Your explanation on why Fast Ethernet would not be advantageous on
a G3 makes perfect sense to me, except that in practice this is just
not so.
I have a 7300 and a G3
networked via a 10 Mbps hub to my Pentium III that runs a software
router and has 56 kbps dialup. I noticed that Web pages loaded far
faster on the 7300 that had a 3Com 10/100 NIC [Network Interface
Card] than the G3 that used the built in 10 Mbps port. That was
is in OS 9.
Unfortunately, I could not get the 3Com card to work under
OS X on the G3 but lucked when someone advertised the sale of
Apple branded 10/100 Mbps NICs on the
swap list. I bought one, and it has made a significant
improvement to surfing speed on the G3 in OS X, ready for when I
go broadband :)
Another major difference is that OS X Mail does not time out
at all when it used to do so regularly- this is probably due to
trying to share a 56 kbps dialup via 10 Mbps hardware.
BTW, I just dropped that card in, and it worked straight away
:)
My guess is that a 10/100 Mbps NIC is far more efficient at 10
Mbps than a straight 10 Mbps NIC- if that makes any sense to you
:)
Sadly, this just adds to reasons not to spend money on a G3: You
need yet another slot to improve networking :(
Thanks for the great site!
I must admit that with seven years of articles on this website
- thousands of them- I don't know just which one you're
referring to. Nor can I understand why you'd find Internet access
speed any different on over fast ethernet than on plain old 10
Mbps ethernet when you're connected with a 56k modem to begin
with.
That said, the AAUI ethernet ports built into Quadras and Power
Macs is problematic when used with 10/100 hardware. At my last
job, we had so many problems with these machines that we ended up
either segregating them to their own 10Base-T hubs or put in
Farallon 10/100 ethernet cards.
It was the only way to keep the network stable. So I don't think
there's anything inherently more efficient about using a 10/100
NIC on a 10 Mbps network, only a real problem with Apple's
ethernet ports on 10/100 hubs and switches.
I'm really surprised that you're running into this kind of problem
at all on a 10 Mbps hub connecting just three computers. I've
never seen problems like this without a 10/100 hub or switch and
several older Macs on the network.
Happy with Mozilla HTML Editor
Responding to my reply to HTML
programs, E McCan writes:
Don't even get me started on the abominable HTML that
Microsoft Word puts out- it makes Microsoft Frontpage look
reasonable. Home Page may be outdated, but at least it's not
stupid.
The HTML editor in Mozilla may come closest to doing what you
want. Try it. I didn't like it, but then I don't hand code,
either. The Mozilla editor at the very least didn't seem to change
code on the page it opened. And it's free.
You know, I've had it sitting here for a while and haven't tried
it (shades of problems with the old "Netscape Gold" editor.)
My only problem doing a test page (I have a boilerplate I use for
my site reviews at http://airmodeller.tripod.com)
is that it wouldn't let me get beyond the table I use for basic kit
info. Just a period or a "Replace me" fixes it, and it does
seem to generate clean code.
Thanks for the suggestion. Given that all my text styles are in
style sheets, it'll make using it easier, too.
The reason Apple took that option out of Drive Setup is the fact
that IDE drives aren't meant to be low level formatted except once at
the factory.
If I recall correctly Mac users were using the option and ruining
their IDE hard drives.
SCSI drives can be low level formatted repeatedly with no ill
effects.
If I recall correctly, and it's been several years since this
issue first came up, it's not actually possible to low level
format an IDE drive with Drive Setup, and that's the reason the
option no longer shows up with IDE drives.
What Drive Setup does do is reformat the drive, and I believe it
will write zeros to every byte in every sector, even though it
doesn't do a low level format. However, it's my understanding that
this is a more thorough clearing of the hard drive than simply
erasing it. It should provide adequate security against most
prying eyes.
I noticed in your B&W G3 specs you miss an important option.
There was an education version that ran for awhile. It was designed
to be much cheaper and allow video capture. I have used, sold, and
serviced several of these. The primary difference is that they came
with a Rage Pro video card that had video capture. You might want to
include that in the profile so that folks know they don't all come
with a Rage 128.
That's news to me. I wasn't aware that Apple offered different
hardware configurations to the education market. I'll update the
b&w G3 profile to reflect this.
I'm still waiting for ATI to release an All-in-Wonder
Radeon card for today's Macs. Video input and output, a television
tuner- could reduce the need for Mac users to spend money on
TiVo or Replay TV. Too bad it's a Windows only card.
You will probably get a few emails with this nitpick, but oh
well.
The four PCI slot thing is not a real bonus unless you run your
B&W headless. Now as a headless server, I see the 4th slot being
a real issue, especially if you put something cool in the 66 MHz PCI
slot, other than a video card of course.
Great piece, I love my B&W and really appreciate your singing
its praises.
I do explain that you really need to have a video card in one
slot- and because it's quite common to add a better video card
to the beige G3, by comparison the b&w G3 does have one more
available expansion slot.
Re: The Value and Limitations of the Beige G3, I offer only one
correction, which you need not publish. The system bus on the PCI
Power Macs (7500-9600) is anywhere from 40-60 MHz, but the memory bus
on these models runs much slower. I believe the memory bus speed is
around 15 MHz, or thereabouts. The Beige G3 was the first Power Mac
to use SDRAM (where the memory bus and the processor bus run at the
same clock speed).
The system bus on the PCI Power Macs was actually set by the
CPU card. It could go as low as 40 MHz and was officially rated at
50 MHz tops, although a few will support speeds of 51-52 MHz. Only
Power Computing managed to over design the bus enough to support a
60 MHz system bus.
These computers supported a level 2 (L2) cache that could feed
data to the CPU at the full speed of the system bus, which helped
make up for the relatively slow motherboard memory. One further
advantage of the G3 is that the L2 cache was on the CPU module, so
it was not limited by the system bus. In fact, by running at half
CPU speed (116.7 MHz on the entry level G3), the L2 cache was
roughly 2-3x faster than that on the previous generation of Power
Macs.
That's just one more way the Power Mac G3s were a big improvement
over the models that came before them.
AirPort for Older iMacs
Looking for a way to use wireless networking with an older iMac,
Owen Strawn writes:
Dan, can you tell me where I can get info on what options are
available for using AirPort on a tray-load iMac? I am sure there must
have been a column addressing this on LEM, but I can't seem to find
anything using the search function.
My wife wants me to move her tangerine iMac to the bedroom, and I
am at my wit's end trying to figure out how to string ethernet cable
that far through a finished ceiling, so I am thinking it may finally
be time to look into wireless networking.
You have two wireless options- you can connect via USB or
you can connect via ethernet. Either way you'll need a wireless
hub plus an access point for the iMac.
I'm not familiar with the USB access points, but I've heard
they're out there. The bandwidth of USB is a bit lower than that
of AirPort, but then most Internet connections are slower than
either.
The alternative is to skip plain old AirPort entirely and step up
to 802.11g networking, which is AirPort Extreme in Apple's
version. As noted in Extreme
Wireless for Older Macs, there are four other manufacturers of
802.11g hardware, and some of them provide Mac support. D-Link is
already partnered with Apple on their Bluetooth adapter, and
Belkin has promised drivers for the classic Mac OS, not just
OS X.
These third-party solutions are a lot less expensive than Apple's,
and all of them make 802.11g access points that can connect to the
ethernet port on your older iMac- or any Mac with an ethernet
port, for that matter.
Maximum theoretical throughput is 54 Mbps, about half the 100 Mbps
rating of the iMac's ethernet port, but you'll probably only see
26-28 Mbps in the real world when moving files between machines
locally- and your Internet connection is much slower than
that.
Even shopping around, you're probably looking at US$250-300 for a
hub and access point.
SCSI was twice as fast as on the SE, offering performance to
rival today's highest speed USB 1.1 devices. As with the SE, it
really benefits from a newer hard drive- something built since
1989 or so can take full advantage of the Mac II's SCSI bus.
In response, Steven Hunter writes:
USB 1.1 is 12 Mbits/sec (1.25 Mbytes/sec) while the SCSI in the
Mac II was 10 Mbytes/sec, meaning it's 8 times faster than USB 1.1.
:)
USB 1.1 is indeed rated at a maximum throughput of 12 Mbps,
although on the Mac it rarely reaches 60% of that level (and
things aren't a whole lot better on the Windows side- maybe 75%
tops).
SCSI-2, the standard used on the Mac II and SE, has a rated
maximum throughput of 5 Mbps on an 8-bit bus, which is what these
Macs used, not 10 Mbps as you state. (See our tech piece on
SCSI Throughput for more
details.)
Theory and practice diverge. In the real world, the
SE has a maximum SCSI throughput of 5,248 kbps, which is a bit
less than half the theoretical maximum for USB 1.1. The Mac
II has a maximum throughput of 11,200 kbps, very nearly the
USB 1.1 maximum and better than any USB device manages in the real
world.
These limitations were imposed by the hardware Apple chose; it
didn't support the full speed allowed under the SCSI-2
specification. It wasn't until the Quadra era that Apple offered
any computers with a SCSI bus capable of reaching 5 MBps on an
8-bit SCSI bus.
A quick correction regarding your article about the introduction
of the Mac SE and Mac II.
You have misstated the speeds of the SCSI ports on the early Macs.
SCSI speeds are measured in megaBYTES per second as opposed to
megaBITS per second. The original SCSI port on the Mac Plus was 2.5
megabytes/second which is faster than USB 1.1 which tops out at 12
megabits/second or 1.5 megabytes/second.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with converting MB/sec to
Mb/sec to help readers understand the difference between SCSI
(usually measurerd in MB/sec) and USB 1.1 (specified in Mbps).
That's what we did.
For the record, Apple's officially
stated maximum SCSI throughput of the Plus, SE, and Mac II
is 1.25 MB/sec. This is despite the fact that the SE is at least
50% faster than the Plus, and the Mac II is about twice as fast as
the SE.
The numbers on our profiles covering the Plus
(2,104 kbps), SE (5,248
kbps), and Mac II (11,200 kbps)
come from an old issue of Macworld or MacUser, where they are
definitely states as megabits per second, not megabytes. I
rounded these to Mbps in my article so they could be more readily
compared with USB 1.1.
This again points up the discrepancy between theoretical and real
world throughput. Although Apple rates all three models at 1.25
MB/sec, the Plus only achieves 0.263 MB/sec, the SE just 0.656
MB/sec, and the Mac II exceeds spec at 1.4 MB/sec.
None of these come close to the 2.5 MB/sec figure you state or the
official SCSI-2 maximum of 5 MB/sec. That's what happens in the
real world, where USB 1.1 never reaches 12 Mbps either.
ADB on All Blue & White G3s?
It should be noted that only the Rev.1 Blue and Whites have
ADB. Rev 2's eliminated this, I believe. I own a Rev. 1, and I
remember how quickly the Rev. 2's came out. Mac Addict had a blurb on
telling the difference, having to do with rear port orientation. I
believe the Rev. 2's had two separate USB channels, rather than one
channel with two ports as in the Rev. 1.
Every source I've checked- including the AppleCare
Knowledge Base- states that the b&w G3 has an ADB
port. I can't find any source that says otherwise.
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not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be
edited for length, context, and to match house
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Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
Mac of the Day: Quadra 700, Oct. 1991 - The successor to the Mac IIci ran a 'wicked fast' 25 MHz 68040 processor.
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August 29 in LEM history: 00: My lowest low-end Mac - 01: Uncluttered organization - Microsoft wins over Mac user - 02: Salute to SatireWire - 03: Wireless Internet popping up everywhere - 05: World domination, online or off - A 3-dimensional Dock replacement - 06: Productive at the low end - PowerPC vs. Intel - Secure wireless
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