1999: Please note that Freewwweb has not only gone out of business, but their domain has been purchased by a porn site. We are retaining this article written by Rob Myers for historical interest but have removed all links to the domain. Dan Knight, publisher.
Author Archives: Daniel Knight
1999 – I just read your advice about upgrading or replacing an older Mac, and my Performa 636CD works pretty well for my purposes (except no RealAudio). I had a logic board swap done about 1-1/2 years ago so I could add a 486 card for Windows 95 (it’s easier for me to adapt to […]
1999: The “I” in iMac must stand for inferior. Because after installing Mac OS 9 on your iMac, you’ll feel inferior to your little computer. OS 9, Apple’s latest operating system for the Mac, is sure to make your iMac work for you.
1999: Transistor density has been doubling roughly every eighteen months like clockwork for 40 years now. That’s Moore’s Law in a nutshell.
The Mac II uses a 16 MHz 68020 CPU. The hard drive is an ancient 5.25″ 80 MB Apple-branded Quantum drive – the one that originally shipped with this machine in 1987 – formatted with Apple HD SC Setup 7.3.5.
Supporting a over 80 Macs in three locations, consistency is very important. Most of the Macs at work are still running System 7.5.5. Newer ones are generally on Mac OS 8.1 or 8.6. We use the Apple ADB Mouse (in its various incarnations) almost exclusively, along with the Contour UniMouse on Macs without ADB ports.
1999: One of the more interesting stories of the past week was the decision of MacTimes to close its doors and try to auction off its domain name on eBay for a cool $100,000. As I write this, there are 12 hours to go – and no bidders.
Intel recently christened “the chip formerly known as Merced” with the newly coined name ITANIUM. (Yes, they really do want it in all caps. Tough.)
Five years ago, my employer was spending about $3,600 for a Power Mac 6100/66 with 16 MB of memory (so much!) and a 230-500 MB hard drive. And Apple’s extended keyboard, which was a separate item back then. And an Apple 14″ color monitor.
The Power Macintosh 6100 (a.k.a. the Perform 6110 series) shipped in two speeds: a 60 MHz version introduced on March 14, 1994 as one of the first Power Macs, and a 66 MHz version introduced on January 5, 1995. Until I benchmarked a 6100/60, 6100/66, and 6100/66 with 256 KB level 2 (L2) cache, I assumed the […]
1999: With apologies to Accelerate Your Mac! for the headline, I hope you were as shocked at Apple’s arrogance on Wednesday as I was.
I’ve had some time to watch the Kihei iMac/Mac OS 9 announcement online and read the Kihei developer notes. I’m more impressed with the new iMacs than ever.
1999 – Imagine something smaller, lighter, and far less expensive than an iBook. Imagine writing on a keyboard with no Mac attached. That’s one way of looking at the AlphaSmart 2000, the device I’m writing this review on.
1999.10: I hope you enjoyed yesterday’s article on the topless iMac. After all the stress with Apple legal, it was fun doing a parody piece. But now Apple has officially unveiled its new iMacs, which are apparently immediately available for purchase.
First, thank you to Adesso for supplying a keyboard for this review. Since the advent of the Power Mac G4, we have to find a new keyboard we can use at work – the G4 has no ADB port for our old Apple Extended, Apple Adjustable, MicroSpeed KB-105M, or Adesso Nu-Form ADB keyboards.
1999: After looking over the requirements for deploying FileMaker 5, my employer has decided to cancel the upgrade order. We have a network of about 80 Macs, most running System 7.5.5 and many running 68040 processors (including IIcis with Sonnet upgrades), and everyone uses FileMaker with shared databases on our file server. The cost of […]
1999: Three iMacs? Well, Apple’s done it before. Despite the amazing success of the iMac, there always seem to be two previous versions available on the close-out and refurbished market. But three different iMac models in production at the same time? What is Apple thinking?
1998: Last week, I wrote about ATMs from a human interface perspective. I suggested graphics and color and a modicum of intelligent programming could go a long way in making ATMs more friendly and less frustrating.
Reviews and comparisons of the MicroMac ThunderCache Pro and Sonnet Presto accelerators for the original Color Classic.
For the most part, the PowerBook 150 was a very nice computer. It was the fourth and final model in Apple’s economy series that started with the PowerBook 140 in October 1991. The 140 ran a then-decent 16 MHz 68030, shipped with 2 MB of memory (expandable to 8), and had a 20 or 40 MB […]
1999: I’ve been running The iMac Channel since May 1998. I still don’t own an iMac, but my home computer is getting closer to the iMac’s specs all the time. (For the record, we now have two iMacs at work. Our web server is a Rev. B iMac; the other is a 333 MHz iMac […]
1999: Apple has responded to the uproar over the inability of Blue & White Power Mac G3s with certain ROM upgrades to accept G4 processors. The following is from Apple’s Tech Exchange. (Because Apple considers this an off-topic discussion, this page was removed from their site.)
I’ve received some excellent reader feedback on The Ethernet Alternative to USB Drives, mostly from people who are already using older Macs as networked file servers.
I maintained several email lists using Macjordomo, a freeware email list server from Leuca Software. The purpose of this page is to explain how Macjordomo works and how you can add, delete, or change your subscription – although the examples provided in this article are no longer in use. (Take that, spammers!)
Macjordomo is a powerful, easy-to-use freeware listserver. Versions are available for Mac OS 8 and 9 as well as Mac OS X.
1999: I’ll admit it: I read PC Magazine. No, I’m not planning on selling out to the dark side. I have DOS roots, but I don’t even want to know how to use Windows. I read PC Magazine to learn about the hot new technologies and get the perspective from the other side of the […]
1999 – USB is slower than promised, providing at most two-thirds of the expected speed based on its 12 Mbps bandwidth (see The Truth About USB Speed). But the iMac, iBook, and Lombard PowerBook don’t have any other option, do they?
1999 – One little chip sure can set off a world of controversy. It started when Apple introduced the Power Mac G3 in November 1997.
1999: Last year’s Bondi blue iMac inspired a host of consumer products in similar color schemes: dust busters, irons, pagers, and even a special version of GameBoy.
1999 – There’s been a fair bit of interest in AppleShare 3 thanks to some articles on this site. Although long discontinued, it is possible to find copies of AppleShare 3 (be sure to get the 3.03 updater from Apple). And for the small network, it may be an ideal solution.
The 400 MHz Power Mac G4 is built on a modified Yosemite (Blue & White G3) motherboard. Yet owners of Blue & White G3 systems with mid-May ROM version 1.1 or later cannot replace their old G3 processors with G4s. Apple deliberately disabled this option by having the system check which CPU is installed at […]
1999.09: Just last week Apple unveiled the Power Mac G4 in two versions and three speeds.
Your results may vary, but this should provide a good starting point for tweaking serial throughput on your classic Mac setup. Note that FreePPP allows serial port settings of 115.2kbps and 230.4kbps, settings not possible with Apple’s serial toolbox routines.
Here is the quick scoop on the wonderful internal grayscale video setup from Micron or Xceed. The video card identifies itself as a “Micron Xceed 3MT” in the Monitors control panel (with an external monitor attached so the Monitors control panel sees the card).
Power Macintosh G4: As far as many are concerned, that sums up Steve Jobs’ big Seybold announcement today. It was certainly an impressive introduction. Depending on what software you’re currently running, the 500 MHz Power Mac G4 can be two-to-three times faster than the fastest G3 or Pentium III available today.
