Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Plug & Play Hardware RAID up to 8.0TB. High Performance, Data Redundant Solutions. FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB2, or eSATA. Hot Swappable Bays, Data Rates over 200MB/s. Click here

Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Blast From the Past

Jody Dugan - 2001.11.12

My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your submission to Dan Knight .

As a Macintosh collector, I have acquired numerous machines ranging from the Apple Lisa to PowerPC machines. In all my years of collecting and resurrecting Macs, I have run into obvious problems such as bad power supplies, cold solder joints, bad floppy, and hard drives. I have never been infected by a virus and have always felt that it would not happen to me. I have always recommended that my clients back up and run virus protection programs on a regular basis - if I had only practiced what I preached!

It all started when I picked up a Power Mac 8500 last weekend to replace the aging 8100 that I used for analog video editing. I got a great buy on the 8500 with 17" monitor and a flatbed scanner, and I was thrilled to install a G3 card and ATI 3D graphic board. After an hour of cleaning and installing the cards, it was time to transfer software to the new computer, which went over without a hitch until the 4th or 5th reboot - then the machine would freeze at shut down. I figured the Finder was shot, so I reinstalled the Finder from my OS 8.5 CD and went back to work. On the next reboot the machine would crash with a Bus Error on startup after loading the startup screen. Well, the simple solution would be to remove the startup screen and go back to work, but it was not so easy.

The Bus Errors and Finder Errors continued to pop up moments after reinstalling the OS, which I tried several times, so I came to the conclusion that there was a problem with the hard drive and maybe bad blocks were located where the System Folder was located. I copied all my applications and documents to my iMac, which I use for file transfer storage, and formatted the 8500's drive. Twice I did this with the problems creeping up after a few reboots. As I scratched my head in confusion I pulled the Bible (Mac Secrets) from the bookshelf and looked up Bus Errors for some help. After some reading, it looked like it was a memory issue, so I went on to removing pairs of memory and rebooted over and over with no luck. I went as far as removing the cache and pulling the G3 card and PCI cards, but it was looking like I got myself a lemon. After four days of tinkering I decided to shelf the unit and pull a spare 8500 I had to put in its place - this 8500 had proven itself a good machine since day one.

As you might guess, the good 8500 puked on me after installing the files from the iMac. At that point I was about to believe the problems were related to bad Feng Shui, but I figured there was one last thing to try, and that was run the only virus program I had (it was dated 1995, but it was all I had). The program managed to locate the MDBF B Virus on the system and on every application and document I ran after booting the machine. I breathed a sigh of relief as the software sought out and killed that virus and the machine was back up to par, proving I didn't get myself a lemon after all. But all was not peaches and cream.

Yep, the iMac was sick as well, and the virus was particularly nasty on the iMac. The iMac suffered corruption of the boot block, making the drive useless as a boot volume. so I had to go through this all over again. After transferring more than 50 gigs over my network to my wife's iMac and formatting the sick iMac's hard drive twice, a week later the virus had been banished for good - and I only lost one file that was unrecoverable. I consider myself lucky to have survived such a nasty infection with virtually no loss, but I could have saved myself so much grief by using a background virus program (which I now have on all machines).

If you start getting strange responses from your Mac, don't rule out a virus. The MDBF B Virus was written in 1993 and managed to find its way onto my network after all these years.

Do you know where your computer has been?

Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.

Recent My Turn articles

Using Low End Macs for Internet Radio, 08.18. When the local public radio station moved classical music to HD radio, it was time to find another way to listen. An old iMac with iTunes solved the problem.
'That's Not a Computer', 07.30. Salvaging a broken PowerBook by turning it into a desktop computer.
Upgrading a Digital Audio G4 to work better in Leopard, 06.02. In its original configuration, the dual 533 MHz Power Mac G4 was slow with Mac OS X 10.5, but add the right upgrades, and it runs Leopard quite nicely.
My 4 favorite PowerBooks, 05.28. The PowerBook 150 has a big screen for a vintage PowerBook, the 165c has color, the 100 is diminutive, and Lombard has USB and a great keyboard.
More in the My Turn index.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: iMac Core Duo, Jan. 2006 - The first Intel-based iMacs ran at 1.83-2.0 GHz, came with 17" and 20" displays.
Group of the Day: Mac Pro List is for those using a Mac Pro.
November 22 in LEM history: 99: Gradebooks - 00: Leveraging Apple design - Quadra 630 to Power Mac 5200 - 02: Laptop or desktop? - 04: SuperDuper: Quick, easy, efficient backup - Cross-platform programming for the rest of us - 05: Mac video surveillance on the cheap - Which OS is best for my vintage Mac? - No 'best browser' for the Mac - Sorry state of browsers for classic Macs - 06: Core 2 means cooler running 'Books - 2.0 GHz G4 upgrade
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

Best eMac Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz Combo, $100; SuperDrive, $269; 1.25 GHz Combo, $119; SD, $319; 1.42 GHz Combo, $289; SD, $498.
Best Mac OS X 10.6 and Mac Box Set Deals, 11.18. "Snow Leopard", single user, $25; 5 users, $45; Mac Box Set, single user, $139; 5 users, $180; Server, $414. Shipping included.
Best Xserve Deals, 11.18. Used 1 GHz dual G4, $649; 2.3 dual G5, $795; 3.0 4-core Xeon, $1,899; refurb 2.26 4-core, $2,499; new, $2,888; refurb 8-core, $2,999; new, $3,449; more.
Best 15" MacBook Pro Deals, 11.17. Used 1.83 GHz, $750; 2.16, $800; 2.33, $900; refurb 2.4, $1,299; 2.53, $1,449; 2.66, $1,699; 2.8, $1,899; new 2.53, $1,579; 2.66, $1,799; more.
Best Power Mac G4 and AGP Video Card Deals, 11.17. Used 400 MHz, $50; 933 MHz, $80; 500 dual, $60; 867 dual, $90; 1 GHz dual, $150; 1.25 GHz dual, $225; 1.42 GHz, $499.
Best Mac OS X 10.5 Deals, 11.17. "Leopard" upgrade, $80; single user license, $135; 5 users, $173; Mac Box Set, 5 users, $230; Server, 10 users, $340; unlimited, $850. Shipping included.
Best Mac mini Deals, 11.16. Used 1.42 GHz G4 mini, $379; 1.66 GHz Core Solo, $419; 2.0 Core 2, $450; new 2.26 GHz nVidia, $580; 2.53 GHz, $769; Server, $990.
Best iBook G4 Deals, 11.16. Used 12" 1.07 GHz Combo, $210; 1.33 GHz, $298; 14" 1.33 GHz, $398; 1.42 GHz, $479; SuperDrive, $498.
Best iPod shuffle Deals, 11.16. Used 1 GB, $35; 4 GB, $65; refurb 1 GB, $39; 2 GB, $59; new 2 GB, $55, 4 GB, $75. New and refurb prices include shipping.
More deals in our archive.

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.