Guide to PCMCIA/ethernet/DSL configuration on a
PowerBook 5300?
From Thomas M. Barclay
Hi, Charles -
As usual, I'm trying to get used gear to work in an orderly fashion.
Ever the optimist, I.
Do you know of a guide to configuring PC cards and the OS features
involving TCP/IP for Internet connection? The Apple OS installation
assistant wasn't really all that helpful, and may have hindered the
effort.
I've got a pair of Dayna Communicards for use with a PB 5300 and a PB 190cs. I have their drivers. I have
done clean installs of OS 8.6 on both machines.
Now comes the hard part.
I use Verizon for our DSL service. They require that Macs going
through a router (as these will when they reach their eventual home)
use DHCP to reach the ISP server and the Internet. When I go to TCP/IP,
DHCP is not an available choice.
Any referrals would be most helpful.
Cheers of the season -
Tom Barclay
Hi Tom,/p>
If you have the proper drivers and your Mac is seeing
your ethernet card, and ethernet is selected in the AppleTalk control
panel, the DHCP should show up in one of the TCP/IP control panel
submenus./p>
I had a similar problem with my daughter's PowerBook 1400 for her college dorm
broadband connection. We have a used (Motorola) ethernet PC Card, and
thought we had the correct driver installed, but it turned out that the
one we had was not the correct one. I finally, with some help from a
reader, found and downloaded the correct card driver and all was
well./p>
I can't say for sure if that is your problem. Is
ethernet showing up as an option in AppleTalk? If not, that's another
clue that you don't have the correct driver support./p>
Charles
LC 5xx
From Scott
I enjoyed your article on the LC 520. I have an LC 580 that I dearly love. I got it for a
buck off
eBay from a gentleman advertising it for parts. It works fine.
I have mine equipped with a 32 MB of RAM. I still use the stock 500
MB hard drive. I also have a 200 MB SyQuest drive, a 500 MB external
hard drive, and a color scanner hooked up to this computer. With the
right software it can be used as a business machine. I use AOL 4.0,
Claris Emailer, and Netscape Navigator 4.0.8. I tried iCab, but I didn't like it much. If I turn off
graphics, it does a halfway decent job. When it gets too slow, I remind
myself of all the money I'm saving with vintage software.
Editor's note: Several members of our mailing lists suggest that iCab works much
better on 680x0 Macs if you open Preferences, select Connections/Log
under Network, and set the number of simultaneous connections to 1. The
theory is that these old CPUs have a hard time juggling multiple
connections. dk
It's a shame to let a good Mac go to waste. And for a church that
doesn't have much money to waste, a vintage Mac setup will allow you to
spend more funds on mission than maintenance. It makes it
worthwhile.
Do you know where a fellow can get a right angle adapter for the PDS
slot inside? I have a card I'd like to hook up in this computer.
Again thanks for the article.
Scott
Hi Scott,/p>
The price was right! Congratulations on getting a lot
of useful service out of an old Mac./p>
Unfortunately, I have no idea where you might find one
of those PDS right angle adapters. You might try running a Google
search for PDS adapters or just obsolete Mac parts./p>
Charles
FireWire PC Cards etc.
From Ross Cottrell
Charles,
I have just installed an IBM Travelstar 40 GB GNX in my 300 MHz PowerBook. It is
much quieter and somewhat faster than the 20 GB Hitachi that it
replaced. The quietness is what I really like about the IBM drives.
There is no sleep wake up problem in Jaguar. And so far, there has been
only one sleep failure while booted into OS 9.1 out of about 8
attempts. It sure is nice to have some extra quickness injected into
the old 'Book. I've maxed out the RAM at 512 MB, too. Jaguar needs all
the help it gets, but I find it usable and stable.
So it's a great drive and worth the $147 I paid to Googlegear.com. Second day FedEx was
.50 cents.
Here's my problem though: OS X.2.1 won't recognize the FireWire
drive I just assembled with the old Hitachi. It's a new OWC Mercury
Express enclosure. The drive is recognized in OS 9.1 and works
perfectly, but Jaguar can't see it at all. I have a Newer
Firewire-to-Go CardBus, which has been suggested to me as the potential
source of trouble. The card does work in Jaguar in that I can import DV
into iMovie 2.
Do you or any of your readers know of problems with these cards and
Jaguar external FW drives? Any recommendations on a 2-3 port FireWire
card that will work in a non-bus powered situation? I am considering
the SmartDisk and OrangeMicro cards. Thanks!
Regards,
Ross Cottrell
Hi Ross,/p>
I had good luck with the Macally FireWire card in my
WallStreet, but never had OS X installed. My son used a KeySpan
FireWire PC Card with his Lombard under OS X for two years, and had no
connection difficulties, but he only had Jaguar installed for about a
month before he sold the 'Book./p>
Perhaps readers can help with more WS/FireWire
info./p>
Charles
Re: CD-RW drive in Pismo
From Tim Harmon
FYI - Just received and installed the Sony drive in my Pismo today.
OS 10.2.2 iTunes 3 does burn to the drive. It makes a very nice
addition, but the fit is very rough with rather large gaps at the top
and the bottom of the drive door.
Tim
Old Macs vs. old PCs
From Brad Loomis
I bet there are more old PCs in use than Macs, especially 486
computers. Don't forget about industrial applications running in
factories and paper mills.
Hi Brad,/p>
In that context you're probably correct in raw
numbers. I was thinking in terms of consumer and office
computers./p>
Charles
Wireless Driver
From Chris Ryan
Charles,
I noticed your write up on
the AeroCard Universal Mac 802.11b LAN Driver in Friday's 'Book
Review.
Out of curiosity did you know that from SourceForge there is an free
and open source driver that will work with many if not all of the cards
that are described? The driver can be found at wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net
and work with Jaguar. Thanks for the great site.
Thanks Chris,/p>
I wasn't aware of that driver./p>
Charles
Misc. Ramblings, 12.09
From Andrew Main
"I would suggest that a better choice for a word
processor with grammar checker would be Nisus Writer, which is under
active development with an OS X version coming in the new
year."
May I also suggest Mariner Write (http://www.marinersoft.com), which
already offers an OS X version and is more user-friendly than
Nisus' somewhat techie interface. No grammar checker, but a search for
"grammar" at Mac Update (http://www.macupdate.com) shows some
possibilities. (Mariner is also better for multilingual work than
Nisus, despite the latter's much-touted reputation.) Like Stone
Design's (http://stone.com) Create,
Mariner is a small-scale labor-of-love Mac developer who needs - and
deserves - our support.
"You can get ethernet PC Cards for the 1400. My
daughter uses one in hers very successfully. However, they are a bit
hard to find these days."
Better yet, a combo modem/ethernet card such as the Global Village
(33.6K Platinum Pro or 56K modem/ethernet card), which seems to appear
fairly often on
eBay; that's what I have with my G3-upgraded PB 1400 second
computer.
As for a DIY DVD/CD-RW upgrade for the Pismo & Lombard, here's
an article on XLR8YourMac which seems to offer this possibility, though
I haven't had time to investigate it:
Matsushita UJDA 710 OEM Combo DVD/CDRW Drive Mods for PB G3.
Actually, I remember seeing this article before (it's more than a
year old), was reminded of it via a link on LEM today describing a
CD-RW mod for original iBook, which mentions the DVD/CD-RW option for
G3 PBs: Le
Hack: CDRW into Fruity iBook Does Go.
Apparently one of these modded G3 units was
recently sold on eBay.
Where the XLR8 article describes soldering to make it bootable, the
eBay description mentions some kind of software fix. More research
needed, which I don't have time for at the moment; if anyone has
checked this out and can provide definitive info, I'm sure it'd be
welcome to many.
(BTW, I often see the abbreviation/acronym "IIRC" on the Net, e.g.
in this article. I haven't been able to figure out what it means. Can
you tell me?)
Thanks again,
Andrew
Hi Andrew,/p>
Mariner is a nice word processor. I didn't mention it
in that reply because the reader had specifically mentioned a grammar
checker as a priority./p>
My daughter's Motorola Mariner PC Card is also a
modem/ethernet combo./p>
IIRC = common abbreviation for "If I recall/remember
correctly"./p>
May also refer to:
and possibly others./p>
Charles
Re: USB 802.11b
From: Edward Nilges
Hey, in regards to a USB wireless solution for an old iMac, I've
used a Belkin F5D6050 with my PC to
access a Broadband Internet connection with excellent results, though
the USB bus is probably a bottleneck. I don't yet have a way of testing
it with my newly acquired 2400c, but there are drivers available
for OS 9 and X. It's pretty inexpensive, too.
HTH,
Ed
802.11b USB cards
From Carlos Joaquin
The only place I have heard that carry these (802.11b USB cards) is
Circuit City. Sorry I can not remember the name of the
manufacturer.
Carlos
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