Macs Don't Die, They Get Upgraded
Eric Schwarz
- 2002.05.29 It started about two weeks ago. A friend of mine, who owns a
Power Mac 6400/200, asked me if I
could take a look at their printer, a StyleWriter 2500, because it
wasn't working. To make this story short, the printer was dead (who
knows how it happened), so the fun began. They were looking for a new printer, and in this day and age, a
Mac serial printer can hardly be found new, so more drastic measures
were required. Remembering that a friend who lives in Eugene, OR, takes care of
these old 6360/6400/6500-class
Macs and makes them sing and dance (so to speak), I decided that a
USB printer might be a better bet. I consulted him to find out what
kind of USB card would be best for this task and if this could be
done on the 6400. Even though he suggested a card by Asanté, I couldn't find
one. I called MacWarehouse. They suggested that I not get the $40
Belkin model, but get the $35 Macally one. Following their advice, I
bought the cheaper card and received it about four days later. I told
my friend to go and get a printer at the local office-supply store.
My suggestion was an Epson C60, as I have been quite impressed with
mine and know it is compatible with older hardware. On Saturday, I went over to my friend's house and got started with
the installation. For logic board related tasks, the 6400 is fairly
easy to work on. I just had to undo two screws and slide out the
motherboard. I installed the card in one of the two PCI slots and
closed the Mac back up. I turned it on and found that they were running OS 8.5.1. No good
- the USB software I had (since the card uses the default Apple
software) requires OS 8.6. Next I updated their Mac to 8.6 (much more
stable, too). Then I installed the Epson printer drivers and
restarted the computer. They opened up their very old copy of MS Word and tried printing a
document. It worked, to their delight. If this were a 6 or 7 year old PC, the choice would be clear -
throw it out and buy a new one - but since this is a Mac (probably
one with the best built-in sound system), you simply cannot throw it
away. Upgrading is the only choice. Finally (I meant to mention this last week), my iBook needs a name
(since lots of people like to name their Macs, and the iBook's code
names are kinda lame). If you want to, send any suggestions to me at
.
Eric Schwarz has been using Macs and other computers for a few years. His personal website - dealing with Macs (of course) - is at <http://schwarztech.macweekly.com/>. You can learn more about his current computer setup in Eric Schwarz's
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