System Crashes in the Classic Mac OS

1998 – It sounds to me like you’re running the kinds and types of software that can create common crashes. I’ve noticed a considerable number of people on the list that don’t have crashes, but I’m not one of them. There are things you can do to shore up your system from crashes and eliminate […]

Burning CDs on a Mac

1998 – First, you’re going to need a lot of memory. All you can afford. Pump your Mac to the maximum memory you can get. Once you get over 80 MB, you’ll be kind of redundant – most CD-writing programs only provide for a 64 MB RAM cache. Aim for at least 64 MB of […]

Beware ‘Soft’ Partitions

1998 – Long ago, as it has been mentioned, some companies used soft partition software.1 This was an overlay of the hard partitioning format. In some cases, this worked okay, but in most cases, it worked just like Stacker or eDisk2 (for more on these ancient utilities, see Miscellaneous Macintosh FAQ) – sooner or later […]

Hard Drive Partitioning

“How come my folders/apps inflated in size when I moved them from the old drive to the new one? The size of files has jumped by more than 25% across the board. Did I do something wrong in simply dragging the entire contents from the old drive the new one?”

Level 2 Cache for the 68040

A Level 2 (L2) cache was a popular way to boost performance on faster 68030-based Macs, including the Mac IIci, Mac IIvx, and Mac IIfx. But none of the 68040-based Macs shipped with an L2 cache, although most were capable of using one. The L2 cache is automatically accessed by the 68040 series processor, whether […]

ISDN

ISDN is a nearly forgotten service provided by the telephone company to provide digital transmission of voice, data, video, and more over a conventional land line. It is faster and more reliable than the 56k modems that have been in use since the late 1990s. [There was a time when we had ISDN service for […]

Serious Classic Mac OS Performance Tips

I have posted my answer to your question to the Quadlist, simply because it’s the most on-topic question I’ve gotten in a while. Contained within my answer are little tips that I think others need to know so that they can get powerful performance out of their machines as well. I have eliminated a considerable […]

Macintosh Serial Throughput: Modem Results

1998 – Your results may vary, but this should provide a good starting point for tweaking serial throughput on your Mac setup. Note that FreePPP allows serial port settings of 115.2 kbps and 230.4 kbps, settings not possible with Apple’s serial toolbox routines. This follows up on our earlier article, Macintosh Serial Throughput, providing real […]

The LocalTalk Gateway

1998 – The entire idea of a LocalTalk gateway is to bridge LocalTalk devices that don’t have ethernet – such as Macs, early LaserWriters, other printers, etc. which are not TCP/IP devices (visible on the Internet in the Internet’s most common language) as LocalTalk devices.

The Zip Disk Click of Death

1998 – Much of the following information has been distilled from a series of articles by Steve Gibson of SpinRite. Since these articles specifically address Click of Death (COD) tools in the Windows world, they provide excellent technical information but no Macintosh perspective. If you want to know more about COD, Gibson’s articles are the […]

Disk Caching and Hard Drive Throughput

1998 – There are several variables that determine hard drive throughput: How fast your Mac can move data over the SCSI or IDE bus, how fast your drive can move data over the drive bus, and caching, including both disk caching by your Mac and the disk’s internal data buffer.

SCSI Throughput

Apple popularized SCSI (small computer system interface) by making it a standard feature on the third Macintosh, the Mac Plus, which was introduced in January 1986. Although Apple only embraced a subset of the emerging SCSI standard, the new bus allowed chaining up to seven peripherals to the computer. The 8-bit parallel interface was theoretically […]

Macintosh Makes the Connection

1997 – Surprising to many, the first Macs didn’t have SCSI. The Apple design team created a compact, closed box with a disk drive, CPU, monitor, 128 KB of RAM, keyboard and mouse ports, a floppy drive port, and two serial ports. The serial ports were the secret – they could support a 230.4 Kbps […]

AppleShare Supported Platforms

1994 – AppleShare currently comes in three flavors: AppleShare 3.0, AppleShare 4.0, and AppleShare Pro. They differ in performance and platform. AppleShare 4.0 is designed to take advantage of 68040-based Macs, and AppleShare Pro utilizes the specialized hardware and operating environment of the Apple Workgroup Server 95. All three flavors have the same security features.