under repair programs. Remember on older systems it has to be LESS THAN 8GB partition for X to recognize it.
I assume all of you are running with a second drive or external bootable and have a cloned copy of your install. Lets say you just updated to 10.4.10 and stuff stopped working or the system is munged up period. A fast fix that won't interfere with your current files in the User or Applications folders is simply to boot from your backup and use Carbon Copy Cloner to ONLY REPLACE the Library and System Folders. You will be back up with the older working version of the OS in short order and you won't lose any changes. Make sure you run repair permissions after you complete the clone.
ANYTIME YOU ARE HAVING TROUBLE BOOTING UNPLUG EVERYTHING FROM THE BACK OF YOUR COMPUTER except the keyboard and monitor, and of course the power plug. Fix one thing at a time. If you just installed hardware remove it.
Run Repair Permissions before and after installing software. Run Repair Permissions anytime you have trouble with an Application or just any problem in general. If permissions are fouled up it can really munge up a system.
Periodically and before any major upgrades boot from the original X install disk and run the disk utility from the menu and run REPAIR.
System Optimizer X does a lot more than simply repairing permissions. It clears out old logs and runs other maintenance scripts at your command. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT for Jaguar and Panther. It is on the OSX Kitchen Sink in the Diagnostics folder. It runs all of the maintenance on your system on demand. I don't like SOCKS though which is his current program.
For Tiger and Leopard I now use an Automator Script that runs the built in maintenance at your command. http://www.titanium.free.fr/download.php There are custom versions for Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard, LION, Mountain Lion and now Mavericks!
Way too many of you call after you have munged your OSX system up by running the automatic updater. You can get away with this if you have a second drive with a cloned backup that you can use to restore. Most of you don't, so heed my warning.
ALWAYS RUN THE BUILT IN DISK UTILITY OR SYSTEM OPTIMIZER AND REPAIR PERMISSIONS BEFORE & AFTER INSTALLING UPDATES. I never do a major OS update from the built in updater and always download the COMBINED UPDATE instead. Even at that I wait a few days and visit MacFixit to see what problems folks are having. If you do this you will have less trouble. The small Application updates, security updates etc. are fine to run from the updater, but again always always run repair permissions before and after installing software. If you do kill your X then be prepared to reinstall from the installer disks. Run the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu of the installer disk and run Disk Repair first though.
The guy who wrote System Optimizer has "upgraded" the program. He now calls is SOCKS. While it has many more features it expires quickly and you will have to judge if you want to pay the shareware fee. I will continue to use System Optimizer for the foreseeable future and prefer its simplicity. SOCKS has a much more elegant interface and it has the same functionality and more.
For Tiger and Leopard I now use an Automator Script that runs the built in maintenance at your command. http://www.titanium.free.fr/download.php
There are still no active viruses or spyware for OSX. There are only rumors of possible ones. If you must send $50 to someone send it to me instead of these lying, cheating virus software producers. Sure the programs find viruses in your email but they are PC viruses and none effect the Mac. I personally don't worry about PC users since they are already infected anyway. There is an average of 3 new PC viruses/spyware/trojans a day. No matter how up to date the PC virus software is, they are already infected. While the program do catch PC viruses in your mail they are worthless and some actually slow down your machine scanning all inserted media etc. DON'T BUY OR INSTALL THEM!
iMac Black Screen of X - OSX iMac WARNING: Make sure your older Slotload or Trayload iMac's ROM is updated to the latest version before installing OSX. What you get is the iMac Black Screen of X (also called the iMac Black Screen of Death). I have repaired this for many people now. If you have installed the OSX software and only have a black screen to look at you know what I mean! v4.1.9. Use Apple System Profiler under product information to identify what version you have installed on Slot Load iMacs. Trayload iMacs should be at v3.0f3 (the 1.2updater).
I know how to fix iMac's (iMac Black Screen of Death) with this particular problem. If you installed OSX on your iMac and no longer have video display call us about getting it repaired (without having to buy an analog board most likely). Our flat rate (not including parts) is $85 plus return shipping and insurance. We do a thorough cleaning and tune-up included in this price.
iMac Trayload systems will hold up to 512MB of ram. I have seen information out that says it will not. If yours doesn't your firmware isn't updated or you have bought ram from someone who doesn't know about iMacs. It takes two chips, one 256MB in the bottom and one in the top slot. I recommend you fill them up if you are going to install X.
A list of required firmware updates is listed on Apple's web site. Do this before installing X. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1395
Way too many of you call after you have munged your OSX system up by running the automatic updater. You can get away with this if you have a second drive with a cloned backup that you can use to restore. Most of you don't, so heed my warning.
ALWAYS RUN THE BUILT IN DISK UTILITY, SYSTEM OPTIMIZER OR MAINTENANCE AND REPAIR PERMISSIONS BEFORE & AFTER INSTALLING UPDATES. I never do a major OS update from the built in updater and always download the COMBINED UPDATE instead. Even at that I wait a few days and visit MacFixit to see what problems folks are having. If you do this you will have less trouble. The small Application updates, security updates etc. are fine to run from the updater, but again always always run repair permissions before and after installing software. If you do kill your X then be prepared to reinstall from the installer disks. Run the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu of the installer disk and run Disk Repair first though.
The guy who wrote System Optimizer has "upgraded" the program. He now calls is SOCKS. While it has many more features it expires quickly and you will have to judge if you want to pay the shareware fee. I will continue to use System Optimizer for the foreseeable future and prefer its simplicity. SOCKS has a much more elegant interface and it has the same functionality and more.
For Tiger, and above I now use an Automator Script that runs the built in maintenance at your command. http://www.titanium.free.fr/download.php There are versions for Tiger and above.
When installing classic programs that work under OS9 it is always best to install when booted from OS9 when you are able to. If your system is only able to boot into OSX then first load classic mode before starting a classic install.
ON systems that you have upgraded to OSX. If you call with an OSX related question please do us the courtesy of dialing on your dime. Please use the tech support line 405-601-5288 number and let us know you are on your time. We are not OSX experts but have some experience and will do what we can to assist. You can also always drop us an email using the form.
Power Macintosh G4 Upgrades Page - this links directly into our online store with links for all the goodies you will need to upgrade your system
Let me say first that is you are a ham fisted klutz get someone to do this for you. You can really ruin a computer by using the wrong cleaning materials and using them the wrong way. This is how I do it. I will tell you though that you do this at your own risk. I make no claims or warranties about this information and working on the insides of anything electronic may result in you messing the things up.
Every year or so you really should clean out your Mac. PC users will not understand this since they have to replace their computer every year or so. They never get dirty enough before having to be replaced.
First and foremost take it outside (or at least the garage). The first time I blew the dust out of my servers power supply after a few years it turned the house dark. Boy was Cheryn chapped. After opening up the housing, I use compressed air to blow out the power supply area and to blow dust out of the nooks and crannies. A small soft bristle brush comes in handy (just don't use your wifes makeup brushes or if you do destroy the evidence). I use canned air on the floppy. A lightly dampened rag is good to wipe off the external housings, being careful not to get moisture on any of the circuitry. If you smoke you may want to use a citrus type cleaner on the moist rag for the surfaces safe to clean internally.
For the case exterior, I use GooGone to remove any stickers, and alcohol to remove any ink. I then use 409 (you can use the cleaner of your choice but nothing works better than 409) spraying it liberally and let it soak for a few minutes. Wipe down with a clean damp cloth.
For polishing up and making it shiny again, I use Meguiar's Clear Coat Body Scrub. This automotive product adds a layer of protection to the plastic and takes out minor scratches much like it does on a car finish. I use a bit of polishing compound if the scratches are deep. I use Windex on monitor screens. I would never use anything on an LCD screen by the way. If you must clean it I would check with the manufacturer.
Cleaning your ball type mouse should be done regularly (especially you women with your hand lotion). The bottom comes off most usually by twisting it. The ball will fall out along with the cover plate. I use 409 on it and spray it liberally and let it soak standing in the cover plate to keep it from rolling away. I take a small pen knife and turn the mouse over and use it to clean the crud off the little rollers. This is made up mainly of hand lotion, dirt, oils, and dead skin. I then wipe off the ball with a damp cloth and replace it. I use 409 on the outside and a bit of Armor All on the plastic and cable to shine it up and protect it. Dust off or replace your mouse pad. For OPTICAL MICE simply wiping them off with a damp cloth is usually enough but a coat of Meguiar's Clear Coat Body Scrub (for the top) will take out minor scratches and leave a wax to protect the plastic.
Cleaning a keyboard is more of the same. Turn the keyboard over and slap it on the back and shake it around. Blow it out with compressed air. I use 409 spraying the keys lightly (old style keyboards only). I use a brush to get all the grime off the keys, then a damp cloth. I hit is with compressed air again to make sure I got all the moisture out. I then spray it with a small amount of Armor All and polish it with a dry cloth. Be very careful not to get moisture under the keys on these newer keyboards. Apply the cleaners to the rag instead. There is no fixing them if you get them wet.
Check often we get a few StyleWriter's and other brands in that work with your older Mac. We most always carry USB printers and we include the needed USB cable and shipping in our low price. No USB? OS8.6-9.2 and a card will put you PCI bus PowerMac owners in business. Remember to get your cables from us even if you buy your printer elsewhere. Our 6 Ft USB A-B Printer Cable sells for $4.99 shipped. I have seen them for as much as $30 in the discount stores. I don't care if they are gold plated that's too much.
BOB'S PRINTER RULE - never buy any printer without first checking the companies web site to see if they have drivers for the version of the Mac OS you are running.
We used to use Epson Printers but anything modern only works in OSX or later. Some Brother Lasers did in 9 and up but no longer. You will have no choices in color these days unless you can find a good old refurbished laser.
Visit http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/ . They have free tips and tricks in their forums that may get you back up and running. They also sell repair kits for many types of printers.
Always give us a call first. Many times we will have a refurb printer that may suit your needs. Since they are getting rare these days though if you must print then you may want to consider this alternative. Midwest Laser Specialists, Inc. rebuild older laser printers. While they won't know much about the Mac OS and especially the older ones you can check with the printer manufacturer site to see if OS9 printer drivers are available for that model. If so you can rest assured that the model will work. I recommend the networkable units since you can network several machines to take advantage of the laser's high capacity. These will cost several hundred dollars but should last you for years and most will also work with OSX as well.
If you are running a machine that boots into OSX and you have a compatible OSX printer you can use the program called PrintToPDF. It shows up in chooser under 9 or classic and allows you to send your print output to a PDF file. OSX will load these files in Preview and allow you to print them from your OSX printer. PrintToPDF version 2.4.5 appears in the Printer Util folder on our OS9 Kitchen Sink CD or you can dowload it from the author at: http://www.jwwalker.com/pages/pdf.html
Here at Headgap we use a networkable HP printer 4100 Series and we print from OS8 all the way up to OSX 10.9 Mavericks. In fact I set up my Mac Mini running Maverick that is connected wirelessly from our bedroom. The HP Lasers are dependable and you can affordably get ink or even repair kits down the road. They are a black and white printer only. This is the same printer we use daily in our operations. Whichever model you buy make sure you can get the appropriate driver for the OS version you are using. The link below is to an unrelated company from us. You are on your own working with them but remember most places may know very little about Mac computers. YOU MUST TAKE THE RESPONSIBLITY TO MAKE SURE A DRIVER IS AVAILABLE FOR YOUR MAC OS VERSION!
This may seem very complex but what you need to do is order this $179 printer so you can plug this printer into your router or if you don't have a router you can plug an ethernet cable from your computer into the network port via ethernet cable. We have these in stock and cables don't generally come with the printer.
You can download the drivers from macupdate.com: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/5680/hp-laserjet-driver
This is the place that has them in stock: http://www.theprinterpros.com/product-p/ypc-4100n-b3.htm
HP LaserJet 4100N Printer - Refurbished C8050A
List Price: $1,095.00 * Our
Price: $179.00 * You save $916.00!
Plus Shipping * Warranty: 6 Months
HP LaserJet 4100 Series printers are HP's most advanced, user-friendly workgroup printers. Unique communication features make it easier to set up and manage printer operation, minimize the need for user intervention, and take the guesswork out of printer status and printing supplies levels. The HP LaserJet 4100 workgroup printer provides 25 ppm speed, 600-sheet capacity, 150,000 pages/month capability and 16MB memory. This amazing printer comes with a variety of intelligent management features and is easily expandable. Each unit is refurbished and certified by our HP Authorized Technicians to meet factory specifications. Many of our competitors simply clean up each unit and claim it is refurbished. We install a brand new complete HP maintenance kit which includes Fuser Assembly, Transfer Roller, Pick-up Roller and Seperation Pad/Rollers. Our Technicians are available to answer any hardware questions you may have.
You set these up like any other printer in OSX using the printer setup utility in your OSX applications folder/utilities folder. Do make sure your ethernet connection in networking set up has AppleTalk turned on.
Below is instructions for using your Laser with OS9
the AppleTalk control panel, be sure it is set to Connect via Ethernet.
One characteristic that can interfere is that if you connected the ethernet cable while the G4 was running, you should restart the computer. Be sure the cable is connected and the printer on and warmed up a bit before restarting the Mac. The reason for this is that on many older Macs, during startup the ethernet bus will be disabled if a live device is not detected as being connected. One solution for that is to use an intermediate ethernet hub, switch, or router. This intermediate device acts as the neded live device, and allows taking the printer out of use in order to fix a paper jam, etc.
Need to hook up a dot matrix printer to your G4 or any PC printer to your Mac? Try Strydent software's PowerPrint program. They offer both a serial and USB version. Includes drivers for many PC printers. Unfortunately I recently checked the web site and Strydent is no longer making this software and cable. Try Ebay.
Have an old working serial laser? Check to see if it still have drivers available for OSX in the OSX printer tips below. We carry the Stealth Serial Port for your G4. It goes in place of the modem and allows a regular serial connection, with drivers for both 9 and X. We can no longer get serial cards of any kind and the Stealth cards are also no longer available. Do call and check to see if we have a used one.
You need to make sure you have the later USB components installed to work if you are using a Beige Mac with a USB Card. Also always check to see that the printer you are buying is supported on the OS version you are installing.
Headgap customer Brian Groppe writes that his S9000 printer started giving him an error message. It reported that his ink cartridge was near full and that he needed to take it to the nearest Canon dealer. He says the Canon dealer in Nashville said it would take him 2.5 hours at $60 per to fix the problem. I sent Brian to http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/. After reviewing the forums he found out it was a matter or internal reset switches that only took him a few minutes. Obviously Canon put the gotcha in this printer to force you to buy a new one or get held up by the dealer. I recommend anyone having trouble with a printer visit http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/ before doing so. That and choose a different printer brand than Canon.
From Cheryn: For the Apple StyleWriter 2400 and 2500, the units are actually made by Canon and you can easily substitute the more affordable and high quality ink. Listed below are the Canon Stock #'s:
LBC-10 Large black only ink tank
BC-11E Cartridge with print head that holds a black tank and a color tank
BC-11C Color ink tank that fits in BC-11E
BC-11BK Black ink tank that fits in BC-11E
For the Apple StyleWriter 1200 - the cartridge is a BC-02
The same holds true for the LaserWriter's which were made by HP and Canon mostly. Find out what yours is internally and by the cheaper and more easily available equivalent. By all means a good quality generic is also something you might want to consider.
Apple LaserWriter II uses the same as HPLJ II/IID/III/IIID, Canon, LBP-8 Mark III, Brother HL-8
Apple LaserWriter Pro 600/630/16/600PS uses the same as HPLJ 4/4M/4+/5/5N/5M, Canon LBP-8 Mark IV, LBP-850, Brother 1260/1660
Apple Personal LaserWriter 300/320 uses the same as HPLJ 4L/4LC, Canon LBP 40/430
Apple LaserWriter Select 300/310/360 uses the same as a Xerox 4505/4510
Apple LaserWriter 8500 uses the same as Xerox/Fuji P880.
From Cheryn: Apple has included PPD's (Postscript Printer Description) for many of their old laser printers, as well as a variety of third-party printers. To check if your printer is supported or not, check the links below.
If your printer is not equipped with Ethernet capability, you may require an Ethernet to LocalTalk adapter (sometimes called AsanteTalk and other brand names). These are still available refurbished. Check our website under Printers to see if we have in stock
OS 10.2 Jaguar- POSTSCRIPT http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107002 INKJET - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107001
OS 10.3 Panther POSTSCRIPT - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25587 INKJET - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25588
OS 10.4 Tiger - http://www.apple.com/support/tiger/printing/
OS 10.5 Leopard - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306684#appledrivers
- Power-Mac-G4.com - online resources for G4 users
- PowerMac G4 Clockup! - How to overclock your G4 processor
- Everymac.com - complete stats for your G4
- http://www.macintouch.com/g4review400.html
- http://www.apple-history.com/
- How about giving your old Sawtooth a faster graphics card?, Rob Art Morgan, Bare Feats, 2002.08.22, since updated. Recommends ATI Radeon 8500 Mac Edition as the "best bet" video upgrade card for Sawtooth.
- Upgrade G4/Sawtooth to 500 MHz or buy new dual processor G4?, Bare Feats, 2000.09.15. Considering resale value of a slower G4, which gives more bang for the buck?
- Benchmark: Rage128 Pro vs. Rage128, Accelerate Your Mac, 2000.02.05. Compares original G4 AGP video card with current version (available from Apple for $99 with OS 9).
- Benchmark: Yikes vs. Sawtooth G4/400, Bare Feats, 1999.12.17. How much faster is the new motherboard?
- Is G4/400 a good value?, Charles Moore, Applelinks, 1999.09.02
- Apple Spec: Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics)
- http://www.barefeats.com/rad9800.html - review of the ATI Radeon 9800 Mac Edition
- Power Mac G4 (AGP): Single channel SCSI cards may interfere with wake from sleep, Apple Knowledge Base, 2002.07.22. Computer may incorrectly assume card supports power down mode and not wake properly from sleep under OS 8.6.
Sometimes Apple has the information you need. Below is a list of links that we find handy.
Apple Product Manuals
Legacy Product Support
Apple Software Downloads
Apple Spec Database
AppleCare Knowledge Archive
Apple Updateable Items
Apple Hardware Test Images - make up bootable CD's that allow you to run Hardware Diagnostics on your system.
Our friends at EveryMac.com have valuable information about legacy Mac Systems including the original specifications of many of the machines we sell. Click the button to visit their site.
Visit Power-Mac-G4.com for new and used powermac G4 systems and components. Need hardware help? Read Bob's Mac Tech Tips. Power Macintosh G4 Upgrades Page - this links directly into our online store with links for all the goodies you will need to upgrade your system
Apple, Apple Macintosh, Macintosh, Mac, MacOS, Power Macintosh, iTunes, Disc Burner, Quadra, Centris,
Performa, FireWire, LaserWriter and StyleWriter, Finder, iChat, Safari, Leopard, Tiger, Panther, Jaguar, Spotlight,
Time Machine, SuperDrive, Airport, Airport Extreme, Xcode and QuickTime are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
All other trademarks are properties of their prospective owners.
All prices are subject to change without notice