Re: IS the world about to change ?

2010-10-20 Thread Eric Herbert

On Oct 20, 2010, at 6:53 PM, James Therrault wrote:
 
 
 I think that like many other business organizations, Apple may be getting too 
 big for its britches.
 
 Sooner or later, somehow, the company will be knocked down a peg or two.
 
 I agree, Apple has thrown a lot of users under the bus...
 
 JT

I saw the responses to this thread and decided to check out what all the fuss 
was about.  I have to say, I think Apple's finally lost it.  Trying to turn the 
operating system into an iPad?  Someone save us.  I like their OS as is, and 
being an Intel user, I do like Snow Leopard.  That said, I think Lion is going 
to blow if they keep up all this Fisher Price nonsense.  It seems that Apple 
forgets that some people actually use their computer for more than consumer 
tasks!

The loss of PPC support is tragic since there are so many PPC machines in use 
still (at my work there's only 1 Intel Mac in the whole building, the other 7 
are all G4 machines) and they're all still perfectly functional.  My main 
desktop is still a G5 DP and it's still as usable as anything else I have.

This sounds awful since I've been an Apple user since birth (Parents bought 
their first Apple 2 weeks before I was born!) but if Apple goes ahead with this 
kindergarten approach they show on Lion, I may consider running Windows.  I 
have 7 on my PeeCee desktop and it's not nearly as painful as having to deal 
with having an iPad OS running on my computer.

Just my own 2¢...

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Re: Quicksilver Graphics Trouble

2010-10-09 Thread Eric Herbert

On Oct 9, 2010, at 3:47 PM, themargate...@tiscali.co.uk wrote:

 I fear I know the answer to this question but just to check if anyone
 here had any other idea's.
 
 I've got a PowerMac G4 Quicksilver (2001) that used to work
 beautifully, but had to have it in storage for a few months while I
 moved house, went to set it up again today and install a fresh copy of
 Leopard on there and noticed a problem, the display is horribly
 bright, even when darkened everything on the screen looks like it's
 brighter then it should be. Now, I've checked the vga cable and
 monitor with a Dreamcast console (Lots of modern tech as you can tell)
 and they look great, so I fear the fault is my 256mb nVidia GeForce
 6200 graphics card (PC card that's been flashed) is on it's last legs,
 I've tried cleaning the contacts on the card, and using compressed air
 to clear the AGP slot and I still have this same problem. Is there
 anything else that may be going on here, or is it time for me to
 invest in a new card for this mac, which is a shame as this one seemed
 good for the machine!
 
 Thanks
 
 Sam Walker

I had this problem a few years ago with a Sawtooth and it just about drove me 
nuts.  Changing the video card won't help you out because it's a color-sync 
problem.

What fixed it for me was navigating to /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays and 
deleting any files that are currently in that folder.  Then restart the 
computer and calibrate your color through the Displays control panel.

Mind you, this is the Library folder on Macintosh HD, not the one in the main 
System folder or the one in your user folder.

I've had this happen almost exclusively with Tiger, maybe once with Leopard, 
and NEVER on Snow Leopard.  It looks like you have the brightness turned way up 
and everything is very washed out, just about nothing will fix it that I've 
tried except for what's suggested above.

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Re: G4 MDD and a 30 cinema display = what video card do I get?

2010-10-09 Thread Eric Herbert

On Oct 9, 2010, at 6:36 PM, Chance Reecher wrote:

 I thought the only time graphics cards could help each other out was
 in SLI and CrossFire configurations? By all means correct me if I'm
 wrong.
 Chance

Nope, you're 100% correct.  The previous poster is the one who's wrong.  A PCI 
card will do absolutely nothing to help out an already more powerful AGP card.  
All it would provide is extra screens if you needed it.

The original poster just needs any AGP graphics card with a Mac ROM that 
supports the Dual-Link DVI setup.  Some models of the Radeon 9600 support it, 
and the 9800 Pro series and later all support it.  Several of the nVidia cards 
also support the dual-Link DVI mode, but I believe that a 6800 Ultra is 
required on the Mac for the 30 display.

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Re: G4 MDD and a 30 cinema display = what video card do I get?

2010-10-09 Thread Eric Herbert

On Oct 9, 2010, at 6:58 PM, Ashgrove wrote:

 On Oct 9, 7:43 pm, Jeffrey Engle macgu...@gmail.com wrote:
 Eric, that's the NVIDIA 9800 pro (that's a Mac card right? I don't  
 want to do the PC card flash dance:-) Jeff
 
 Eric is actually talking about the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro card. The Mac
 version is kinda hard to get. Well-flashed PC versions should work as
 well. Either of them should work without any taping nonsense.
 
 Ah, Flashdance! :-)
 
 Felix

The original post referenced an nVidia 6800 Ultra as well as the Radeon 9800 
Pro.

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Re: Quicksilver CD-ROM

2010-10-05 Thread Eric Herbert


 OK, first off THANKS for the cleaners for my CD-ROM and DVD Player!
  
 Now, I ran the one for the CD-ROM unit and then stuck that CD-ROM back in and 
  
 it STILL asks me to choose between Ignore and Eject.
 I believe I did look at this CD-ROM on my old Smurf (BW G3) and it is 
 possible
 I saw it on the old 8600/200

When it's asking if you want to Initialize, Ignore, or Eject, it means that 
either there is no data on the disc (never was burned), or if there is data on 
the disc, it's in a format the computer flat out doesn't understand is actually 
data (a corrupted or incomplete burn).  If the drive is reading other discs 
normally, it's the disc, not the drive.

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Re: MDD 867 vs 1.0

2010-09-27 Thread Eric Herbert


 I have 2 machines, both MDD, 1 an 867ghzdp the other a 1ghzdp.  The 1ghz 
 machine has a dead mother board.  Can I swap the processors 1.0 the 867 
 machine?  Or should I look at swapping the motherboards?
 
 Jeff Bequette
 jbeque...@tconl.com

Technically yes, basically no.  While you can physically swap the processors, 
the motherboards run at different speeds.  The 867 has a 133 MHz bus and the 
1.0 has a 166 Mhz bus.  If I recall correctly, there's a bit of soldering on 
the processor card itself to change the multiplier to make it run at the right 
speed on the proper board.  If you drop your 1 Gig in the 867 board, it'll run 
at 800 MHz without modifications.  So while you can do it, the processor won't 
run at it's rated speed.

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Re: External Fax Modem for G5

2010-09-23 Thread Eric Herbert

 Hey folks,
 
 I have a late 2005 2.3GHz dual core G5.  I wanted to get a fax modem for it
 and was told that my only option was for an external USB modem.  However, I
 have read that my current OS (10.5.8) does not play well with external
 modems and that the built-in Fax software of OS X will not recognize
 external fax modems.  Is this true?
 
 What are my other fax options?
 
 Thanks in advance!

Apple makes an external USB modem.  It works with the built-in faxing software 
all the way up through the current 10.6.4 version of OSX.  I have one attached 
to my late 2009 iMac at work and use it daily, never given me a lick of 
problems in 9 months now!

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Re: Happy birthday OS X!

2010-09-13 Thread Eric Herbert

On Sep 13, 2010, at 5:47 PM, glen wrote:
 
 Wow, times flies as the saying goes. Still have a 10.0x disc and the 10.1 
 upgrade! So many changes in my computing and my life in the last 10 years.

Ain't that the truth.I got bored recently and loaded 10.0 on my 
Sawtooth just for giggled.  It amazes me how far OSX has come since then.  I've 
been a Mac user since System 6 and regardless what the die-hard PPC folks say, 
I personally think that Snow Leopard is the best/fastest/most stable OS that 
Apple has released to date.  If the OS has come this far in 10 years, imagine 
where we'll be 10 years from now!

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Re: ITunes 10 Burning

2010-09-06 Thread Eric Herbert

On Sep 6, 2010, at 1:23 PM, Norm Rowe wrote:

 I downloaded iTunes 10 and now I'm getting the following when I attempt to 
 burn a play list. (The drive reported an error and disk can not be burned). I 
 get a similar error with Toast. Is something wrong with my system? G4 with OS 
 10.5.8 with all the latest updates.
 Norm

Have you tried burning a different disc?  It could be that the disc you're 
trying to burn has a problem.  Can you burn something through Disk Utility or 
from a Burn Folder on your desktop?  It could be that the drive has packed up.

Off topic a little bit, how are you liking iTunes 10?  I made the mistake of 
letting that abomination install on my work iMac and have since boycotted it on 
the rest of my systems (PC included).  HIDEOUS dock icon aside, I can't stand 
the sterile gray appearance of the main window.  Besides making it harder to 
find everything, I can't help staring at it and wondering who was smoking what 
at Apple.  It looks like some sort of lazy Linux program from the 90s!  Is 
there a tax on color and nice icons or something?

OkI'm off my soapbox...

Back on topic, try a different disc and see if that works.  If not, try burning 
through Disk Utility or from a Burn Folder.  Does the drive read discs 
correctly?  If all else fails, it might be time to put a new optical drive in 
it.  Fortunately they're dirt cheap nowadays if that's what it comes down to.

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Re: Repairing permissions

2010-09-03 Thread Eric Herbert

On Sep 3, 2010, at 3:14 AM, ainsies wrote:

 G'day to all
 
 Have recently learned that repairing permissions on Tiger takes 48
 seconds, on the same machine Leopard takes 56 minutes, can anyone let
 me know of the reason for tthe huge difference in times ?
 
 I have an iMag G5, 20 inch, 2.0GB ram, 2.0Ghz cpu, 250 GB HDD, running
 both Tiger  Leopard
 
 Many Thanks - ainsies

They're different operating systems.  There are different files, different 
permissions, and a different quantity of files.   A more important question is 
why are you timing this and why is 8 seconds something to be losing sleep over? 
 Add a few user accounts, some complex programs, several hundred thousand user 
files, and some age to your installation and watch the time it takes to perform 
a scan rise significantly.

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Re: Repairing permissions

2010-09-03 Thread Eric Herbert

On Sep 3, 2010, at 8:46 AM, Ted Treen wrote:
 
 
 i think the difference between 48 SECONDS and 56 MINUTES is more than 8 
 seconds.
 
 I can't remember the timings on my G5 dual when I had one disk at 10.5.8, and 
 the other with 10.4.11 (to run Classic mode).  I've ceased needing the OS9 
 apps, so Tiger's been given an honourable retirement now.
 
 Ted
 
Good point..when I replied this morning, I hadn't had my cup of coffee 
yet...

56 minutes does seem excessive.  Was Leopard installed as an upgrade instead of 
a clean or archived install?  Does it take 56 minutes every time you check 
permissions or was it a 1-time-only thing?

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Re: latest mac mini for 10.4.11

2010-08-23 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 23, 2010, at 6:53 AM, MnDel wrote:

 
 I'd love jumping to 10.5 or 10.6 -  but I have enough docs in Pagemill
 and Appleworks that the jump looks like a bloomin big mountain to
 climb. Reading this guide to using OS9 apps on Intel macs puts me
 right off my feed.
 http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060509180914879
 So if it really is just unworkable am I stuck with only going to a G4
 mini?
 One person recommended getting instead a G5 tower and installing 2
 HD's, one with tiger.
 Perhaps that is the only good solution, but I had hoped to go with a
 Mini for their noise and wattage reduction.
 thanks for any comments, Del
 
 

There seems to be some info missing here.

Number 1:  There is an OSX native version of AppleWorks.  It's AppleWorks 6 and 
it works just fine with Snow Leopard even though it's a PPC application.  I've 
got it on this computer to open ancient files I've got and it works a treat 
with Snow Leopard.

Number 2:  PageMill files will open with Adobe GoLive.  It's an obsolete 
program now, but GoLive 9 was released with the Adobe CreativeSuite 3 and was 
intended to be the final version of GoLive, so it's got some tools and 
utilities in it to help you make the move to DreamWeaver when you decide to go 
that way.  I personally HATE DreamWeaver with a passion.it takes a simple 
WYSIWYG program and makes it horrible and complicated for the simplest tasks.  
That said, GoLive is the direct successor to PageMill.  When we migrated to OSX 
about 8 years ago, we were still using PageMill 3.0 for our company website.  
We bought GoLive and it opened the PageMill files natively.

If those are the only two things holding you back, get on the LEM Swaplist and 
see if anyone's got copies you can have of the above mentioned programs.  
Upgrading to Snow Leopard on an Intel Mini is a MASSIVE leap forward.  Not only 
is it a lot more stable and polished, but it's MUCH faster than Tiger on the 
Intels.  Join us in the 21st century and make your life a little easier!

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Re: latest mac mini for 10.4.11

2010-08-22 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 22, 2010, at 11:51 AM, John Carmonne wrote:
 
 
 I have 10.4 Universal but it will not install on a Mini.
 
 
 
That's because 10.4 was never released as a Universal.  It had a Retail disc, 
but it was PPC ONLY.  Intel versions shipped with the machines they were 
intended to run on and were machine-specific.

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Re: PCI graphics card for Yikes G$

2010-08-22 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 22, 2010, at 12:41 PM, Yikes owner wrote:

 Hello to the group!
 
 I currently am running a 400mhz Yikes G4 with a 1GB ram with the stock
 ATI video card.   I'm amazed that this computer is still viable for
 everyday casual use, 10 years after we first purchased it.  But I
 don't like how it handles you tube and other streaming videos, the
 video is very choppy while the sound is fine.  The computer is hooked
 up to a 6Mps DSL via ethernet. Will upgrading my video card to a
 Radeon 7000 or 9200 take care of this problem?  BTW, I'm not
 interested in 3D gaming just smooth streaming video.

Choppy video on slower computers is due to the modern requirements for YouTube. 
 They use a newer version of Flash which is more compressed with higher quality 
than older versions used to be.  The downside to this is that you need a faster 
computer to play it back.  I've found that for YouTube to play back fairly at 
all, you need at least an 800 MHz G4 AND a Core-Image capable graphics card.  
The newer iterations of Flash use the graphics card for decompression, and 
anything less than Core-Image compatible will cause the CPU to have to do all 
the word.  The result:  a glorified slideshow...

The bad news is that with the Yikes, you're VERY limited with what you can do.  
CPU upgrades fall short on speed and processing power and due to the lack of an 
AGP slot on the motherboard, you can never have Core-Image or even 
Quartz-Extreme graphics.  Unfortunately there's not much you can do except 
upgrade to a newer machine.

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Re: eSATA transfer speed

2010-08-22 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 22, 2010, at 1:16 PM, ah...clem wrote:
 
 
 the difference between HD speed and interface speed has been
 discussed on these lists many times.  as eric correctly points out,
 the SATA-II interface is capable of handling 3 GB/s.
 
 but, new HDs themselves currently have sustained read/write speeds
 of around 120 MB/s or above.  i have tested several using HDST that
 were in the 120 MB/s range (seagate and maxtor).  i have not
 purchased the latest or most expensive HDs, so i assume that there
 are probably others out there that may be a bit faster.  i have also
 tested PATA drives that were in the 100 MB/s range (seagate).  this
 number has increased steadily over the past 20 years from less than
 5 MB/s to the current level, and presumably will continue to increase.
 the best SSDs currently advertise read/write speeds of 275/250 MB/s.
 however, SSDs have a more limited number of read/write cycles
 before they fail compared to a traditional spinning platter HD, so i
 would NOT recommend getting an SSD to use as the boot drive.  it
 will wear out in a few years of normal use.  in any case, for the
 SATA-II interface to actually get to 3 GB/s would require two dozen
 or more of the latest HDs in a RAID, so in practice, it is
 unachievable.
 in reality, a new PATA drive is likely just as fast as a SATA-II
 drive,
 if it's the only HD on the bus.
Drive speeds are somewhat misleading.  Often when you get a result from a 
benchmark, it's the result of the host talking to the controller about a 
relatively small file towards the edge of the disk where the data density is 
greatest and the speed is the highest.  I deal with the latest and greatest 
disks every day building machines for people in high-performance situations, 
and so far the fastest disk I've tested is the newest generation of Seagate.  
The highest sustained data rate I saw in real-world situations was about 
95MB/s.  SSD's will likely be faster, but for mechanical drives, the speed is 
still increasing.  Just 3-4 years ago, 60MB/s was considered blistering fast 
for a sustained data rate.

IDE/PATA drives are doing good to punch past about 60MB/s due to the overhead 
in their interface.  SATA by it's nature has a lot less wasted time due to the 
fact that it's data is serial instead of parallel.  On a parallel bus, the 
controller uses up a lot of time making sure that all data is sent and received 
at the same time.  Serial doesn't careit just sends everything out in 
order.  This alone makes the SATA faster and less latent than the older 
PATA/IDE disks and controllers.  While the drive is internally identical to the 
SATAII drives, it's the interface that slows them down.  PATA disks are 
starting to be phased out by a lot of manufacturers, and I personally say GOOD 
RIDDANCE!  SATA makes so many improvements in so many ways.

 
 
 and NO, it is not a PCI thing.  if you bother to actually think
 about it, it should be obvious to anyone who's mastered sixth-grade
 arithmetic.  multiply the bus speed (MHz = million cycles/s) times
 the
 bus width (bits/cycle) and divide by 8 (bits/byte) and you will find
 that
 the PCI bus in an old Mac 9600 with a bus speed of 50 MHz is still
 way faster than the latest HDs.
 (50,000,000 cycles/s) x (32 bits/cycle) x (1 byte/8 bits) =
 200,000,000 bytes/s = 200 MB/s.  in practice it will be a bit less,
 but
 still faster than any one single HD.

You're leaving out an important note about the PCI bus.  The speed of the PCI 
bus is the TOTAL capacity of the bus itself.  Unlike PCI-Express, each slot 
does not have it's own data rate.  It shares the total data allowance of the 
PCI bus itself.  On the 32 bit PCI Macs the PCI bus speed is 33 Mhz with a 
width of 32 bits.  It gives a maximum capacity of the bus as 133MB/s (hence why 
ATA/133 caps out there).  On the 64 bit Macs, such as the G4's and G5's with 
PCI slots, the bus is still 33 Mhz, but it's 64 bits wide for a maximum 
throughput of 266MB/s.  However the 32 bit front half of the slot is still 
limited to only 133 MB/s.

Keep in mind that everything on a PCI bus has to share interrupts, wait states, 
and data throughput.  So although you can have an ATA/133 drive, your 
performance is doing good if you even achieve half of that.  It's because of 
all this sharing and latency that the PCIe architecture came about.  It's 
better in more ways that I care to count!  If you only have a single drive on a 
PCI bus, you will see about 60-65MB/s as your peak speed achievable on any 
single disk.  If you have 2 disks and have them copy data from one to the other 
on the same PCI bus, you can half that due to the limitations of the bus itself.

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Re: PCI graphics card for Yikes G$

2010-08-22 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 22, 2010, at 5:15 PM, Kris Tilford wrote:

 On Aug 22, 2010, at 12:55 PM, Eric Herbert wrote:
 
 due to the lack of an AGP slot on the motherboard, you can never have 
 Core-Image or even Quartz-Extreme graphics.
 
 You can enable Quartz Extreme using PCI Extreme 3.1, and some PCI nVidia 
 FX5200 and 6200 cards support Core Image over PCI on New World Macs such as 
 the BW/Yikes and later, but won't work for Old World Beige and earlier.
 
 This may provide some information, dead links are available via Internet 
 Archive Wayback Machine:
 http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/Mac_PCI_FX5200/mac_PCI_FX5200.html
 
 Both Quartz Extreme  Core Image work on hackintosh under Snow Leopard with 
 an FX5200 or FX6200 PCI.
 
 Anyone using a PCI card in a Mac should be aware that normally using a PCI 
 video card that doesn't support Quartz Extreme  Core Image will disable both 
 QE  CI for the AGP or PCIe graphics card also. If you're using a PCI card in 
 a Mac as a 2nd graphics card it's important to have one that will enable QE  
 CI, or you will loose acceleration for both cards.

Yes, you can enable QE/CI on the PCI bus, but the problem (and hence why Apple 
chose to not support either on the PCI bus) is that it hogs bandwidth from the 
rest of the PCI bus to do it causing the rest of the computer to slow down.  So 
yes, while you CAN do it, it's just not a good idea.  The only exception to 
that is if you're using a PCI card in an AGP system as a second card.  In that 
case it won't impact performance on the rest of the machine too badly since it 
isn't working full time to draw the main working window.  That said, there will 
still be a performance impact on the PCI bus by doing so.

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Re: eSATA transfer speed

2010-08-21 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 21, 2010, at 4:58 PM, John Carmonne wrote:

 Hi All
 
 I recently installed a SeriTek 1V4 in my PM G4 and PM G5 the transfer speed 
 is 88 sec's per GB  on a 114 GB CCC. I was under the impression it would a 
 lot faster than this I seem to remember a 3 GB per min claim. Is it possible 
 I'm doing something wrong? Both HDD's are 2TB 7200 RPM Hitahci's in the PM G5.
 
 
You can only go as fast as the drive can read or write, whichever drive is 
slower.  3Gb/s is the maximum transfer rate the interface is capable of.  
Translates out to roughly 300MB/s.  The fastest hard drives on the market are 
only capable of reading at around 80MB/s and writing at around 65MB/s sustained 
transfer.  When you're running CCC, you're also having the processor get 
involved reading, checking, and verifying permissions and metadata on every 
single file copied and parsed.  If you have a bunch of little files, it'll take 
MUCH longer than when you're running large single files like DVD ISO's or large 
movies.  That said, I've always found Hitachi drives to be much slower than 
other brands on the market, so you're likely in the ballpark of what your 
system is capable of doing with the hardware you have installed.  The 1V4 you 
have is also the 1.5Gb/s version, limited to a maximum controller throughput of 
150MB/s theoretical maximum.  If you've got both drives attached to the same 
card, you can insert a bunch of hardware interrupts, etc, and you can see how 
it'll slow down.

SATA isn't magic.  It's still bound by the abilities of the hardware connected 
to it.  All current SATA drives have the SATAII interface which is capable of 
3.0Gb/s (not to be confused with GB/s) yet we still have yet to see a drive 
capable of outperforming the original SATA interface.  Just be patient, it'll 
go as fast as it's capable of going!

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Re: Mysterious bump in transfer speed?

2010-08-04 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 4, 2010, at 5:37 PM, Mark Sokolovsky wrote:

 Hello, everybody I have an external 2.5 drive sitting inside my PM G4 
 plugged in through USB 2.0 (A PCI card) and normally, whenever I transfer 
 things between the Main system HDD and the external 320GB HDD, the transfer 
 speed is literally 500Kb/s. For some reason, yesterday, when I restarted, the 
 External HDD hot-wired itself, and sped up the file transfer speed to 690MB/s 
 for some strange reason. This only works between the main HDD and the 
 external drive. One day I was copying a 100MB Mac OS 8 ISO from the main HDD 
 to the External HDD and it took about 27 minutes. The next day, I restarted, 
 and I copied the ISO of Kubuntu 10.04 from the network to the system's main 
 HDD, and that took about 3 hours. I then copied the ISO from the HDD to the 
 External drive, and it literally took 1.2 seconds. I verified the image and 
 i'm not lying, something in there is hotwired. I was able to copy a DMG image 
 of Leopard (Which BTW is 7.8GB in size!) for the use of my Virtual Q emulator 
 system in about 8 seconds.
 
 So tell me wise users of Lemlist I didn't do anything to hotwire the 
 machine to do this, and I was able to copy a 7.8GB file in 8 seconds... how 
 is this possible through USB 2.0?

It isn't possible.  USB 2.0 has a maximum transfer speed of 480mbps which 
translates into roughly 50MB/s maximum theoretical speed.  In actual practice 
the speed cap is around 35-40MB/s.  In addition, the maximum bandwidth of the 
PCI bus is 133MB/s between ALL slots in the system, this means that your 
transfer speed from your main internal hard disk is part of this speed.  Even 
over a gigabit connection or between 2 SATA II hard drives, you can't copy a 
7.8 GB file in 8 seconds.  Methinks you made an alias instead of actually 
copying the file in question.  It isn't possible to copy a file that large in 
that short of a period of time through ANY interface in your computer.  In an 
Intel Mac with superfast RAID arrays or something, perhaps, but not a G4 of any 
shape, form, or fashion.

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Re: Combo updating made easy?

2010-08-04 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 4, 2010, at 8:01 PM, John Carmonne wrote:
 The drag is the Java updates, they have to be done one by one, I would like 
 to have an installer that would do all of them at once. The update needs to 
 be run 6 times via Software Update. I already have all this stuff on a DVD so 
 I want an installer that will take care of the whole enchilada:-)

You're telling me the Java updates suck...on a new install of Tiger, 
that's my nemesis  You have to run that sucker for what seems like hours to 
install Java update after Java update.  Why doesn't Apple just release a single 
installer that updates all the previous versions to the most current?  Seems a 
bit like Micro$oft updates in a lot of ways..

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Re: HDD wattage timit

2010-08-02 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 2, 2010, at 8:15 PM, Mark Sokolovsky wrote:

 it depends on the amount of wattage your Power Supply Unit in your system can 
 handle. Typical PSU's have a sticker affixed to one of the sides of the PSU 
 (Normally from a viewable angle) and should tell you what is the maximum 
 wattage it can handle. It can also tell you how much volts it can handle. 
 Having 5 2TB HDD's inside a PM G5 is generally normal for the PSU to handle 
 since the series of Power Macs you own required more power for the system. 5 
 Hard drives all being 3.5 inches in size should have a PSU with at least 550W 
 of power to ensure safety. Anything 200W-550W is unstable with that many 
 internal devices built in, because you will never be able to tell when the 
 PSU will not be able to handle that much power being fed to it anymore. For 
 safety reasons, both of my PM G4 Sawtooth systems have a 1200W PSU from best 
 buy. Their form factor was ATX, which fit the machine's socket that supplies 
 power to the main logic board, so I was able to use them. When buying 
 computer parts like that, watch out for their price tag. My 2 PSU's cost me 
 $350 together.

I don't know what the wattage of the G5 power supply is, but I'm sure it's more 
than adequate for what you're doing with it.  1200w power supply in a Sawtooth 
is like dropping a Lycoming aircraft engine in a Yugo.  Not only is it 
absolutely ridiculous, but it's pointless as well.  350w will drive a Sawtooth 
with a hefty upgraded dual CPU, every single expansion slot filled, and 4 hard 
disks without even breaking a sweat.  I have 4 hard drives and 4 PCI cards in 
mine, and it's the stock 220w power supply.

Modern hard disks pull about half the current as hard disks just 5 years ago.  
They generally have a ramped spin-up so they don't shock the system with a 
sudden power demand, and their seek power consumption is far below less than 
half again of their startup current.  If you don't have a bunch of expansion 
cards in the machine, then running 5 hard disks should be a piece of cake on 
the stock power supply.

I should also point out that the power socket on a Sawtooth is NOT a standard 
ATX socket.  While it is physically identical, it has a slightly different 
wiring layout.  See the attached link for how to mod a standard ATX power 
supply to work in a G4 safely and within spec of the original power supply:
http://www.outofspec.com/frankenmac/wire.shtml

On another subject..you still have like a 36 point From Mark's G4 
Sawtooth attached to every message you send.  Please either get rid of it, or 
make it a reasonable size!!!

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Re: G5 Question

2010-08-02 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 2, 2010, at 9:30 PM, DLC wrote:

 Greetings all,
 Today I was blessed with a nice used late-model G5/2.3GHz Dual-Core
 unit to use as a server in my office. This is one of the PCI-E models.
 Everymac.Com states this about the PCI-E slots:
 This model has two open full-length four-lane PCI Express slots,
 and one open full-length eight-lane PCI Express slot
 
 (I presume the two four-lane slots are the 100MHz slots, and the third
 is a 133MHz slot, yes?)
 
 My main question is: which slot of the three is the 8-lane slot? I
 suspect its the one closest to the CPU, is that correct?
 
 Thank you for the consideration. Best regards,
 Dana

PCI Express runs at the same clock speed, they're all 100 MHz.  The lanes mean 
the data bandwidth of the slot.  A 1x slot is good for 250MB/s, while a 4 lane 
slot is good for 4x that, and an 8x slot is good for 8x that amount.  The 
graphics card sits in a 16 lane slot.  You can tell which slot is which by 
their length.

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Re: any usb keyboard?

2010-08-01 Thread Eric Herbert

On Aug 1, 2010, at 10:20 AM, MarkyB wrote:

 I have two G4's from work. all I got was the towers. The mirror door
 one I know I need the apple keyboard to even open the cd tray, but the
 graphite one has a button on it for that. Can I use any USB keyboard
 to get this one going?

Yes you can.  On keyboards without an eject key, the F12 key is your eject key. 
 Just hold it down.  The MDD machines will generally show an eject icon next to 
the clock as well.

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Re: Swapping Out a G5 case

2010-07-30 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 30, 2010, at 9:14 AM, Illirik Smirnov wrote:

 I fit an IDE controller in a PMac G5. By attaching an external PC power 
 supply, I managed to get an additional 40GB of space :P.
 Mine only has a 9800 XT pro, and I desperately want an upgrade so that I can 
 play UT2004 online without lag. On some maps on the server I 
 frequent, it can stay at 18-20fps at 640 x 480 at LOWEST settings! If I go to 
 single player, I can play comfy at my 18 display's native res.
 Sent from a computer running either the SPARC, Itanium, or PowerPC 
 architecture.

It sounds like you have more of a CPU bottleneck or a network bottleneck rather 
than the graphics card.  A 9800XT is WAY above the system requirements of 
UT2004.  The game will actually play well on a Pentium 3 with a GeForce 2 
graphics card, so it's not a resource intensive game at all.  I should also 
point out that 23fps is the threshold of human vision.  Below 23fps you can 
notice frames change, above 23fps, you can't tell the difference. Some people 
can tell up to about 30 fps, but beyond that, it's all bragging rights and BS.  
Try reinstalling the game or applying the latest patches to it and see if that 
helps.  If not, do a network bandwidth analysis on your internet connection and 
see how latent your ping is.

Any G5 should be able to play UT2004 at full settings comfortably.  I use mine 
at LAN parties all the time and mine only has the 9600 in it, and I play 
1280x1024 with everything cranked..not even a stutter.

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Re: Power Mac G5 – to buy or not to buy?

2010-07-25 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 25, 2010, at 8:44 AM, Austin Leeds wrote:
 Yeah, I know PPC is dead-in-the-water—all of my Macs (except for a 68k
 PowerBook 180) are PPC. Nonetheless, I'm not too worried about it—if
 it can word process, print, connect to our wireless hotspot, watch TV,
 and possibly turn our VHS and HI8 tapes into DVDs, it's all good.
 
 Actually, the PC isn't going to be a hack. It'll be running Ubuntu—
 next best OS after Mac and iOS—with MythTV. Trouble is, it doesn't
 exactly go with the decor, and it doesn't have much room for upgrades.
 Also, I am a little nervous about unleashing Linux upon a very PC and
 Mac household.
 
 Thanks for the info about the coolant—I'll have to let someone know
 about that so they can turn it back on (it's been shutdown for the
 summer).
 
I have to echo what everyone else has already said about avoiding the 
water-cooled models.  Water + electricity = bad.  I don't care what the 
situation is, a computer used in the home or as a workstation should never have 
to be cooled with fluid!

Back on topic though, I run an early 2005 model 2x2.0 Ghz G5 (BOL model) as my 
HTPC/File Server.  It sits out in my living room tucked away behind my 
entertainment center where it quietly hums away doing it's job flawlessly.  
I've got it hooked up to a 720P HDTV via a DVI-HDMI cable and it runs 
everything I throw at it with ease, including 720P HD video files.  It does 
choke on 1080P files, but plays 1080i files smooth as silk.  Because it's 
air-cooled, I don't even give it a second thought, it just sits out there and 
does it's job, getting vacuumed out every 4 months or so.  In the last 2 years 
that it's been installed, it's only been down once, and that was due to a tree 
taking out my utility mast!

In all seriousness though, you need to remember that the end of the line for 
PPC machines is Leopard, or if you're feeling adventurous: Linux (which I 
personally dislike).  For me it's not a problem since all the machine does is 
host files, display movies, play music, and surf the web.  For everything I 
want it to do, the G5 does a fantastic job, and it does it totally reliably.  
What's interesting is that even though it lacks the processing power of modern 
computers, it still feels faster when using it.  The machine seems to be more 
responsive than my new MBP and even my high-spec desktop PC.  I guess that's 
why I've always had sort of a soft spot for the G5's, they're just so peppy!

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Re: Power Mac G5 – to buy or not to buy?

2010-07-25 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 25, 2010, at 11:39 AM, Austin Leeds wrote:

 OK, so avoid the quad? I'll agree with the peppiness factor—it really
 does seem faster. How about a dual 2.5 or 2.3?
 
 I'm hooking this thing up to a 480i (?) CRT via SVID, so HDTV is no
 factor. The big demand here is compatibilty with older hardware, which
 I believe the G5 would have more than a rebuilt PC. I'm considering a
 Mac mini vs. the G5, so I'm trying to stack the pros and cons. Thus
 far, the big advantage the G5 has is its speed (it may be running
 video game emulators) and PCI-e graphics cards.
 
 Thanks for all your advice thus far. I'm going to talk to my family,
 hopefully today, to discuss exactly how our home network should be
 laid out, including which computers we should keep/throw/upgrade/
 purchase. I'll probably have some more questions after that.

With what you say you're doing with it, you're probably better off with an 
Intel Mac Mini in all honesty.  They've got a LOT more processing power, the 
newer ones have better graphics power (due to not only a better graphics design 
than the 5 year old G5 design but also a faster processor), and of course the 
ability to hide it just about anywhere.  If you decide to ever upgrade to an HD 
set or subscribe to a video streaming service, the Intel will love you back as 
much as you love it.  The G5 with it's dated hardware will likely cough and 
sputter, especially in the coming years when Apple drops support for them 
entirely.  If you're intending to slap generic PC hardware into the G5 you have 
a very rude awakening coming.  Apple hardware requires Apple hardware.  Simply 
inserting a generic PCIe graphics card into it will cause a no-boot or no-video 
situation, you have to use a Mac ROMed card for it to work.  You CAN flash PC 
cards to work in a Mac, but usually you're limited to particular chipsets and 
often times the ROMs for a Mac are twice the size as the ROMs for a PC.

For what you've said you want to do so far, I'd say skip the G5 and get an 
Intel Mini.  You'll have MAYBE $100 difference in cost and you'll wind up with 
a much faster and more capable machine with about 1/20 the footprint.

YMMV, but that's my own opinion.  Others may disagree, but after building, 
servicing, and upgrading machines as a trade for the last 12 years, those are 
my own observations.

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Re: Power Mac G5 – to buy or not to buy?

2010-07-25 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 25, 2010, at 12:16 PM, ah...clem wrote:
 
 
 eric, - did you not read the original post?
 
 
 are you saying a used intel mini is going to radically outperform the
 late 2008 iMacs that Austin mentioned?  don't think so.  if you've got
 an app that utilizes altivec effectively, the latest intelmac still
 cannot beat a quad G5.  why else would a 4 year old quad G5 still
 command $1000+ on the used market?

Yes, I did read the original post, I also read what the OP wants to do with 
said machine.  He wanted opinions and thoughts, so I shared mine.  I have a 
3.06 Ghz Late 2009 iMac in my office at work, and yes..it is faster than 
the quad G5's.  A friend of mine has one, and while they feel about the same 
navigating through the OS and doing an average workload, the Intel beats out 
the G5 hands down on anything CPU intensive or graphics intensive.

I'm not saying the Intel Mini will radically outperform anything, but load Snow 
Leopard on an Intel and watch it soar compared to Tiger or Leopard.  The catch 
I've found with it is that an upgrade usually results in disaster.

The latest Intel Macs use the Core i5 and Core i7 processors.  They WILL beat 
out a quad G5.  The quads still command $1000+ on the used market for several 
reasons.  For one, they were the fastest PPC machines made, and there are still 
situations where PPC is required.  We keep PPC machines around at work for that 
very reason, some of our programs don't run well on Intel machines due to their 
age and reliance on older operating systems.  They're also popular with people 
who want a faster computer than what they have, but don't want to shell out for 
a new one.  I'm personally one of these kinds of people which is why I have a 
2005 model G5.  Sure it's old, but it's plenty fast to do what I want with it 
and to the untrained eye, it still looks like the mac Pro, just without the 2nd 
optical slot.  They're stylish, they're powerful, and they hold their resale 
value.

That said, getting back to the OT and in regards to the OP, for the things he 
wants to do, it seems like a better use of time, space, and financial resources 
to get a computer the size of a CD wallet that will do everything he wants to 
do and more.

Just my own $.02

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Re: G5 2.7 upgrade to Quad Core?

2010-07-25 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 25, 2010, at 1:53 PM, Mark Sokolovsky wrote:

 There is a very slim chance this will work, as it all depends on whether the 
 processor is compatible, the CPU bus speed, and if the machine will accept 
 it. I tried putting a dual 500Mhz in my other 400Mhz sawtooth, and no luck 
 came around.
 
 I'm not saying it's impossible, i'm saying I have had too many instances 
 where something like this failed. The warning is, to not waste money on 
 something that won't work. try before you buy.

The Sawtooth machines require a specific motherboard revision to support the 
Dual processors.  The early boards are not multi-processor capable.

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Re: G5 2.7 upgrade to Quad Core?

2010-07-25 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 25, 2010, at 3:26 PM, John Carmonne wrote:

 
 I thought the PM G5 dual 2.7 was a two processor machine?
 
I was braindead when I replied earlier (been a long weekend).  The Dual 2.7 is 
a 2 processor machine.  Each processor being single core.  You can't use a 
dual-core processor in a previous model machine.  They use a different 
motherboard chipset and are thus incompatible with the older motherboards.  For 
some reason I thought you had a late 2005 G5, my mistake!  So your long and 
short answers are both No, you can't upgrade an older dual processor to use 
the newer dual-core chips.

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Re: PowerMac G5 Performance

2010-07-25 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 25, 2010, at 5:57 PM, JoeTaxpayer wrote:

 This may be an ignorant question, but I'll trust the Mac fans here to
 be kind.
 I have MDD G4. 1.25 dual proc. 2GB RAM.
 I'm thinking of going to a G5, and curious if I got a dual 2.5GHz, and
 sufficient RAM, if in general, I'd expect 2X the performance.
 The only time I feel it shows its age is when encoding video.
 Depending on the exact encode, it can take 2hrs to 4hrs real time to
 encode the one hour of video.
 If the encode looks to use one core only, I take it it will do the
 same on the G5, and single/dual/quad won't change result much, just
 free up cores for other functions, right?
 I'm running Leopard, and trust these machines are happy to use it as
 well. I followed the liquid thread, anything else to watch out for?

I don't think it's an ignorant question at all.  In fact, I think you'd likely 
see about 2x performance improvement.   The G5 was a HUGE upgrade from the G4, 
not only in speeds, but also with the addition of 64 bit processing instead of 
32 bit.  For software that's optimized for 64 bit, this means that roughly 
twice the data can be processed in a given software command than in a 32 bit 
system.  The G5 also brought around a different bus communication setup instead 
of forcing the 2 CPUs to communicate through a relatively slow FSB.

Check out the link below for a relatively old comparison between the G5 and the 
1.25 Dual G4:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G5/G5_vsG4MDD_review2.html

When you're reading the above link, keep in mind that Panther is the operating 
system they're using, and these would be some of the first G5s to market 
(should kind of date the article).  When Tiger rolled around, G5 support was 
greatly improved with a significant amount of G5 code being added to the OS for 
optimizations as well as bringing 64 bit capability to the operating system.  
Leopard took this even further and I feel like the performance is best with 
this OS (just my personal observation).

I have a dual 2.0 Ghz early 2005 model G5 (BOL for that release) and I'll say 
that it's quite good for video exporting.  Exporting a 30 minute video through 
QuickTime Pro to H.264 via the Save for Web function takes approximately 7-10 
minutes depending on the quality of the source video.  Granted, on my MacBook 
Pro, it takes less than half that for the same function, but on my old dual 1 
Ghz MDD it would take upwards of 20 minutes to do the same function.  On some 
source movies with very high quality video, it would take a 1:1 time or 
sometimes actually longer than the source to do the compression!  I LOVE my 
G4's, but I'll be the one of the first to say that the G5 and later definitely 
are improvements in some regards.

Hopefully that helps!

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Re: Disc Burning

2010-07-18 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 18, 2010, at 11:17 AM, Bruce Johnson wrote:

 
 On Jul 17, 2010, at 9:07 PM, Tina K. wrote:
 
 IIRC, non-oem ODDs don't function with the iLife apps. At least I think it 
 used to be that way, haven't heard it mentioned in a long time.
 I think there used to be a hack called 'Fair Burn' or something that would 
 fool the iLife apps into thinking your ODD had Apple firmware but I can't 
 seem to find it on the web.
 
 For a very long time that was the case, but since 10.5 any drive will do. The 
 software you're remembering is PatchBurn http://www.patchburn.de/

NEC, LG, and Lite-ON drives don't require PatchBurn with 10.3 or later.  Some 
brands do such as Sony and Pioneer (non Apple ROMed versions), but the 
previously stated 3 don't require it.

 
 -- 
 Bruce Johnson
 University of Arizona
 College of Pharmacy
 Information Technology Group
 
 Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs
 
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Re: Latest iTunes update no burn?

2010-07-18 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 18, 2010, at 5:07 PM, John Carmonne wrote:

 Hi all
 
 I have a PM G4 MDD and a PM G5 Dual 2.7. Ever since the last iTunes 
 update neither machine will burn a CD in iTunes booted in Tiger, both work OK 
 in Leopard. Anyone else with this problem?
 I've reinstalled many ways and still no cigar, funny though my TiBook G4 has 
 no problem in Tiger with the new update??
 
Do you have non-Apple drives in those machines?  Do you need to apply 
PatchBurn?  Personally I'd lean towards a bug in the newest iTunes.  I made the 
mistake of installing it on my 13 MBP last night thinking it would be a quick 
update.  WRONG!  An hour and a half later, it finally finished Updating 
Library and proceeded to crash.  I run 9.1 on the PeeCee with Windows 7 and 
ever since the update, it takes about 500 years to import a single track with 
lots and lots of hard drive thrashing.  I have no idea what Apple was thinking 
when they unleashed these new versions of iTunes on the unsuspecting public, 
but I'm hoping they fix it soon!  I should also point out that once the library 
has been updated by iTunes 9, they've got you hooked.  Unless you backed up 
your library (just the library files) prior to the update, you're now an iTunes 
9 customer.  iTunes does back up your library file for you prior to the 
installation, but that does you no good if you decided to try iTunes 9 then 
wanted to revert back to 8.x

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Re: Latest iTunes update no burn?

2010-07-18 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 18, 2010, at 7:10 PM, Kris Tilford wrote:

 
 I think this has been answered already. For non-Apple OEM drives you need 
 Patchburn for Tiger. It's nothing to do with the iTunes update, you need 
 Patchburn to add support for all Apple applications including Disk Utility, 
 iMovie, etc.
 
 In Leopard Apple ditched the requirement of OEM-Apple drives, which is why 
 there is no Leopard version of Patchburn.
 
 http://www.patchburn.de/
 

That's not the problem here.  His drives have been working fine WITHOUT 
Patchburn (many drives work flawlessly on Tiger without the use of PatchBurn) 
until the last iTunes update.  It's something to do with the iTunes update 
itself, perhaps it's being a lot more stingy with what devices it will work 
with than it was before?  Still, it's worth a shot to see if PatchBurn fixes 
the problem.  It may, and it may not, it depends on how much they've messed up 
iTunes with this last update.

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Re: plain text please

2010-07-17 Thread Eric Herbert
I hate to be that guy, but might I ask why we're being asked to cling to a 
1970's server technology in the 2010s?  HTML and Rich Text emails have pretty 
well been the standard since at least the late 90s.  Even freebie email 
programs such as Yahoo and Hotmail have been HTML based for years.  Is there 
some sort of reason that HTML and Rich Text are suddenly taboo?  Seems to me 
that Mail.app defaults to Rich Text, which I have to say, has been working just 
fine for me (and everyone else in my family, company, friend circles, et al...) 
for years.


On Jul 17, 2010, at 4:58 PM, Kris Tilford wrote:

 On Jul 17, 2010, at 4:13 PM, Jeffrey Engle wrote:
 
 Q: what is plain text?
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_text
 
 and how do I make sure that I'm always using it?
 
 Mail.appPreferencesComposingComposing:Message Format:Plain Text
 
 or
 
 use MenuFormatMake Plain Text to change a single email format from the 
 preference. This is also a keyboard command Shift-Cmd-T which is a toggle 
 between plain text  rich text for the open email document.
 
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Re: plain text please

2010-07-17 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 17, 2010, at 5:22 PM, Kevin Barth wrote:

 
 
 JUST DON'T SEND HTML!  Well, there are reasons for it but rarely, if at all, 
 on a mailing list that's for users of older machines.
 
 
 Just because we're all users of older machines doesn't mean we use those 
 machines exclusively to read emails.   And even if some of us do, so what?  
 My G3 is very capable of reproducing email with markup.  Isn't one of the 
 purposes of this list to show how even older Apple machines are capable of 
 modern tasks?  

Add to that:  Since this is the G3-5 List, aren't any machines supported by 
this list capable of running OSX and/or Linux of some flavor?  Add to the just 
given point, 10.2.8 (supported on all versions of the G3) and later all contain 
mail.app which natively reads rich text and html messages anyway?  Steadfastly 
demanding people use plain-text only for email is like demanding that Apple 
still provide system updates for OS9 in BinHex format.

It's 2010, soon to be 2011.  Neither one is going to happen.
 
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Re: Disc Burning

2010-07-17 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 17, 2010, at 10:41 PM, JOHN CARMONNE wrote:

 
 
 
 
 
 I just bought a  LITE-ON 22X DVD Writer Black IDE Model iHAP422-98 
 LightScribe Support form Newegg for $24.00.  for my PM G5 to replace a 
 Pioneer CD?DVD burner.
 
 
 
 
 John Carmonne
 Yorba Linda USA
 Sent from PM G5 2.7

I have the SATA version of the same burner in my desktop PC and it's been 
flawless.  Never a coaster, and it's been through a few spindles of DVD's and 
CD's.  I have the 16x IDE version in my Sawtooth G4 (only burns at 8x-12x due 
to the bus speed) and it too has been flawless, never a coaster from it either. 
 They're not the quietest drives in town, but they're darned fast and very 
reliable.
 
 
 
 
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Re: Radeon 9800 - 128 vs. 256 MB VRAM

2010-07-16 Thread Eric Herbert
I've used both and they perform for the most part identically, both in Windows 
and on the Mac.  The 9800 core wasn't really powerful enough yet to make use of 
the extra 128M of VRAM.  Save your money and get the 128M version.  Truth be 
told, on any machine you're going to be using a 9800 card in, the machine 
itself will be more CPU bound than graphics bound anyway.  Other than the last 
generation of PCIe G5 towers, I'm not aware of any G series machines that can 
even use uncompressed textures without choking anyway, I certainly know my dual 
2.0 Ghz G5 can't.  VRAM determines how big of textures the card can process 
and display.  Translation:  Eye candy.  The VRAM has nothing to do with how 
fast the card is, except in newer generation cards that natively handle 
uncompressed textures and other higher end features.  The 9800 isn't one of 
them.  :-)


On Jul 16, 2010, at 5:08 PM, bro...@verizon.net wrote:

 I have been looking at the Radeon 9800 Pro video cards on Ebay and see some 
 that are 128MB models and some that are 256MB models.  Sellers claim both 
 with boot OS9.2.2, which I would like to be able to do, just in case.  All 
 claim excellent 3D acceleration (but not in OS 9), core graphics,  and what 
 not.  So, how useful is the extra 128MB VRAM on those more expensive cards?  
 Is it worth another $50-70?
 
 Broos
 
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Re: Big screen TV for PM G5

2010-07-12 Thread Eric Herbert
Get a TV that has a DVI or HDMI connection on it, then get the appropriate 
cable to connect to it.  My G5 tower is connected to a 52 Toshiba HDTV via a 
DVI-HDMI cable in my living room and it works like a champ.

PS:  HDMI and DVI are standard connections on most modern TV sets (Well the 
decent ones anyway).  Skip S-Video, the quality is horrible.

On Jul 12, 2010, at 4:07 PM, John Carmonne wrote:

 Hi All
 I want to get a large screen TV that I can connect my PM G5 Dual 2.7 to and 
 be able to watch DVD images. What do I need to be able to do this? ,I don't 
 want to watch iTunes stuff just full on DVD images like I do now by mounting 
 them with Toast and playing on my VIZIO display. Any solutions would be 
 appreciated.
 
 
 John Carmonne
 Yorba Linda USA
 Sent from my MBP
 
 
 
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Re: Best DVD burners?

2010-07-12 Thread Eric Herbert
I'm a very FIRM believer in Lite-ON drives as far as reliability, performance, 
and longevity are concerned.  Every single one of my Mac towers has been fitted 
with a Lite-ON of varying ages and I've never had a failure of the drive, 
failure to read a disc, or failure to burn a disc.  Using various media of 
varying degrees of quality I have *NEVER* (knock on wood) burned a coaster on 
any machine fitted with a Lite-ON drive.  I've got beige G3's onwards using 
them and all machines boot natively from the drives with no sweat whatsoever.  
Interestingly I don't even have to use PatchBurn on any of the older 
OSXes...burning natively from Apple apps just works.

Considering the hundreds of PeeCee towers I've built using them, the dozens of 
Macs I've upgraded with them, and the number of people I keep track of who use 
them, consider this a very strong recommendation for Lite-ON drives.


On Jul 12, 2010, at 6:06 PM, John Carmonne wrote:

 Hi All
 I want to hear from folks who do mostly DVD burning with external drives I've 
 always had the best luck with Pioneer drives like the 116 and 118 L. But I've 
 made my share of coasters and am open to some new drives, so I'd like to get 
 some brand and model opinions? Also the best media for DLs.
 
 John Carmonne
 Yorba Linda USA
 Sent from my MBP
 
 
 
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Re: computer / printer connection via Wifi base station

2010-07-11 Thread Eric Herbert
I'm assuming you're talking about an AirPort Extreme base station?

If you are, what you're experiencing seems to be normal behavior for those.  In 
order to make the USB print server work again requires powering down the base 
station, waiting, then powering it back up with everything connected.  We have 
one at work and I've just about thrown it out the window on multiple occasions. 
 It is SUPPOSED to be a hot plug and play setup, but I've found it never works 
properly.  I've reflashed the unit before and it works as advertised for about 
a month.then the USB issues creep back in again.

Perhaps more importantly:  Why are you unplugging the USB port for lightning 
protection?  Unplug the device the USB plug is plugged into instead.  If you're 
worried about lightning in the first place, the router itself should be turned 
off as well.  Put everything on a single switch so it all goes down and comes 
up together.

I personally gave up on Apple's pathetic attempt at a print server here in this 
house.  I just got a D-Link wireless router/gateway and an IOGear USB print 
server which connects to the wireless router via wired ethernet.  Works about 
10 zillion times better than the AirPort disaster I had before it (an epic 
story on it's own merit), and faster networking too!


On Jul 11, 2010, at 8:00 PM, John Callahan wrote:

 I have my printer connected to my base station and if I break that 
 connection, unplug USB from base station USB port(done because of fear of 
 power surges due to lighting strikes), it takes all kinds of convolutions to 
 get my computer to print on it even though it is recognized by the computer.
 
 
 John Callahan
 jcalla...@stny.rr.com
 If there are no dogs in Heaven, when I die I want to go where they went.
 --Will Rogers
 extreme positive = (ybya2)
 
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Re: G4 video card compatibility

2010-07-11 Thread Eric Herbert
The card will work in a Sawtooth, but it will NOT run an ADC monitor.  The 
Gigabit and later models all have an extra power port just ahead of the AGP 
slot that supplies the 28V to the ADC port.  You CAN however run an ADC-DVI 
adapter and have a DVI monitor connected.


On Jul 11, 2010, at 9:36 PM, Dennis Myhand wrote:

 I believe it will still work X 4.
 
 Deiniol ap Deiniol wrote:
 Sorry just got the magnifying glass out and this ADC card is from a
 466 MHz Digital Audio, not a Sawtooth!
 On Jul 12, 3:05 am, Deiniol ap Deiniol
 autolycus.mercat...@googlemail.com wrote:
 I've just got a 400MHz Sawtooth which has the VGA/DVI video card
 fitted.  It works fine, but I'd like to swap the video card for the
 one out of my (dead!) 450 MHz Sawtooth, as I want the Sawtooth to talk
 to an ADC monitor.
 (I may be buying one, but need to test it as working so I need to take
 a computer along. Can't take my Quicksilver as it will sulk if I turn
 it off for too long and will embarass me!)
 
 Is this possible, or does the later motherboard have the AGP slot
 wired differently to provide the 28volts for the ADC?
 
 Running OS 9.21 and OSX 10.4.11 on the Sawtooth.
 Thanks group!
 
 Dan.
 
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Re: Cube vs TiBook reliablity

2010-07-10 Thread Eric Herbert
The Cubes seem like one of those products that was a good idea at the time, but 
just poorly implemented.  I've owned 2 450 MHz models and both have similar 
problems to what you describe.  Both of mine were sent in for a switch repair 
procedure when they were new, so they don't have issues with the switch 
anymore, but both of them had issues just like you describe.  Intermittent FW 
port failure, intermittent (although rare) endless gray screen at boot, 
intermittent lockups, and perhaps most annoyingly..intermittent USB port 
failure!  OY!

I found a partial solution to the problem was to install a fan in the bracket 
in the bottom of the machine (It actually has a place for a slim 80mm fan in 
the bottom of the case) and allow that to cool the thing down.  I found a 
correlation between the instability and how hot the room was and how hard the 
machine was working.  The hotter it was in the room and the harder the machine 
worked, the more frequently it crashed or lost a port.  With a fan installed, 
the frequency of weird issues went way, way down.  Compared to a laptop, I 
can only come up with the issue that on a laptop, all the peripherals are 
soldered to the main logic board.  In the Cube, they're installed in sockets.  
eg:  Video card, power regulator, HDD Drive, etc.  With all the heat that the 
Cube makes internally, and with only a central port for the heat to leave, it's 
easy to get the machine heat-soaked.  With repeated heating and cooling cycles, 
it can cause some connectors to not make such a great connection anymore.  Poor 
connections = poor reliability.

If you're feeling adventurous, you might slap a fan in one of the machines and 
see if it's reliability improves!  It did with mine.


On Jul 10, 2010, at 11:21 AM, John Carmonne wrote:

 
 On Jul 10, 2010, at 8:57 AM, Dan wrote:
 
 At 8:45 AM -0700 7/10/2010, John Carmonne wrote:
 I have a question about the reliability of some Macs. I have two G4 Cube 
 500MHz and two Tibook 500MHz machines. The Cubes seem to be somewhat 
 problem prone compared to the TiBooks. Both have the same 10.4.11 the Cubes 
 have 1.5 GB Ram  and the TiBooks have 1 GB Ram. Otherwise AFAICT  all   are 
 the same, yet the TiBooks run along with out any hitch but the Cubes at 
 least once a week have an issue' Anyone know maybe why?
 
 an issue?
 
 - Dan.
 
 Just kinda unstable compared to the TiBooks. Many times they'll have trouble 
 with the FW ports, a real battle to get them recognized, 
 also some times don't want to boot, in which case I reseat RAM and video 
 cards and up it'll come up. I like my Cubes I just wonder if others 
 have these problems too. Get the endless grey screen some times and then what 
 a pain to get a FW boot to fix it.
 
 I'm used to the normal switch problem I can fix that in two minuets. Funny 
 thing though, I have one with a Sonnet Encore 1.2 GHz 
 card and it's the most stable of the four I have.
 
 
 John Carmonne
 Yorba Linda USA
 Sent from my MBP
 
 
 
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Re: Cube vs TiBook reliablity

2010-07-10 Thread Eric Herbert

On Jul 10, 2010, at 12:05 PM, Dan wrote:

 
 
 Firewire can be twitchy.  You using known good cables etc?  And when you have 
 problems, what is being thrown into the system log?
 

It can be?  I can't say I've ever had a problem with Firewire other than 
intermittent flakiness on the Cube.  I use ultra cheap cables with various 
devices all the time, and I've yet to ever have a problem.  The only machine 
I've got with issues is my Sawtooth.  It had an unfortunate accident with an 
external hard drive that had a worn out plug.  A bit hard to determine the 
correct way to plug the plug in, and welloops!  I can use one port at a 
time, but not both simultaneously.  The internal port doesn't seem to be 
affected, only the ports on the back.  The external hard disk went to the big 
trash heap in the sky though.

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Re: IBM HDD clicking

2010-07-09 Thread Eric Herbert
One of 3 reasons causes the click of death:

1:  There is damage to the magnetic media on the platters themselves
2:  The read head on one of the arms has died, causing the drive to not 
recognize one of the platters
3:  The controller card screwed to the bottom of the drive has failed (#1 
reason for the drive going south)

In regards to the claim that no one brand drive is more prone to fail to 
another, I call BUNK on that claim!  As a serviceman for computers around town, 
I will say that I will never own, nor recommend a Maxtor drive to anyone!  
Vintage, not so vintage, brand new...it doesn't seem to matter, these 
things just like to die without warning, even if not used all that much.  At 
the trailing end of Western Digital's run of ball-bearing drives, the same 
seemed to apply to them, however since their move to the newer fluid bearings, 
they seem to be about average again...except for their green label 
drives anyway...

A lot of people swear by Hitachi drives and I've never understood it.  The 
Deathstar IBM drives were made by Hitachi during their entire run.  The 
stigma hurt IBM so badly that they sold off the whole division to Hitachi over 
it.  Hitachi drives do seem to be somewhat reliable nowadays, but their 
performance is terrible compared to other drives, especially in the same price 
range.  I can't tell you the number of MacBook users that have had me replace 
the stock Hitachi HDD due to it being so terribly slow!

Anyways.enough rambling!


On Jul 8, 2010, at 11:29 PM, John Carmonne wrote:

 
 On Jul 8, 2010, at 3:59 PM, John Carmonne wrote:
 
 
 On Jul 8, 2010, at 10:20 AM, Bruce Johnson wrote:
 
 
 Google's studies of drive failure are the best data we have, 
 http://tinyurl.com/2bfcgfp, the rest of the stuff I can find is 
 exemplified by things like this http://tinyurl.com/36x6vqo which is quite 
 possibly the stupidest experimental design for a statistical survey I've 
 ever seen. 
 
 I didn't know Iomega made hard drives...
 
 I'm with you on this Bruce, so when I got home I opened up my two Iomega 320 
 shirt drives and to my surprise if found two of them loaded with 
 questionable Seagate  Momentus HDDs so if one takes a dump like the article 
 says may happen more so than the Iomega drive who do I call?Ghost Busters?.
 
 
 I opened the Deskstar and I can see the arm moving across the platers 
 endlessly, That's the clicking noise. Why is it doing this.
 
 John Carmonne
 Yorba Linda USA
 Sent from my MBP
 
 
 
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Re: I need help with my video card! =(

2010-07-08 Thread Eric Herbert
Lines popping up in an animation followed by the computer freezing is 
indicative of a failing video card.  What you're seeing is called artifacting 
and it's caused by either a failing GPU chip, or failing memory on the card.  
It can also be caused by using the wrong ROM to flash the card, causing the 
memory to want to run at the 2.2ns speed instead of the 2.8ns speed that's more 
common.  Some cards in the PeeCee world also ran at 3.2ns and are incompatible 
with any Mac ROM.  Look up the RAM chips that are on your card to verify the 
speed memory you have and ensure the ROM you used is compatible with said chips.

If all else fails and you've done everything right, the card is likely on it's 
way out.  The 9800 Pro's built by PowerColor and Sapphire as OEM cards are 
well known to die without warning and prematurely whether they're modified or 
not.  It's an unfortunate fact of life!  I've got a drawer of several that have 
died, whether they're flashed for the Mac or running bone stock in a PC.  When 
the 9800 Pro was king, I ran one in my PeeCee desktop, and I remember filing 
warranty claims with ATI 4 times when I ran it.  On the 5th failure of my own 
card, I junked ATI and never used them again!

Regarding your transparent bar:  The sawtooth that won't display the 
transparent bar IS running Leopard right?  Tiger and before didn't have the 
transparent bar.  If you're running Leo and still have a solid bar, type the 
following into the terminal, hit the return key, then log out and log back in 
again:

sudo defaults delete /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer
'EnvironmentVariables'

Hopefully that helps.


On Jul 8, 2010, at 7:09 PM, Mark Sokolovsky wrote:

 Hello,  I am Mark, the one who has recently successfully flashed an ATI 
 Radeon 9800 Pro with 128MB of RAM to a Mac, but there's some problems I've 
 been having. Whenever I enter the time machine, the graphics are animated and 
 everything moves as in i was in space, but then again a bunch of lines pop-up 
 and the entire computer freezes. I click cancel to exit time machine, and 
 most of the lines disappear, but some stay with the windows while other lines 
 stay with the mouse. Also, whenever I plug this into my other Sawtooth Power 
 Mac, the menu bar is transparent, which is something I really want. The other 
 monitor is 1280x1024 and it's a 17 and that one has a clear menu bar, but my 
 sawtooth i'm using right now doesn't have a clear menu bar. The one i am 
 using right now has the flashed card and the monitor is a 23 Widescreen dell 
 monitor at 1366x768. Is there a reason behind why my video card doesn't want 
 to display the transparent bar:
 
 There are 2 possibilities i have in mind:
 
 1) The sawtooth I originally used to flash the video card was the only 
 machine that showed the transparent bar (I only have 2 AGP machines, the rest 
 are PCI and PCIe)
 2) maybe 1366x768 is not a supported resolution for the transparent bar.
 
 Any help is needed and very much appreciated! Thank you very much.
 
 -- 
  Sent from my Power mac G4 Sawtooth.
 
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Re: IBM HDD clicking

2010-07-07 Thread Eric Herbert
Just remember on any G4 made prior to the Quicksilver 2002, you're limited to a 
120GB or smaller drive on the internal IDE bus.

On Jul 7, 2010, at 10:32 PM, John Carmonne wrote:

 
 On Jul 7, 2010, at 8:20 PM, Kris Tilford wrote:
 
 On Jul 7, 2010, at 10:10 PM, Jeffrey Engle wrote:
 
 yup, trash heap signals... had one do that to me... warranty?
 
 IBM got out of the HD business in 2002.
 A lot of people had one do that to them.
 I think 8+ years is pretty good for an IBM HD?
 It's probably good there are no more IBM HDs.
 
 
 Well sadly I removed the jumpers and relegated the drive to the recycle box 
 along with two Maxtors. A trip to Fry's will be in order tomorrow:-)
 
 John Carmonne
 Yorba Linda USA
 Sent from my MBP
 
 
 
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Re: Leopard is sloooooow to boot...

2010-07-06 Thread Eric Herbert
Judging by your specs, the system should boot pretty quickly.  I run Leopard on 
a Dual 450 Sawtooth system and booting off the internal IDE bus takes less than 
a minute to desktop, including a pause for login.

A couple of thoughts:

1:  Does your processor upgrade require a cache enabler KEXT file?  If it isn't 
present, the machine may not be using the higher level caches, causing it to 
run painfully slowly.
2:  I seem to recall with Leopard that you have to remove or hack a particular 
KEXT file pertaining to the nVidia drivers that originally shipped with Leopard 
to avoid a long boot time when using a flashed 6200 card.  I can't for the life 
of me recall which one it is, but when I had my 6200 card in my Quicksilver, I 
remember it took FOREVER to load the progress bar when the computer started up.

Edit:

See attached website for additional help:  If you don't feel like reflashing, 
there's a comment at the bottom which tells which KEXT file to remove and where 
to remove it from.

http://everythingapple.blogspot.com/2007/11/os-x-105-leopard-g4-nvidia-boot-delay.html


On Jul 6, 2010, at 7:25 PM, Michael B. in Cincinnati wrote:

 Hi: I found a deal on a copy of Leopard, and updated my G4 DA. It's
 been extensively upgraded:
 
 - 1.5 GHz OWC processor
 - 1.5 GB of RAM
 - DVD-RAM
 - Acard AEC6290M SATA card with a 160 GB HD
 - Reflashed Geforce 6200 256MB video card
 - USB PCI card
 - maudio Delta 2496 sound card
 - Sweet Multiport front panel
 
 but the boot time has gone up to 3 min. 15 secs! It's about 20 sec
 just to the grey apple, another 60 sec of spinning gear, and then two
 mins plus of blank blue screen before the desktop shows up. A friend
 of mine here claims that this isn't normal. What boot times are folks
 seeing with 10.5.8? Is there some setup that I can change? I installed
 the drivers for the SATA and sound cards, but that made no difference.
 Does anyone have a clue what it's doing?
 
 Thanks in advance.
 
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Re: Video Card Upgrade Info Please

2010-07-05 Thread Eric Herbert
From what I understand, it goes like this:

Quartz Extreme was Apple's first layer of hardware video acceleration.  It 
requires a minimum of a GeForce 2 or a Radeon graphics card on an AGP bus to 
function.  Quartz Extreme was designed to speed up finder graphics and 2D 
animation by offloading graphics rendering to the graphics card instead of 
using the CPU for rendering as had been done in the past.  Without a Quartz 
Extreme video card, Tiger and later operating systems are fairly sluggish since 
the CPU is required to render all graphics and animations that your screen 
displays.  

Core Image takes Quartz Extreme to the next level.  It required a GeForce 5200 
or a Radeon 9600 graphics card minimum to function.  Core Image accelerates all 
graphics rendering on the system as well as allowing 3rd party applications to 
use the graphics card for proprietary functions.  2 examples I can think of 
right off the top of my head are Flash and Photoshop.  Flash applets, such as 
YouTube will benefit SIGNIFICANTLY from Core Image.  I can use my Quicksilver 
G4 as an example.  With it's stock GeForce 4 graphics card on Leopard, only 
Quartz Extreme is supported.  Watching a YouTube movie is similar to watching a 
slide show.  The whole computer grinds to a halt.  I upgraded it a while back 
to run a flashed GeForce 6200 graphics card which supports Core Image.  The 
XBench graphics benchmark score actually went DOWN, but Flash apps like YouTube 
run smooth as glass.  The Finder overall feels much more responsive as well.

If you can manage it, upgrading to a Core Image capable card makes a major 
difference in how your Mac behaves.

For further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Extreme

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Image


On Jul 5, 2010, at 7:27 PM, Mark Sokolovsky wrote:

 Core image is the very center of the graphics on Mac OS X. If the video card 
 doesn't support it, well then, I guess you can kiss fast graphics goodbye. As 
 for quartz extreme, i don't know too much about it, but I know for a fact 
 that any video card that doesn't support it will make the graphics even on 
 Mac OS X 10.4.11 or earlier really slow.
 
 -- 
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Re: G5 1.8 PPC memory RAM Question???

2010-07-05 Thread Eric Herbert
You stated earlier that the memory you have from your IBM is ECC.  The PowerMac 
doesn't support ECC memory.  You need plain-jane, generic unbuffered memory.  
The same stuff that 99% of all PeeCee's run on.


On Jul 5, 2010, at 6:17 PM, John Carmonne wrote:

 
 On Jul 5, 2010, at 4:10 PM, Miguel Garcia Gell wrote:
 
 I just try...minutes ago, (unplug the power and push the power for kill the 
 static) pull it out the 4 modules of 256 and try with the 2x1 GB. 
 The machine make 2 or 3  beeps with hard spinning fans... but that's it
 
 On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 3:43 PM, Mark Sokolovsky coolmar...@gmail.com wrote:
 Of course! Try it out, since the 2 machines are similar. 
 
 -- 
  Sent from my Power mac G4 Sawtooth.
 
 Which slot numbers did you put them in? 
 
 John Carmonne
 Yorba Linda USA
 Sent from my MBP
 
 
 
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