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.
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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.
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?
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.
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 […]
“No Newton is good news.” “Apple kills the Newton.” “Life after Newton.” These are just a few of the headlines since Apple’s Feb. 27 announcement to discontinue the innovative but unprofitable handheld computers. Although it would have been nice if Apple could have sold the Newton division and its technology to someone else, the fact […]
1998: By now, everyone should realize that the 56k modem is just a flash in the pan. So were the 33.6k modem, the 28.8k modem, and the rare 19.2k modem. And let’s not forget the 14.4k modem, the 9600 modem, the 2400 modem, the 1200 modem, the 300 modem, and the lowly 110bps modem.
1998 – If you’ve seen the snail, you love the snail. Apple’s incredible new ad pulls no punches, bragging to the world that a Power Mac G3 is up to twice as fast as a Pentium II PC.
1998 – It’s the talk of the Internet: Apple has apparently inked an exclusive deal with CompUSA as the only national (U.S.) Macintosh reseller.
It had to happen sooner or later: First, Apple dropped support for the Mac 128K and 512K. After all, with single-sided floppies, too little RAM, and no SCSI port, they could no longer be considered serious productivity machines. The last version of the Mac OS to support these computers was 4.1, introduced in 1986.
“Should You Buy Disposable PCs?” is the cover story in the February 1998 issue of Byte. It is certainly an intriguing question.
During Macworld San Francisco came the rumors that Claris would discontinue Emailer. With freeware Eudora Lite and the emailer in Internet Explorer 4.0, perhaps people would be unwilling to pay for Emailer.
A source in Kitsap, Washington, writes, “I read the articles about the Grand Rapids (MI) Schools trying to go to PC only, and I couldn’t help but relate to the problems in Grand Rapids. The South Kitsap (WA) School District, where I live and where my wife teaches, is going through the same horror. I […]
The SuperMac J710 was the last new model from Umax, and only about 50 were ever produced. Combining the form factor of the compact C500 with the power of a PowerPC 604e or G3, the J710 would have been great for power users on a budget. About 90% shipped with a 200 MHz 604e, a few […]
Low End Mac began on April 7, 1997. The first editorials were published on July 15, 1997. All editorials are by Dan Knight unless otherwise noted.
Can you say beleaguered? That became the word most associated with Apple in 1997.
This information is about what are commonly referred to as the x200 series of Performas and Power Macs. These machines, with the exception of the Performa 6360, were all PowerPC 603 or 603e machines with severe hardware problems.
It is out of sheer desire to help others overcome the year-long disaster that I went through, that I would like someone to be able to document this somewhere. Please take note, this affects all Centris 610 and Quadra 610 machines, but not the 660av.
Rather than have six separate pages for the remaining case studies, all of which are quite brief, I’m combining them all on a single page.
My workplace computer is a Power Mac 7600 with 48 MB of RAM. For some reason, it doesn’t want to run RAM Doubler, so I have virtual memory set to 96 MB to provide enough memory for Photoshop, FrameMaker, Netscape Communicator, GraphicConverter, and the other memory hungry applications I run regularly.
In early December 1997, MacWeek announced a new version of RAM Charger. Version 8 is fully compatible with Mac OS 8. As I would discover, it is also a big improvement over RAM Charger 3.
1997 – RAM Charger is a sophisticated memory manager for the Macintosh. It works on any Mac (compare this with RAM Doubler, which requires a 68030 or better and at least 8 MB of RAM). The current version works transparently, allowing you to simply install it and forget it on any Mac running System 7 […]
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 […]
Apple has done some remarkable things with its third generation Power Mac, the Beige G3s. (The first generation Power Macs used NuBus, and the second switched to PCI.) The motherboard is smaller than in earlier Power Macs, leaving room for one more drive in the same type of desktop case used for the 7200-7600.
The Beige G3 is a third-generation Power Mac. It has a new motherboard with a faster system bus than earlier models, a third-generation PowerPC CPU, uses a completely different type of memory, has a different way of upgrading the CPU, and includes a personality card slot. The Power Mac G3 comes in desktop and minitower […]
1997: Three months ago I wrote an editorial, “Why Macs Need Parallel Ports.” It struck a nerve. In response to “To Print or Not To Print” by JM Pierce, I present an updated version.
Apple introduced the first G3-based Macintosh on November 10, 1997. The PowerBook G3, also called the 3500 or Kanga, took the proven Power Mac 3400 design and put it on overdrive.
This PowerBook G3 was the first Mac designed around the PowerPC 750 (a.k.a. G3) processor, beating the first G3 Power Macs by less than a week. It was the world’s most powerful notebook computer when it was released in late 1997. Don’t confuse the original PowerBook G3 (based on the PowerBook 3400c) with the […]