Panther a Lot Faster than Jaguar on G3s
From Charles W. Moore:
Hi Dan,
Regarding David Lee's query:
I can vouch for the fact that Panther [Mac OS X 10.3] is a
lot faster on a G3 Pismo than Jaguar [10.2] was, and in fact the
Panther release was the tipping point for me in switching to OS X
for production work. Jaguar had been just too sluggish to put up
with.
Incidentally, I find the late builds of Tiger just as lively on my
Pismos (observed using both 500 MHz G3 and 550 MHz G4 processors) as
Panther.
Charles
Charles,
Thanks for the hands-on feedback.
Dan
All Browsers Unstable on My 12" PowerBook
From David Sehnal:
Hello Dan,
I am a happy Mac user and a great fun of Low End Mac for years
already. Recently I bought a used PB 12'' 1,5 GHz Combo, made a
clean installation of Tiger from the original disk. Everything runs
very nicely, but all web browsers appear to be extremely
unstable, they tend to close down after few minutes of browsing,
chatting is virtually impossible. I tried out Safari, Firefox, Opera,
Camino, iCab, SeaMonkey, and Mozilla without having noticed any
difference. With Target Disk Mode I tried to boot from my very stable
PB 15'', but the problem did not disappear. Do you have any suggestion
on this matter? What are the possible reasons, and what could help?
Downgrade to Panther? Since I'm using Classic, too, I am not willing to
install Leopard.
BTW, earlier I noticed similar but not to this extent severe
unstability of Safari, but its higher versions did not suffer from it,
nor did the other browsers.
Thank you very much,
with best wishes
David Sehnal
Czech Republic
David,
I've been using Tiger for years and never run into
problems like this on eMacs, G3 and G4 Power Macs, or G3 iMacs. Have
you run all of the updates to Mac OS X 10.4? If not, that could be
part of the problem.
I've also heard that dialup connections can sometimes
be troublesome and result in weird behavior, but I have no experience
in that area.
The only other thing I can think of is that perhaps
the version of Tiger installed on your PowerBook doesn't fully support
it. This could happen if the install disc was made for a different
model.
Dan
Power Mac G5 Best Choice for Video Work?
From Hadi:
Hi Dan
I'm a fan of Low End Mac from Malaysia. I first stumbled upon the
site when I was doing a research on which particular Mac to buy as my
first Mac back in 2006. Yeah, I'm a recent switcher. Anyway, I settled
for the 12" PowerBook G4, and it has
been really much fun to use and carry around as well as still having
somewhat of a punch in power.
Anyway, I'm studying video editing, and I find that my PowerBook is
becoming quite restrictive for me. The screen is fine, since I plug in
my Samsung LCD monitor for most of the time. It is the processing power
that this sweet machine is lacking.
I'm planning to upgrade to a desktop, since I need expandability.
Looking at my life realistically, a Mac Pro is a distant dream, so I
went looking for a used Power
Mac G5. Bear in mind that the Mac community here in my country
isn't very large, and most G5 owners are still keeping their machines.
The only one I found was the 1.6 GHz Power Mac G5, the first
G5s back in 2003 for roughly US$900.
Now my question is, do you think the G5 is a good upgrade path for
me? How much difference would a 1.6 GHz G5 make compare to my
PowerBook's 1.5 GHz G4? Would the 64-bit support in Leopard make much
of a difference? On top of that, the G5 sports PCI slots instead of
PCI-Express, which would be quite an issue in the long run. What do you
think? Go or no go.
Anyway, I really admire your work in conserving old Macs. My
university just upgraded the lab to the new iMacs. Sadly, the old Power
Mac G4s and G3s are gathering dust in the store room. Many people tried
to buy those Macs, but they don't seem to allow it. I wonder why.
Personally I own an iMac DV SE 400 MHz at a
computer parts shop selling for US$90. I kind of toasted the analog
board by putting it flat on the table and had to fork out another US$90
for the board on
eBay. The Apple Store here was asking for 10x that amount.
Pff..
Hope this email sail safe through your spam filter. Haha. Hope to
hear from you soon. Take care.
Hadi
Hadi,
I'm happy to hear we helped you become a Mac user, and
I understand your frustration working with video. The sad truth is, a
1.6 GHz G5 isn't that much more powerful than what you already have.
Based on the
numbers posted by Primate Labs, you're only going to trim about 20%
from processing time. That's an awful lot of money to spend for so
little benefit.
This may sound a bit silly at first, but I've recommended it before: The 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini has well
over three times the processing power of your 1.5 GHz PowerBook. It
would make a much better machine for working with video, and it should
include Leopard and new copies of iMovie and iDVD. (According to
Primate Labs, it has about 3x the power of my dual 1 GHz Power Mac G4
as well, and it's also sluggish for video work.)
Max out memory to 3 GB and add a big, fast external
FireWire hard drive, and you'll have a very nice video production
machine that points to the Intel future rather than the PowerPC
past.
Dan
Hi Dan
Thanks for the prompt reply! Wow, yeah, a Mac mini does sound a bit
weird but the stats sure does show a lot. The thing that kept me
wondering is what effect would the lack of a dedicated video card have.
I'm not really sure if Final Cut Pro would run on a hardware with an
integrated graphics chip.
Hadi
Hadi,
Ah, you hadn't mentioned Final Cut Pro before. Yes,
that's going to be a problem, as Apple clearly states that "Final Cut
Studio is not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors." In
that case, look at a used or refurbished 17" or 20" Core 2-based iMac.
You have some nice
options between $800 and $1,100 these days.
Too bad Apple doesn't make something between the
$600-800 Mac mini and the $2,200 and up Mac Pro that doesn't include a built-in
display.
Dan
Tiger on Tray-loading iMacs
From Dave Garboczi:
Dear Dan Knight,
I enjoyed Bringing G3 iMacs and
Other G3 Macs into the Tiger Age.
I have two tray loaders that I put Tiger on by installing Tiger on a
FireWire/USB external disk mounted on a PowerBook G4. I used the retail
DVD and did all updates. Then I copied the new system into the G3
through the USB port with Disk Utility. Takes 1-2 hours to transfer but
works fine. During this, I have the G3 booted from the Panther retail
CD.
This way I get around the DVD and the FireWire "requirements". I
have 512 MB memory in each.
I put 128 GB disks in both and partitioned them at 7.5 GB and 100
GB.
I want /Users to be on the big partition, so I put a Unix link in
the small partition and point it to the big partition. Something like
this:
ln -s /Users /BigPartition/Users
The problem is that when I fix disk permissions on the small
partition, the user permissions on the big partition become wrong, and
Safari can't write its bookmark file, etc., etc.
I'd like to get the right procedure for making the link or of fixing
permissions. Maybe a guru can address this?
thanks,
best wishes,
Dave Garboczi
Dave,
I've never tried this, as I prefer to keep all the
users on the boot partition, but there are some good online resources
about this:
I hope they'll provide the info you need.
Dan
Can You Upgrade Firmware without a Bootable Classic
Hard Drive?
From Jody Outlaw:
Do you have any suggestion? Tiger on a default, and partitions
formatted for classic. When I boot from my OS 9 CD I need to do a
firmware install, but I don't have a bootable classic partition to boot
from.
Jody
Jody,
You can't do a firmware update by booting from a CD.
Firmware updates can only be run from writable partitions, such as a
hard drive.
If your drive's partitions are formatted for Classic,
all you have to do is install the Classic Mac OS to one of those
partitions and select it as your Startup Disk in System Preferences.
(Or hold down the Option key during startup. Your Mac will then ask
which drive you wish to boot from.)
This may not always work, however. Some of the newer
G4 Power Macs need files that only exist on the Software Restore discs
that came with them - a problem I've run into with my own Power Mac
G4.
Dan
Mac LC 575 Won't Boot
From Cindy:
Picked up a free Mac LC 575.
Owner said it works fine and has lots of games on it.
Got it home, hooked up and started it, happy face came on
. . . but then it goes off, and I get the flashing "?"
Tried all problem solvers I could find - but still no luck. Charged it
overnight - still nothing but the happy face then the "?"
Any ideas???
PS have no start up CD or disk with it. Have printer and have
printer disks, but not for that printer?
Cindy,
The flashing question mark means one thing: Your Mac
doesn't have a bootable system installed. That could mean there's no
internal hard drive, the hard drive has been wiped clean, or the system
has been damaged or removed.
Unless you have access to another Mac with a floppy
drive, you're in a tough spot. You can go to our Best Classic Mac OS
Prices, look on the LEM Swap List,
and check on
eBay for System 7.5 through 8.1 on CD. Any of these will work on
your LC 575.
If you have access to another Mac with a floppy drive
and the ability to burn DVDs, you can go to our Classic Mac OS Downloads and Updates page. Download
System 7.5.3 and the 7.5.5 update, all of which are free, and burn them
to a CD-R disc. Also make a Disk Tools floppy, which you'll use to boot
your LC 575 while the CD with the installers is in the CD-ROM
drive.
This should world, but sometimes older Macs can't read
burned CDs, in which case you're back to having to find a bootable
system CD.
Dan
Running a PowerBook from Compact Flash
Dan:
I liked your articles on using CF in older PowerBooks. I have a 4 GB
SanDisk Ultra II in my 1400c's
PC Card slot at the moment running OS 8.5. I also have 2 Addonics HD CF
adapters (dual) upon which one of them will be transplanted inside the
1400c with a CF Card. I ordered the Addonics because, as mentioned in
your article, using one increases the speed of the CF Card versus its
performance in the 16-bit PC Card Slot.
Now I am stepping it up a bit and buying a SanDisk 8 GB Extreme IV
CF Card. It has UDMA with Enhanced Super-Parallel Processing with up to
40 Mb/sec sequential read and write speed. I believe the Ultra II is
rated at 9 Mb/sec for sequential write and 10 Mb/sec for sequential
read. The Ultra II does not, however, have ESP or UDMA, so combining
its slower read/write speed with the lack of these performance
enhancing technologies, there should be some significant real world
performance differences both seen and felt with the new Extreme IV card
in the PowerBook.
Now, I have a mint WallStreet I am going to use,
and it has a 60 GB HD inside that I am going to keep in there, but I
want to us CF when I can via the PC Card slot. However, I am wondering,
shouldn't even just the Ultra II perform better in the WallStreet's PC
Card slot than the 1400c's because it is CardBus compliant at 32-bit?
From the limited info I have read on this, the WallStreet's PC Card
slot should allow the Ultra II or Extreme to operate at their full
capacities. Here is what I found on Amazon:
CardBus is a 32-bit bus-mastering architecture that
operates at PCI local-bus speeds of up to 33 MHz, yielding a peak
bandwidth of 132 MB/sec. Unlike 16-bit PC Cards, which operate at
slower ISA bus speeds of 8 MHz using an ISA-like asynchronous protocol,
CardBus provides a fast 32-bit multiplexed address/data path...
By utilizing internal bus speeds, CardBus can operate
at speeds six times faster than a 16-bit PC Card and five times faster
than a 100 Mbps PC Card. In addition, CardBus PC cards operate at 3.3
Volts, saving power and conserving your PC's battery life.
Also, what about an SSD hard drive in the WallStreet?
Thanks,
Ryan
Ryan,
You're right, CardBus has much higher bandwidth than
the older PCMCIA/PC Card specification, so you should see excellent
performance on the WallStreet. Also, there's no reason you shouldn't be
able to us an SSD flash drive in any notebook computer that takes a
2.5" IDE hard drive.
Dan
Titanium PowerBook Won't Boot Using PC Card
Device
From Jeffrey T Kafer:
Dan,
I was recently reading an article [Flash Memory Improves PowerBook], circa
Nov. 2002, about booting PowerBooks from CF in a PCMCIA adapter. The
article notes that this should work in numerous G3 and "all" G4
PowerBooks.
Well, I am here to report that I have been unable to boot from
anything in my PC Card adapter on my 867 MHz TiBook. I've
tried installing Mac OS X to a microdrive, installing OS 9.2 to
both a microdrive and a CF card. I can choose them as the startup disk
in the control panel, but I can only boot from my internal. I even
tried holding down the option key, but in every case the PCMCIA card
does not appear as an option to boot from.
It could be that I am not doing something quite right, but I am
beginning to suspect that later PowerBook G4s do not support booting
from CF or microdrives in the CardBus slot. Do you know of any
information to contrary? If it is possible, I would certainly
appreciate some guidance from one who has successfully navigated this
road before.
Regards,
Jeffrey
Jeffrey,
I know that my 400 MHz PowerBook G4 could
boot from CF in a PC Card adapter, but it's possible that Apple made
some hardware change that prevents this in later TiBooks. Have you
tried using a different brand of CF adapter or one that uses the newer,
faster CardBus protocol?
Dan
G4 Quicksilver and Big Hard Drives
From Meghan:
Hi!
My name is Meghan, and I have a very beloved Quicksilver G4 (733 MHz). I
recently did some upgrades and installed RAM (almost maxed out at 1.12
GB), moved the internal hard drives around, and successfully added a
new Seagate 320 GB hard drive. I can see the room above 137 GB! I used
a SIIG PCI
card purchased at Other World Computers to do so, and it loaded
without much problem.
I read Low End Mac every now and then and wanted to let you know
that it is possible to have big hard drives on a Quicksilver
733. My next test is to try to load up Leopard (to match my new MacBook
Pro). I know it's possible by tricking the installer; I want to try.
Leopard is very smooth. If it doesn't work, I may consider upgrading my
processor.
Thanks for all you do!
Meghan
Meghan,
Thanks for writing. The problem with big hard drives
in older Macs is that the built-in UltraATA hard drive bus can't
recognize drives larger than 128 GB. Workarounds include special
drivers, putting the big drive in an external FireWire enclosure, or
buying a third-party UltraATA card that supports big drives - which is
what you did.
We've had lots of good feedback on Leopard running on
older G4 Macs, and if you can't trick the installer into running on
your Quicksilver, there's always Target Disk Mode: connect your Power
Mac to the MacBook Pro with a FireWire cable, boot the Power Mac while
holding down the "T" key (think "Target"), and run the installer from
the MacBook Pro.
Dan
March 2, 1987: The First Expandable Macs, Mac II and SE
From Robert MacLeay:
Hi Dan!
I'm writing about Sunday's article
on the first expandable Macs.
A note about color on these Macs. I had an early SE, and it supported 3-bit color
(i.e., 8 total colors). Of course, with a 1-bit screen it could not
display them, but colors could be assigned to text and objects, and
when printed on an ImageWriter with a color ribbon, the colors were
there.
Also, I purchased a new Mac II
in 1988, just before it was replaced with the IIx. My II came with only 1 MB of
RAM. I could have bought a second MB for another $1,200 (some things
never change; Apple is still overcharging for RAM), but none was
available, and I refused to buy it without a delivery commitment. I
still remember the thrill of upgrading from a 512 x 384 monochrome
screen to a huge 640 x 480 color screen!
- Robert MacLeay
Robert,
Thanks for mentioning the 8-color/3-bit color support
in the Macintosh SE. I'd almost forgotten about it, but there was even
a SCSI video adapter available that let you display it on an external
color monitor.
My first Mac was a Plus, and in my job at ComputerLand
of Grand Rapids, I had an SE/30 on my desk. I also remember
the thrill of moving to a 640 x 480 color display when I bought my
first color Mac, a Centris 610
in 1993. It's also remarkable how much real work we managed to get done
with a 512 x 342 1-bit display.
Dan
Dan Knight has been publishing Low
End Mac since April 1997. Mailbag columns come from email responses to his Mac Musings, Mac Daniel, Online Tech Journal, and other columns on the site.
