I have to agree that USB is a non-optimal solution for networking
a computer. But for an older iMac, where you aren't going for speed
anyway (like with mine, which is used as a 'recipe and email'
computer in the kitchen), I've found that a USB 802.11b adapter works
just fine. The two times I have wanted to transfer large files
(actually, lots of files: my iTunes and iPhoto collections), I just
took the iMac out of the kitchen and put it next to my Power Mac,
then transferred them via wired Ethernet. After that large transfer
was done, the small updates to keep my iPhoto libraries synced (I
have the screen saver on the iMac using my photos) are plenty fast
over the slow USB/AirPort connection.
My main concern was the expense of a .11b (or .11g) to Ethernet
bridge is more than is really justified for getting an older iMac
online. And putting the base station near the 'remote' computer means
moving the Internet connection, too. I know that I don't have a cable
outlet near my kitchen iMac, nor a phone jack, so any Internet
connection would require serious rewiring anyway.
Now, at some point in the future, I'd love to have a diskless Cube
in my bedroom, with a 15" LCD. I think a dead-silent computer (using
NetBoot) would be wonderful in the bedroom. For that, I'll have to
string some wire, or get an Ethernet/AirPort bridge, but that seems
to justify the cost to me. (Because I'll already be spending lots of
money on the Cube and LCD, plus having to get OS X Server for my
server.)
At $75, the Belkin F5D6050 is a good $50 cheaper than the
802.11g access points I mentioned. And if you've got one Mac that
already supports AirPort or AirPort Extreme, you could use it as a
base station and avoid the expense of a wireless hub.
Setting up an AirPort base station via software - now there's an
article just waiting to be written by someone who has two AirPort
equipped Macs.
...given what you've said about the much better quality of a Rev.
B Blue & White, would changing the card in my Rev. A bring it up
to that quality? Or do I need to get a whole different machine?
The CMD646 IDE controller is soldered to the motherboard (see
photo
on Accelerate Your Mac!), so the only way to upgrade to a Rev. B
would be to replace the motherboard or pick up whole Rev. B
computer.
As best as I can reconstruct these issues from early 1999, the
Rev. A seemed just fine with a single device per IDE bus, although
even then data corruption could be an issue. The problem was
especially prevalent with slave drives and high speed hard drives
- and least likely to impact the original drive Apple installed
at the factory.
If you are considering replacing the stock drive or adding a
second hard drive to a Rev. A Yosemite, I urge you to read the
above link to Accelerate Your Mac! and make an informed decision.
As of this morning, I have begun noting "Rev. 2" on our Power
Mac G3 Price Tracker when the dealer notes which model is for
sale.
Anyone buying a b&w G3 with the intention of upgrading the
hard drive should avoid the Rev. A model.
.mac Restrictions
Alvin wonders:
Thank you for your time. I haven't used really some parts of
.mac like homepage since 2nd
quarter of last year. I really just use the email and Norton, not
even Virex, don't use it that much. It's really a waste we can't
control, sort of.
Though I'd like to ask if .mac's Homepage, email and everything
can be used for business. I'm planning to make the homepage display
the pictures and description then they can reply on my .mac email?
I'm in real estate by the way. If this is legal and moral, that would
be good news now I can really use it.
If ever it's not legal to do that (but I think it's moral), can
you recommend a the best but not necessarily the cheapest for domain
name registration and Web hosting with email where they can send
their replies.
Do you need a company to have a .com domain or you can use that
even if you're a freelancer but would be for business - to display
the houses and listing, sort of ads for real estate (I will design,
program if needed as I'm in IT)?
I use .mac primarily for email. Instead of routing email about
Low End Mac through my spam-laden lowendmac.com mailbox, I now
link all my articles to my mac.com email address. This way Apple's
spam filters can clear out a lot of the spam before I ever get the
chance to see it. That alone might be worth $50/year.
I haven't used the homepage feature, but during the iTools era a
lot of shareware and freeware authors used it to distribute their
software. I don't see any restrictions on the site limiting it to
personal use, and I know that a lot of small businesses do use
.mac for emai, online slide shows, etc.
If you want to register your own domain, I've had very good luck
with AITDomains.com,
where I can usually register or renew my domains for under US$10
per year. I'm not affiliated with them; just a very satisfied
customer. They made it easy to consolidate all the domains I had
signed up for through 3 or 4 different registrars.
If you're running a business, having your own domain helps
reinforce your brand. For instance, if your business was called
Alvin For Real Estates, you might try to register
alvin4realestate.com. Some businesses have gone so far as to
rename themselves to match their domain name - right down the the
dot-com - which I think is a bit excessive.
We are preparing our own ala carte alternative to .mac at
lowendmac.net. We
haven't quite hammered out all of the details yet, but we will be
offering low-cost email accounts, online server space (for Web
pages, FTP, backup, and accessible just like iDisk), and may also
offer PHP, MySQL, and iCal services. We'll
AFAIK, electronically all beige G3 Macs are indeed compatible with
256 MB DIMMs. The problem is that the desktop and the tower case have
differing amounts of space over the DIMM slots, so RAM that fits fine
in the tower, may not fit in the desktop. I think the height limit is
1.15" for the desktop. <http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/G3_RAM.html>
mentions this in the 'before you buy' section.
Thanks for the note. I'll update the profiles to reflect
this.
It's the good old YMMV thing - and you wrote it yourself: We
also note that what works for one may not work for all, something
we've seen in two seemingly identical iMacs - one accepts a 256 MB
upgrade, the other doesn't.
I have a beige G3 (Rev. B) and my
wife a 350 MHz iMac, both equipped
with 100 MHz SDRAMs. The iMac came with 64 MB installed, which I had
ugraded with a 256 MB module. The beige G3 has the 32 MB module it
came with back in 1998 and a 64 MB and a 128 MB module I upgraded it
with over the years.
Last year I wanted to use the beige G3 as a "home server," so I
exchanged the 128 MB module with the 256 MB module from the iMac. But
what a surprise - the G3 accepted it as a 128 MB module! No matter
what slot or combination of modules I used, it just wanted to use
half of the 256 MB, while the iMac still can see all of its 256
megabytes.
So while I know that Apple's 192 MB limit is not true, I also know
that there might be another ceiling, depending on the luck you have.
Right now the G3 is equipped with 256 MB (128+64+64) and the iMac
with 288 MB (256+32).
That's the odd thing. One user after another after another may
be able to use 256 MB DIMMs in an iMac or G3, but for some reason
unknown to quantum physics or voodoo, it just won't work in some
other machines that seem exactly the same.
I suppose I could open up both iMacs to find out whether the low
profile DIMMs are identical. In fact, I do have to open up the one
with the 256 MB module to determine whether the CD-ROM is dead or
only improperly reconnected after the memory upgrade. I still wish
this was all a bit more predictable, a bit less subject to
Murphy's
Law.
I believe it's just for an AGP Pro/AGP Pro150 slot. I think you
already know this and drew a conclusion re: ADC power. Still, though,
this might be a handy reference:
p.s. I hate Tom's Hardware more than anything in the universe
. . . it pains me that it has handy articles from time to
time!
You'll hate it even more if you use Safari. What an abominable
mess!
Yes, Tom's has some great stuff, but also a tragic reputation for
mistreating people who write for the site. Van's
Hardware was one of the great sites to spring up by
someone so mistreated. One of my favorite PC tech sites, along
with ars technica.
And Van's even has a Mac related article now and then.
As for the extra "tooth" on some AGP cards, I was unaware of it
until this week. Since it seems to exist on cards that provide
monitor power, I guessed that it prevents installing the card in
machines that can't provide sufficient power to drive Apple's
monitors.
Apple in Trouble over Unix in OS X?
Just got my eWeek today.
SCO, which owns the intellectual property rights to Unix™ is
suing
IBM for $1 Billion. Why? Because IBM has been making parts of
AIX, based on their software, available to the open source
community.
Why is this article of interest?
A note later down: "SCO has employed high-profile attorney David
Boies and his law firm to investigate whether Windows, Mac
OS X, Linux, and versions of BSD infringed on the Unix
intellectual property it owned."
I believe BSD wasn't covered by that, and given that
OS X drew from NetBSD (or FreeBSD, one of those) I'd think it
should be safe, or distant enough not to go after... but I'm (a) not
a "high profile attorney" (and we know what they can do, and
(b) not all that clear on *nix history anyway...
Eric McCann
I'm not terribly clear on Unix
history, either. In broad outline, Unix was developed at
Bell Labs by Ken Thompson, who later taught at UC-Berkeley, where
BSD was developed by a grad student in 1977 - one year before SCO
was created. Where BSD began by taking ideas from Unix, soon
things were going the other way, and a lot of work on BSD found
its way into Unix as well.
BSD was perhaps the first large scale open source project, in many
ways an ancestor of Linux. Unix remained a proprietary commercial
product. Due to lawsuits by Unix, BSD development began to lag in
the early 1990s, at the same time that Linux was emerging.
As far as I know, and I am neither a *nix guru nor a lawyer, BSD
is considered a legally free alternative version of Unix, although
because of trademark law, the term Unix should only be applied to
the commercial OS now owned by SCO. This is the reason you'll
often see the word "*nix" used to encompass both Unix and the
Unix-variants, such as Linux and BSD.
I have no idea whether SCO has a legal leg to stand on because of
the parallel history of Unix and BSD, but you can bet dollars to
donuts that the lawyers will earn their money regardless of the
outcome.
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I
think he means this extra "tooth" (reduced image at right - click
link for larger view):
