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 […]
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 […]
By request, I’ve searched my personal archives and stumbled on my thesis. It’s rather short compared to the ones I write now, but it should get the point across. Now, there are two complete reposts here, so don’t get confused when the subject changes.
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 […]
“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?”
“I’m using my PowerBook Duo 280c over Apple’s LocalTalk Bridge to get access to my ethernet network. What do I need to get TCP/IP to flow through that, too? Where can I get it?”
1998 – Homer Brickley on Nando.net thinks we’ll see $500 computers by Christmas ( The Computer Model T Is Not That Far Away). I beg to differ.
1998 – Go into your Preferences folder and remove Display Preferences and Sound Preferences. One of the problems when Mac system software switched over was that the engineering team at Apple created Monitors & Sound, instead of leaving them separate, when they created Mac OS 7.6. This created two separate versions of preferences files which […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
1998 – Quantum makes the best SCSI drives for Apple or Mac clone branded equipment. I think they make lousy IDE drives though and vote for IBM or Maxtor when it comes to IDE.
Someone I’d love to give credit to, but don’t know who they were when they suggested it to me, gave me a wonderful idea for the RAM disk/disk cache solutions in an article I wrote a while back, RAM Disk vs. Disk Cache: When to Use Each
1998 – This is a long post, but it is relevant to many of the problems we have discussed recently. I would also be interested to know if people agree with what this Apple tech has to say.
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 […]
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.
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 […]
1998 – Scott Barber blew me away with the news: He has Mac OS 8.1 running on a Macintosh IIsi!
April 1998 – You’ve probably heard that the University of Texas McCombs School of Business will require students to purchase or lease a specific Dell laptop running Windows NT beginning in the Fall 1998 semester. (Special thanks to thessaSource for following the story.)
“You can’t run a 9600 modem on a Plus.” “You’re wasting your money buying a 56k modem for that old Centris 610.” “Those old Macs don’t do handshaking.”
This page looks at the first MS-DOS coprocessor cards for the Macintosh, the Mac286 and its sibling, the Mac86. I have created this page in response to the lack of information about these cards that is publicly available.
By now you’ve probably heard of FireWire, the new high speed standard for moving data between devices. Also known as IEEE Standard 1394 or P1394, FireWire was invented by Apple as a faster alternative to SCSI in its many permutations.
The G3 All-in-One succeeded the Power Mac 5000 series for the education market. Key features include the G3 processor and a 15″ multiscan display (13.8″ viewable). The All-in-One was specifically designed for the education market, where less wires and parts to remove are a big plus.
1998: The price/performance ratio of the Power Mac G3, especially after recent price cuts, is simply amazing. And somehow Apple has packaged the technology into the G3 All-in-One for as little as $1,500. The rumored $2,000 PowerBook G3 also sounds like an incredible value.
Sometimes getting a SCSI chain working properly seems to be more hit and miss than science. We know the last device should be terminated, that the chain should not exceed a certain length, and that every device must have a unique ID. But even that isn’t enough to consistently build a busy SCSI chain and […]
1998: I thought that a good topic to kick off The Road Warrior would be the machine I’m typing this column on, the PowerBook 5300, which has been my workhorse computer for more than two years. Of course, I would love to have a new PowerBook G3 Series machine like the ones I’ve had an […]
It’s the hot new technology for 1998: modem bonding. Windows 95 supports it, many modem makers support it, and ISPs are beginning to support it.
1998: I recommend you read It’s the Latency, Stupid by Stuart Cheshire to get a good understanding of latency, then come back to this overview.
1998: According to the hype, v.90 (a.k.a. 56k) modems are the greatest thing since Zip drives. In some respects, they are. They’re ideal for surfing the World Wide Web, but perhaps less than ideal for other uses.
1998: We’ve looked at packets, compression, and latency. We’ve seen that each takes a toll on throughput. The following shows the effect of this at various modem speeds.
Code named Gossamer, this faster version of the Beige G3 builds on Apple’s success with the 233 and 266 MHz Late 1997 models. In addition to a 300 MHz PowerPC 750 (a.k.a. G3) CPU, the 300 MHz model has the option of a 1 MB backside cache – twice as big as in the earlier models. […]
1998: Should the Internet be a tax-free zone? President Clinton thinks it’s a good idea. Anyone shopping on the Internet is inclined to agree. Why would anyone oppose the Internet Tax Freedom Act?
Sad to report that Rodney Lain finally committed suicide on 6/14/02. He had gone off his anti-depressants.
March 1998 – This letter was written in response to news reports that the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, was considering phasing out Macs in favor of Windows computers. This letter should be appearing soon in Imprint, the university newspaper.
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.
