Regular Low End Mac readers may recall my
journey of two weeks ago, which resulted in me acquiring some
great Mac items. In particular, you may recall the G3 upgraded
Performa 6400 I was so excited
about.
My plan was to make the Performa 6400 into a media center.
Accordingly, I added a 120 GB internal hard drive and partitioned
the hard drive into four volumes:
- 8.2 GB HFS+ main boot partition
- 89.8 GB HFS+ storage partition
- 9.7 GB HFS storage partition (not really sure why)
- 3.9 GB HFS+ backup boot partition
6400 Peculiarities
So far, the 6400 seems to be a great Mac on its own merits.
There have been a few items to nitpick about on this otherwise very
useful Mac. I figure by relaying the following information, I can
garner some helpful tips, snarky insults, and maybe even provide a
little guidance to other Low End Mac users wanting to keep their
Macs useful.
First, the odd subwoofer issue. It seems I cannot disable the
internal subwoofer, even while I'm using the 6400's audio out port.
Head scratcher. Is there an option I missed in the Monitors and
Sound control panel? I work around the constant added bass by
running a line out through the head phone jack. I suppose this will
work for now.
Also, I could not get any of my Comm Slot II ethernet cards to
work. The computer would not boot while a CS card was installed. I
waited 5-10 minutes, but the black screen never changed. I hadn't
tested the CS II ethernet cards until now, so I'm not sure if the
fault lies with the 6400 or the cards. I usually like to test my
parts when I first acquire them, but I never had the right type of
Performa/Power Mac to test these cards.
The lone major difficulty arose from trying to share files with
a G3 iMac running OS X 10.2.8. Let me quickly dole out the
specs in order to help anyone reading get a handle on the
situation.
Performa 6400
- Mac OS 8.1
- 400 MHz G3
- 136 MB RAM
- 10/100 ethernet card
- 120 GB internal ATA drive (3 HFS+ and 1 HFS partitions)
- Mac OS X 10.2.8 and 9.2.2 on separate partitions
- 500 MHz G3
- 256 MB RAM
- built in 10/100 ethernet
- 30 GB internal hard drive (2 HFS+ partitions)
- 30 GB external FireWire hard drive (2 HFS+ partitions)
File Sharing Failuire
Not knowing the easiest way to proceed, I enabled AppleTalk and
file sharing on both the iMac and 6400. Some of the files I needed
were on the iMac's internal hard drive and some were on the
external FireWire hard drive connected to the iMac. The two Macs
were connected by a simple ethernet crossover cable.
Here is my problem: File sharing over AppleTalk was not up to
the task of transferring the 7 GB of files from the iMac to
the 6400. I think much of the fault falls on OS X and its
inability to network with the classic Mac OS via AppleTalk. The
iMac could see the 6400 when I connected to it. However, the iMac
could only see 2 GB of free space instead of the almost 90
GB.
Unfortunately, if I tried to transfer the files to the 6400, an
error would appear, noting not enough space was available to
transfer the files.
My next thought was to connect to the iMac from the 6400.
Although, in hindsight I could have tried to transfer smaller
chunks of files at a time. Maybe disconnecting and reconnecting
after each smaller transfer would have alleviated the 2 GB
issue.
The good news: The 6400 could see the iMac. The bad news: When
an attempt was made to log into the iMac, an error message would
appear describing an inexplicable connection error. I decided the
easiest way to proceed was to boot into Mac OS 9 and not worry
about any possible AppleTalk issues from within OS X.
I truly believe this attempt would have succeeded if an odd
quirk had not derailed my carefully planned course of action. My
rationale was simple: It didn't matter if there were only 2 GB
of free space on the iMac's shared volumes. The needed files would
still be displayed, and the transfer was from the iMac to the
6400.
Making sure there was enough room in the 6400 was easy, since
the drive was freshly formatted. There were maybe a handful of
files on the storage partition. Unfortunately, after more than a
handful of minutes waiting for file sharing to start on the iMac, I
realized a new plan was needed.
Timbuktu Strikes Out
File sharing was obviously broken on the iMac's OS 9.2.2
partition, but I'm not sure exactly why the file sharing protocol
was broken. Trashing preferences did not help, and other network
activities, such as connecting to the Internet and using Timbuktu,
worked fine.
After running Timbuktu through its paces, I had an epiphany, or
so I thought - Timbuktu has a file transfer feature!
Timbuktu could actually make the connection, and the transfer
procedure seemed to start without too much trouble. Well,
seemed is certainly the correct term to use. Dropped
Connectionville here we come, followed by a quick trip over to
Frozen Mac City.
Please note that I tried this procedure under both Mac OS 9 and
X. Either way, bad mojo. I can't remember if I connected from the
6400 to the iMac as well as from the iMac to the 6400. I know I did
the former, but after multiple failures, I sort of gave up on this
scenario. I attempted a single large transfer of the files as well
as multiple smaller groupings, ranging from 200 MB to 1 GB in
size.
I went so far as to retrace the preceding steps with a Mac OS
9.0.4 install on the 6400's backup boot partition. I used the iMac
Software Restore CD and copied the disk image over to the 6400.
(Sure, some of the features or settings were quirky. The sound not
working was a big problem. But the networking still made it
through.)
Mac OS 9 on the 6400 allowed the iMac to see 4 GB of
available space, but the iMac continued to be unable to file share
to the 6400. The iMac's OS 9 file sharing was still broken,
and the disconnect problem in OS X persisted.
Luckily, the light bulb, while previously flickering and dim,
finally brightened to the point of illumination. The solution came
hither: I would enable the built in FTP service found in the
OS X Sharing system preferences pane. Now the iMac could
circumvent any weird file sharing protocol shenanigans.
Internet Explorer?
Not having an FTP client, browser based or otherwise, installed
upon the 6400's main partition, I was lucky I had made an OS 9
boot partition. The iMac's default system restore included Internet
Explorer 5. (I know, I lambasted Internet Explorer in previous
articles, but I simply wanted to get the darned file transfer over
with.)
Internet Explorer 5 includes a decent FTP client. Besides, I
intended to wipe this partition after the transfer was completed
anyway. Some may wonder what I so desperately needed from the iMac
to begin my Media Center project or why I did not have the iMac
already configured for these file sharing duties.
I keep my music and podcasts on the iMac because it remains the
sole OS X Mac I can routinely access. In order to keep my iPod
updated, I could use my Ubuntu NEC box, but I like the ease of use
enabled by the iPod/iTunes integration.
Mom's iMac
The G3 iMac was my faithful companion for almost five years, but
it's now my mother's trusted computer. Because I have spent so many
years working with Macs, not to mention I truly enjoy fiddling with
computers, I am tasked with keeping the iMac running smoothly.
Since I am the administrator, I keep things tidy, but I customize
the settings for my mother's use, not my own. I keep the external
FireWire hard drive attached to the iMac to back up my mother's
files and store my audio files when I need to update the iPod.
When all my music was in the MP3 or AAC format, I was happy to
use my iPod as my primary audio device. Yet I have become
increasingly fond of the Ogg Vorbis and FLAC codecs, which the iPod
does not support. True, Mac OS 8.1 doesn't support FLAC either, but
there is the very basic, yet impressive, JustOgg music player.
I fully plan to explore JustOgg and its cousin MpegDec in future
articles. Also, on account of Internet Explorer 5 proving so handy,
I decided to install a copy on the Performa 6400's main boot
partition. I still love iCab, but the version 3.0 beta will not run
on Mac OS 8.1.
There are still things I absolutely detest about Internet
Explorer, but there are a few great features that deserve a closer
look. Don't worry, I'll be here to tell you all about my Internet
Explorer experiences in a future installment.
Until next time, continue to put those "obsolete" Macs to good
use.
- Timbuktu,
remote access and control application, my old copy crashed and
burned for this specific use, but generally Timbuktu is secure,
reliable, and relatively easy to configure.
- MpegDec,
basic MP3 player, 68k Mac support.
- OggDrop,
basic Ogg Vorbis player, 68k Mac support.
- Ogg Vorbis, a
digital audio compression codec (lossy).
- FLAC, an open
source lossless codec.
