What made them die?
From B.J. Major
Charles,
So sorry to hear of the death of your G3
WallStreet. Since I own two of these babies myself, I am most
anxious to know/learn the cause of complete death for yours.
Any details you can provide would be helpful. It seems to me a
1998 computer should last way longer than my old 1996 1400.
-bj
- Hi BJ,
So far, my best guess is that the Power Manager Unit failed,
although when I took the motherboard out, I also discovered that
the heat sink contact had come unsoldered from the CPU.
I suspect that heat is the culprit, although the fan only came on
four times in 3-1/2 years, and Gauge Pro never recorded internal
temperatures higher than 150°.
I agree that a computer should last more than 3-1/2 years, but I
also deduce that the admirable longevity of the older PowerBooks
was substantially attributable to their relatively tepid internal
running temperatures.
Charles
5400 RPM drive for iBook?
From Lee Kilpatrick
I remember recently that you had an article about faster hard
drives for your laptops. (I think it was on Low End Mac, though it
may have been one of the articles linked in from another site.)
Anyway, I was wondering if you know if you can get a 5400 RPM hard
drive in a new iBook from the Apple Store. If you do a build-to-order
option, you can get a 40 GB drive in an iBook, and I was hoping that
this one was a 5400 RPM model. Do you (or anyone who owns one) happen
to know the speed of this drive?
Thanks,
Lee
- Hi Lee,
The new IBM and Toshiba 5400 RPM 2.5" drives are both 9.5 mm
units, so either should fit in your iBook.
However, as far as I can fathom from Apple's specs, all of the BTO
drives offered by Apple for the iBook are 4200 RPM units,
including the 40 GB unit.
Charles
9.2 for Mac Clone?
From Dan Rose
Dear Mr. Moore:
I am trying to find out whether I can upgrade to 9.2.2 on my Mac
clone, a PowerCenter Pro 210
(presently running 9.0.4) without incurring problems . . .
but there doesn't seem to be any info on that in lowendmac.com
. . . any thoughts on that?
Thanks,
Dan Rose
- Hi Dan,
To the best of my recollection, the pre-G3 PowerMacs, including
your Power Computing machine and my Umax, are not supported by OS
9.2. I believe there have been some hacks that will make OS 9.2.2
run on these machines, but I'm not sure what they are.
I'm quite satisfied with the performance of OS 9.1 on the Umax,
and indeed I am using OS 9.1 on this Pismo
PowerBook right now, even though it supports OS 9.2.
Charles
ATA 100
From Allan Dresner
Hi
Just a quick note, because I think a lot of people are being
mislead. While the new Toshiba drive that you and many other Apple
sites mention is ATA100 compatible, the IDE controller on even the
newest of PowerBooks is ATA66. While the drive will be backward
compatible, the IDE controller is not forward compatible. This, as a
possible PC convert, has prevented me from switching to the
PowerBook.
Thank you,
Allan Dresner
http://www.dreztech.com
- Hi Allan,
Nevertheless, the Toshiba drive, even with the ATA66 controller,
will provide decent performance on the PowerBook.
OTOH, perhaps the controller issue is the reason why the Toshiba
drive with its 16 MB buffer was trounced by an IBM drive with an
8 MB buffer in this shootout: http://www.barefeats.com/fire32.html
Charles
Editor's notes: ATA100 drives are backward compatible with ATA66
controllers; albeit at a slower maximum speed.
The shootout on Bare Feats was conducted using an external
FireWire enclosure, so the results may not apply with the same drives
used inside a computer.
Portector
From George Slusher
Charles:
I read about the "Portector" on your website (http://lowendmac.com/ibook/01/0917.html)
and others. However, I can't find the company or any source. I tried
the URL given elsewhere for the company's website, http://www.portector.com/,
but got an error message that access was forbidden. I tried the email
link on your page (Portector@fueldesigninc.com), but the email
instantly bounced. Do you or any of your writers know if the product
is still available and, if so, how I can get hold of someone who
sells it?
Thanks and keep up the great work at lowendmac.com and
Applelinks.
George Slusher
- Hi George,
I'm getting the same response you did. I can only guess that they
have shut down the website.
Charles
Where can I download the old, free ThinkFree
Office?
From Alvin Chan
Hi. do you know where I can download the old, free ThinkFree
Office before it became commercial?
Thank you in advance.
God bless,
Alvin
- Hi Alvin,
I don't recall there ever having been a version of TFO, at least
for the Mac, that was not commercial, unless there was a public
beta. Given the nature of the program, I'm doubtful that an
earlier version would be available for download anywhere.
Charles
Myrealbox? Reliable...?
From Terry Horton
Google "insubject:myrealbox" for the latest on lost mail. They are
down constantly, far more than their About section implies.
Btw, the above address doesn't forward through myrealbox, as
they've again been inaccessible throughout today.
- Hi Terry,
I have found MyRealBox to be quite reliable for the past couple of
years. Recently they have been installing new servers or something
(they gave users a heads-up), and reliability has fallen off for
the past couple of weeks or so.
Charles
I have found the best browser today: Netscape 7
PR and best email client: Eudora
From Alvin Chan
Thank you for your time. I'd like to share this discovery. This is
on OS 9.2.2 with 128 MB iMac 350.
Bear with me here:
I have been to:
- Netscape 4 then to
- IE 5 then to
- Netscape 6 then to
- IE 5 again then
- Netscape 7 then
- iCab then
- Netscape 7 again then
- IE 5 then
- Netscape 7
and this will be for a long time from now on.
It doesn't really matter if it is PR or beta or alpha as long as
it works, it's just a name. the best is when you test a product
anyway and with time it will tell you if it is a good
product/service.
Why is it the best?
If you switch it to the Classic theme, turn off My Sidebar (slows
things down) and turn off open Side bar in the Internet Search in
preferences, it becomes lean, focused on Internet navigation only;
the most basic use of the browser. It becomes a minimal but more
powerful (fastest browser and renders better than IE 5.1.5 - another
reason why I switched back again). With the Classic theme it responds
faster. This is with the latest version of Shockwave 6 and Flash 6
(found Netscape 7 and installed without problems).
The memory sizes are:
- Minimum 20480
- Preferred 28807 - Shockwave adjusted the preferred size
Why not iCab or IE 5.1.5 or IE 5 compared to Netscape 7 with
Classic theme?
iCab is slower, the plug-ins don't install well, and you need
Netscape or IE anyway to plug-in important ones like Shockwave and
Flash. It doesn't look good, but most importantly its slower to
render pages than Netscape 7 and doesn't render pages like Panasonic.com
well.
IE is slower and doesn't render pages properly, pages that are
more important. Although Netscape 7 doesn't properly render some
pages too, these pages are less important than what IE doesn't render
properly because of the pictures involved. Though IE look better when
it come to GUI, the Classic theme of Netscape is not significantly
bad looking - it has a wholesome, friendly, but clean interface to
it. Though, it needs to be Aquafied soon, but then again the theme is
changeable.
Email client
Eudora is the best, faster then Outlook or Messenger, and is the
most compatible if address book and copy-pasting contents on the
clipboard are concerned. It is also more secure than Outlook and is
most user-friendly, as it doesn't have too many buttons around it and
you just drag and drop files to be attached and drag and drop files
you have received to the Finder/Desktop. Though, it needs to improve
on its looks.
I hope this helps =)
Take care and God bless,
Alvin
- Hi Alvin,
I pretty much agree with you. Netscape 7.0 rocks, especially the
OS X version. In OS 9, I can't decide whether I like NS
7.0 or Mozilla 1.1 better. I think Mozilla is faster in
OS 9.
I'm a Eudora fan too.
Charles
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