Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year from Low End Mac!
This is our last Mailbag of the year, and what a year it's been.
We've solved problems with AirPort Extreme in G4 iBooks, discovered how
to install Leopard on unsupported hardware, looked at booting iBooks
and PowerBooks from Compact Flash, and a whole lot more. We're very
much looking forward to the year ahead.
Dan Knight, publisher - Tip Jar
GeForce Startup Delay with Leopard Solved
From Brian Deuel:
Dan,
Thanks to "Gotoh" over at the Mac Elite forum, the Leopard bootup
delay caused by GeForce video cards in G4 systems has been solved [see
Leopard
Boot Delay with G4 and GeForce 6/7]. Simply remove
AppleHWSensor.kext from /System/Library/Extensions, and the delay goes
away. The delay was due to Leopard not supporting temperature sensors
in G4 systems.
Of course, messing with extensions can be dangerous and could cause
system bootup to fail, so anyone trying this should tread lightly.
Brian
Brian,
Thanks for this invaluable information. We'll be
linking to it several places on Low End Mac.
Dan
GeForce FX5200 Probably Not a Good Choice with
Leopard
From Joseph Burke:
I read the recent letter in the
Mailbag concerning whether the GeForce FX5200 is Core Image
compatible. There is a caveat that goes with the FX5200. The FX5200
proved itself to be fairly useless with DX9 games under Windows even
with 256 MB of video memory, so it may not be a very good choice for
running Core Image/Core Animation under Leopard. The FX5200 simply did
not have the muscle necessary to run demanding DX9 games in spite of
it's hardware compliance with the standard, and I seriously doubt that
it will be a good choice to use with Leopard, which is more graphically
intense than Tiger was. If it runs at all, it will most likely
crawl.
DFS writes that he wants to run Leopard on one of these machines but
does not want to use a video card that draws off the power supply. The
minimum he is going to need to run Leopard reasonably well will be a
Radeon 9500-9800 card or a GeForce FX 5500-5950 which will require a
tap to the power supply. I use a Radeon 9700 in mine and I had to use a
power splitter from a PC that had a mini Molex connector for extra
power.
Joseph,
Apple states that it's the least powerful Nvidia card
that supports Core Image, and that's what I reported. Based on all the
tests and reviews I've seen, the Radeon 9600 Pro is a much better card,
and it generally sells for less than the GeForce 5200.
As I don't have Leopard, a Radeon 9600 Pro, or a
GeForce 5200, I have no way of looking into this beyond what I
read.
As far as drawing off the power supply, it's not a
subject I'm familiar with. Living in the late renaissance era of
personal computing (Power Mac G4 Mirror Drive Door, Mac OS X 10.4) and
not being a gamer, I've had no reason to go beyond the outdated Radeon
9000 card in my equally outdated computer. Then again, it's not
obsolete until I say it is. :-)
I'll be looking into power draw as we add profiles for
AGP video cards to the site.
Dan
LeopardAssist Automates Unsupported Installs
From Ben Stafford:
This link might be of interest to you and your readers:
LeopardAssist 1.0 Helps Install Leopard On Some Unsupported
PowerMacs
Ben Stafford
Ben,
Thanks for the info on LeopardAssist,
which essentially automates the process in Dylan McDermond's article. I'll be
sure to add links in Dylan's article and our Unsupported Leopard Installation
article.
Dan
Dual G4 Power Mac Misreports CPU Speed
From Clint McIntosh:
I tried your trick to
tricking the Leopard installer on my Dual
450 MHz G4 (gigabit ethernet) and it works!
However, I have a problem that is a little more odd than installing
an OS on unsupported hardware. Years ago, I dutifully applied Apple's
G4 Firmware update for my computer, and upon the first reboot, my
computer began reporting itself as a Dual 250 MHz G4! No amount
of PRAM zapping or NVRAM resetting will get it to report its true
speed. When I try to rerun the Firmware updater, it tells me that I've
already run it and won't let me re-flash the firmware.
I've run multiple benchmark apps just to confirm that my Mac wasn't
dumbed down, but all tests confirm that the speed of the computer
matches that of a Dual 450 MHz G4. How can I permanently write the true
CPU speed back to NVRAM?
Clint McIntosh
Clint,
This is a new one for me. I Googled Power Mac G4
Firmware Update 4.2.8 and haven't found anyone else reporting the
same problem. I'll post this in the Mailbag and hope a reader can
provide some insights - and perhaps a fix.
Dan
Translucent Finder Menu Bar Tied to CPU Speed?
From Brian Deuel:
Dan,
Regarding the translucent Finder menu bar in Leopard . . .
I don't think that even having a QE/CI/CV supporting video card has
anything to do with whether it appears or not. I have reason to believe
that it is based on CPU speed. I did an experiment with my spare
DP500 G4, and my current workhorse, a
DP500 G4 upgraded with a Sonnet 1.8 GHz processor. Prior to installing
the Sonnet upgrade, I noticed that my Leopard menu bar wasn't
translucent. After the upgrade - and running the same install of
Leopard that I ran prior to the CPU upgrade - the Finder menu bar was
suddenly translucent. I then installed Leopard on my spare DP500, using
the same GeForce 6200 that
is in my main machine, and sure enough, no translucent Finder menu
bar.
What minimum CPU speed is needed? That I do not know. Although
trivial in a way, it might be worthwhile to add whether the Finder bar
is translucent to the unsupported install questions. Just a suggestion
:)
Regards,
Brian Deuel
Brian,
Now there's an interesting discovery - put in a fast
enough CPU, and you get a translucent menu bar. Let's see what readers
report about CPU speeds that do and don't provide it.
Dan
Leopard on Upgraded Digital Audio Power Mac
From K. Wightman:
Hi Dan -
This one for the Leopard Unsupported Installation page:
I've installed Leopard (both client and now Server :)) on a
Digital Audio. The specs:
- RAM: 1.25 GB of RAM
- CPU: Gigadesigns dual 1.6 GHz upgrade
- VID: Radeon 9600 Pro (I bought this from OWC - I seem to recall
that it was originally from a G5 but was modified by them for use in
G4s)
I was able to install Leopard client with no modifications, which
was kinda cool. When I installed Leopard Server, I didn't have a spare
Mac bootable dual layer DVD drive (my MacBooks are the only machines
here that have 'em), so I made a disk image of the server install DVD,
wrote it to a partition on a FireWire hard disk I had laying around,
and booted off of that. I didn't have to make any modifications to the
installer, though.
Subjectively, Leopard feels the same as Tiger did on this machine.
Since I played with Leopard client on it, I installed an ACARD 6880M
ATA controller and new hard disks in it (this so I could have RAID-1'd
hard disks for Leopard server/Time Machine backups of my laptop and my
girlfriend's laptop). No noticeable speed difference here, although I
am worried that my Digital Audio's power supply is going to kick the
bucket with the extra load!
When I installed the Gigadesigns CPU a while back, it required
booting off a CD to install their own motherboard firmware upgrade. The
Boot ROM for mine is 4.2.8f1, with Gigadesign's "7447(a) firmware
enabler". Interestingly, the CPU ID string in the System Profiler
reports "Processor Name: PowerPC 60? (1.1)".
Another possible 'supported' dividing line would be the version of
the ASIC in the motherboard (see http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2002-09-05/#3375).
My revision is 7. I'd be interested to know if other Digital Audio
models have a different ASIC (mine was originally a single CPU 533
MHz).
Benchmark scores:
- Geekbench: 1118
- Xbench: 27.73
I didn't run the benchmarks before the upgrade. I'll be reinstalling
Leopard Server in the next few days, though, and may load up Tiger
Server and rerun the benchmarks...
Reid
Reid,
Thanks for your report, which confirms the discovery
that as long as the CPU runs at 867 MHz or faster, the standard Leopard
installer will run without modification. (Possible exception: We have
not received a single field report of a Yikes!
G4 running Leopard, with the stock CPU or upgraded.) I don't think
the installer checks ASIC versions at all.
Dan
iWork Not Just Optimized for Leopard
From Liam Greenwood:
Hi Dan
You commented in your reply to Derek about iWork:
Derek,
(I have Office and don't like it. I've worked with
Pages and Number, and I don't consider it worth the expense and time to
switch all of my work over.)
I'm not surprised that you're having issues with iLife
06; Apple produced iLife 08 to give us applications optimized for
Leopard. Just one more way to get our money.
Just as a point to consider - iWork 08 brought in Numbers, a
significant addition to iWork, and did extensive changes to Pages,
giving it a word-processing persona as well as the page-layout one. So
I think it is egregious of you to intimate that it is just an
'optimized for Leopard' release.
In my case I read a review of Numbers that was positive and
indicated some items that were of interest to me. So I downloaded the
trial version and played with it a bit - and found that there was
enough functionality in it to be worth the price. Which is a drop in
the bucket compared to Office. It's cheaper than Office even if you buy
an 'Educational' license of Office.
We got a family pack; my wife keeps the budget in Numbers rather
than in Excel or OpenOffice. I use Numbers and have just done the
Seasonal newsletter for family and friends in Pages. Used it for the
first time and, like Numbers, it has a number of little interface
tweaks that made it the easiest page layout program that I have used.
Previous have been FrameMaker, Pagestream, Quark, and others.
I looked at previous iWorks and didn't perceive good value for me -
so used OpenOffice. iWorks 08 had significant changes, such that I got
it and used it on Tiger - nothing to do with Leopard.
Cheers, Liam
Liam,
Don't get me wrong: I think Pages and Numbers are
great. If I wasn't still absolutely thrilled at how well the ancient
AppleWorks 6.2.9 (last update: 2003) works, I'd choose it over Office
in a heartbeat. I only have Office because I won a free copy, and I
hate to use it (but sometimes you have to). I really enjoyed my 30-day
trial of iWork 08, but until I have a project that requires more than
AppleWorks provides, I'm not ready to make the investment.
My comment to
Derek had to do with his problems using iLife 06 apps with Leopard,
and my response was that iLife 08 is designed to work with Leopard,
where iLife 06 wasn't. That says nothing about how well iLife 08 will
work with Tiger, only that it should work a lot better with Leopard
than iLife 06.
Dan
Weak iBook G4 AirPort Solution
From Jason Greshes:
Dan, thanks tons for running a
recent letter about the two-click iBook AirPort antenna. Although
I've been through tons of Macs, this is one thing I wasn't aware of! I
had taken my AirPort card out of my G4
iBook to put in my wife's 20" G4 iMac, and left the iBook sitting
on a shelf for a while. I thought I had an AirPort G card laying around
for the iBook, but it turned out to be spare original AirPort card. I
traded that with someone for a G card, put that in the iBook, and got
almost no AirPort reception.
I figured it was a bum card (the guy had been awfully anxious to
trade it!) and got a replacement off of eBay. Then that one had the
same problem, and I figured the iBook itself was at fault (the screen
bezel had cracked, and I thought maybe the antenna itself was damaged).
Happened to look at Low End Mac (actually, to see what iBook G4s were
going for these days!), saw the letter you ran, and had the iBook's
AirPort at full strength a minute later.
Thanks again,
Jason
Jason,
That's one of the joys of building community with the
connectivity of the Internet. Someone is stumped, someone else
researches and finds a solution, and it's posted for the benefit of
all. Glad to be of help!
Dan
Logitech Webcam Won't Work with iChat
From James Gager:
Dan,
I recently received a
Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks, and I downloaded the driver
from Logitech. The camera works within the Logitech software, but I can
not get iChat to recognize the camera. My computer is a Power Mac G5 dual 1.8, 2.5 gigs of RAM running
10.4.11. I don't know if this is in your realm of expertise but I
appreciate any help you can give me.
I also want to thank you for your timely response to my question a
couple of days ago.
Have a Merry Christmas,
James Gager
James,
It's not my area of expertise, but the answer is
simple: iChat only supports FireWire webcams. Fortunately, others have
stepped in where Apple has not provided support. Further, there are two
versions of the Quickcam for Notebooks Pro, one of which works with
OS X 10.4.3 and later, and one that doesn't work with the Mac's
drivers. Guess which one you have?
- See if there's a macam
driver for your webcam - free. In your case, a driver exists, but
its status is "depends", so it may or may not work. Another option is
the commercial IOXWebcam X, which sells for $19.95. It claims to work
with your Quickcam.
- Install Unsanity
Application Enhancer (APE), free.
- Install iChatUSBCam ($10), which
supports your webcam.
The macam drivers and APE are free, and you can test
drive iChatUSBCam before paying for it, so you can know if that
solution will work at no cost - and then only $10 to register
iChatUSBCam. If the macam drivers don't work for you, add $20 for
IXCWebcam X.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
