Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks December 2000

Symantec has released Norton Personal Firewall for Macintosh. Let's hope they had really good programmers write the interface, or most users will be at the mercy of the default settings that come with the program. Anyone can build a Firewall, the secret is to make it user friendly. I'm hoping that will be the case in this product. You must be running System 8.1 or above, with 24 Meg of RAM available to use this. If you purchase this product please email me at charles@pmug.org with your thoughts and observations. Symantec can be reached at 1-800-441-7234 or http://www.symantec.com/

Many folks with Beige G3 machines are now thinking about upgrading to one of the G4 ZIF CPUs. Please be aware that although there is no problem with the G3 ZIF upgrade, there can be a problem with the G4 models. The type of VRM (voltage regulator module) plugged into the motherboard can affect the G4 CPU upgrade. It seems there are two different brands of this VRM. The one branded Royal delivers way too much power to the G4 ZIF CPU and damages it. The VRM card is located next to your PRAM battery on the motherboard. A MacWorld article states that the Royal cards are not very common and will most likely be found in the G3 333MHz beige Macs. For more information check out http://macworld.zdnet.com/2000/03/30/upgradejeopardy.html

To update (the Apple modem) or not, that is the question. It seems Apple really has problems with their modem updater for the PowerBook G3, iMac, B&W, G4, Cube, and iBook. Some people report that the modem fails the upgrade and is then no longer usable; while others report that the modem works better, longer and with fewer hang-ups. Some of the pitfalls can be using a different modem string than you are suppose to be using, or having to select a different phone number from your provider. DO NOT stop the installation once you start it or you will have a non-working modem.
If for some reason you need to reset your modem to the factory settings, try this (from the MacFixit Web site).
     1. Unplug the modem line from telephone jack. Unplug all other peripheral devices from the Mac.
     2. Shut down the Mac for one minute; then restart.
     3. Open the Modem control panel and select the Null Modem 9600 script. Close and Save.
     4. Open the Remote Access control panel. Select Options; select Protocol, deselect the top three boxes and select the bottom box "Connect to a command-line host." Select OK.
     5. Click Connect and a PPP control window will open. From here, enter the following AT commands:
     ati12    (s1 should appear, this means that the modem is responding properly. If s1 does not appear, the modem may need to be repaired or replaced).
     at*nc22    (this AT command resets the EPROM and country code in the modem)

I have been using my iBook SE for about a month now with no problems. The only problem I can really be mad about is that the composite video out does not work well with the PMUG video projector. In fact the text is unreadable on the screen. Not that I bought it for that feature, but it seems like they would have expected some people to use it for presentations. As a DVD player attached to a television set, the picture is fine and it works fairly well. However it stutters a couple of frames about every ten minutes, at about the same time as the hard drive calibrates so I assume the two are linked.

I would like to be able to change the resolution to 1024 x 768, rather than the 800 x 600 or the 640 x 480 that you can choose from now. The reason is many web pages have to be scrolled to the right in order to read the last half of the text. The picture on the screen is clear and bright, the keyboard has a good feel and the unit overall is a good buy for the price. I am currently running it with two partitions. One is 6 Gigs with the standard OS 9.04 that came with the unit, the other is a 4 Gigs running System X beta. I can switch back and forth using the special System Disk control panel. This will most likely be the computer that travels to Macworld Expo with us in January. I still have to update the modem so I'm hoping everything goes well with that, if not you'll hear about it.

As I was saying over a month ago third party warrantees are risky and very time and follow-up intensive. I ended up calling the company that had my digital camera only to find out that they were waiting for a faxed OK from the warranty company before they could fix it. Called the warranty company who said they had sent the fax but would send it again. Repeated this two days later. These people must be sitting on hundreds of cameras if the faxes fail to go through. Mine would never have made it from the warranty company unless they were helped along with two to three phone calls from me. So the week after MacCamp my camera showed up on my doorstep. The delivery guy just left it and drove away. Upon opening the box I found a piece of paper with the details of the repairs. All it said was "Returned to factory specs." Guess I'll just be happy it works and that I did get it back. The total time the company had my camera was two months. Of that 15 days were shipping or waiting for pick up, three days repair time and the rest was all waiting for the various companies to fax information back and forth. I think they could use a good e-mail program between them and their vendors.

News of New Versions
AOL is on a lot of my customer's minds right now. It seems they have been promising to mail AOL 5.0 disks to Mac clients for the last two months and not one of them has shown up. Don't be fooled if you get one from a store around town. It may say 5.0 on the outside but have the 5.0 version for Windows and only the 4.0 version for the Macintosh on it. AOL seems to care a lot more about Windows users than Mac users these days. No wonder we tell people to get a real Internet provider and let AOL drown in the Windows world.

GraphicConverter 4.0 has a ton of new features; so many in fact I can't name them all here. Look for the new version on the Sheep or if you don't have a Sheep account, go to versiontracker.com and do a find for GraphicConverter. This $35 shareware product beats the pants off most everything else in its class. Please pay your shareware fees; these people work hard and long with very little reward to bring you good products at great prices.

Owners of Microtech USB flash card readers my be interested to know that new drivers have been issued and the current revision is 1.2. These drivers seem to allow my reader to mount the card faster than the old drivers. They are now fully 9.04 compatible for 9.0 users. You will find these on versiontracker.com or I will upload them to the Sheep if someone requests them.

More About Upgrades.
There are good reasons and bad reasons to upgrade your computer. Good reason is that it does what you need it to but has grown a little slow for some things. Bad reason is that you think it will give you all the speed and functions of a new computer. The old proverb of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear comes to mind. People keep asking me to do upgrades thinking that it will increase their download speed on the Internet, make their hard drive faster, or allow them to move to System X when it comes out.

So let's address the "it isn't going to happen" first. Your modem speed is dependent on your phone line quality, the speed of your modem, the speed of your serial port, and how busy the server or provider is that is feeding you data. Your hard drive will be just as slow as it was with your old processor. Apple has stated that it will not support any computer trying to run OS X that is not an Apple made G3 or above. This does not mean it won't work; it just means it might not work and they will not support any version of the System you put in a upgraded machine. If you have upgraded one of the Nubus based machines you will find it hard to get cards for video, and impossible to get other cards like Firewire and USB. The bus speed of your machine is still the same as it was before the upgrade so you have a huge capacity with this slow bus keeping things plugged up.

The good part is that it will make things faster than they were with your old processor. Spreadsheets and databases will calculate much faster than before. People have complained to me about the speed of scrolling being much too fast with the upgrades. Games play faster with less response lag. So all in all you get a faster machine but with bottle necks that slow data transfers down. Good machines to upgrade are 7500, 7600, 8500, 8600, 9500, 9600, beige G3s, and B&W G3s. Machines you should think about trading in or giving to your children are 6100, 7100, 8100, 6200, 6300, 6400, and 6500.

Looking Ahead
Macworld Expo is coming up fast and the rumor mill is going nuts about how this one may have record breaking attendance. Since the hotel Janet and I stayed at last year was already booked full for those days I tend to believe that rumor.

The G4 PowerBook sounds like a sure thing for the show; as well as speed bumps for the G4 towers. Lots of software announcements including System 9.1 to take care of some more bug fixes and add a few features. Word has it that Apple will have the next revision of OS X to demo to the cheering masses. I do get a big kick out of hearing people say how solid System 10 is. Yes it's solid, it's not running anything. At least not anything people use to make a living. What is running is System 9.0.4 and the programs are running under it. Most companies are getting their System 10 or carbon products on line and many will announce at Macworld so then the fun will really start. As I'm about to start beta testing releases that are not public beta I will not be writing any new thoughts about System 10 for awhile. Please keep this in mind when I haven't commented on new features or products that runs on our future System.

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

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