Odysseus Anticipation
From Leif Halvard Silli in response to Odysseus Cometh: The Real
Successor to Eudora:
Hi Charles,
I have bought 2 preview licenses for Odysseus.
Hope we shall not be disappointed. Fingers crossed. Your writing about
of course did much.
That Eudora-Thunderbird thingy unfortunately did all kind of strange
things. And even the normal Thunderbird deserves to be called rough -
although not to such extremes as Eudora. Let's hope this is the end to
email experimenting ... ;-)
To become a complete success with me, Odysseus must allow me to send
basic HTML formatted mail, such as at least the Windows version allowed
users to do. Because I need to send formatted mail ever so seldomly.
Only something basic, as a way to highlight small bits in the text now
and then (mostly my wife who needs it).
Leif Halvard Silli
Hi Leif,
In case you hadn't heard, Infinity Data Systems posted
the first public beta of Odysseus on Monday. You can download it
and check it out, although IDS strongly emphasizes that it is at this
stage for testing only and should not be used for anything mission
critical.
For my first impressions of Odysseus 0.8.2, see
Odysseus 0.8.2 Eudora-Style Email Client - First Look on
Applelinks.
Charles
Mac OS 9 Still Very Nice
From Carl Nygren:
Hi Charles,
I
loved this article [Low End Mac's Compleat
Guide to Mac OS 9, 2008 Edition]!
Great work. Mac OS 9 is still a very nice operating system, and it
sure is a shame that there are no good browsers. Although on my
Graphite 'Paris'
iBook, I use iCab. It's a little slow, but at least better than
IE.
Keep up the good work!
Carl
Hi Carl,
Thanks for the kind words. Glad you liked the
column.
Charles
PowerBook 1400 Upgrade Questions
From Elliot:
Hello, Charles
I recently
picked up a PowerBook 1400cs/133
at a small flea market for $15. The machine looks like it's in superb
condition physically, except for the CD-ROM drive, where the front
cover was snapped off, but the drive itself still works. At first, it
felt slow, until I opened "About this Mac" in Mac OS 8.0 to find 16 MB
of RAM . . . and . . . WTF?!? 576 MB of virtual
RAM? After I corrected that, the machine feels fast, but I feel it
could do better.
I'm looking for RAM for the machine but can't find anywhere that
carries it. Do you know of any sites that sell PowerBook 1400 RAM?
Second, I bought it with the intention of being a cheap replacement
for my broken Toshiba notebook, which has a cracked LCD. I wanted
something portable, so I jumped at the chance when I saw this machine.
However, the battery doesn't hold a charge. I tried using the battery
conditioner program, but it made the machine shut off . . .
normal, I thought . . . and then it started making this
chainsaw/lawnmower like noise, which scared me and made me unplug it.
Do you know where I can purchase a battery for it?
Last question, almost every time I go through a menu or scroll in
the Finder, I hear the machine make a clicking noise. It sounds like
it's coming from the battery, but the noise is present without the
battery. I doubt it's the hard drive, since it working perfectly. Do
you have any idea what that may be? Thanks for the help.
-Elliot
Hi Elliot,
Congrats on the PowerBook 1400 purchase. Nice little
machine with a great keyboard and tough as nails.
Real RAM is much faster than virtual memory,
especially with a slow hard drive and bottleneck system bus, both of
which obtain in this case.
Wegener Media sells both
RAM and batteries for the PowerBook 1400, and so does The
PowerBook Guy.
My best guess: the clicking sound when scrolling is
probably the hard drive and probably doesn't indicate anything serious
amiss.
Charles
Thanks for the recommendation as far as RAM and batteries! As far as
the keyboard and build quality, it feels the most durable of any laptop
I've used, and the keyboard is better than any desktop keyboard
I've used, including them $100 "high-performance" keyboards seen on
gaming rigs in computer stores.
However, a thought hit me today, how do I get files I type up on it
off the computer? I can put files onto it by making binhexes out of
them on my Bondi blue
iMac, and then burn them to CD on my Windows computer, but I have
no way of getting files from the PowerBook to another machine. I have
no external SCSI drives. I tried using the IR with my iMac, but I found
out that the iMac and PowerBook, while both IR, speak different
languages (AppleTalk over IR on the PowerBook, IrDA on the iMac). Is
there a way I can make them start working well with each other? I know
I can pick up a floppy drive module, but I was wondering if I can do
anything about it in its current state? Thank you.
-Elliot
Hi Elliot,
IMHO the PowerBook 1400 keyboard is second only to the
keyboard in the WallStreet and Lombard/Pismo G3 Series 'Books, but I
know some people consider the 1400 'board best of all.
File transfers are tricky from these oldies to modern
computers. For smallish transfers, I routinely used email when I was
running a 1400 as my drafting and editing 'Book. Another option is to
upload stuff to an online storage site and then download it with the
destination computer.
Using floppies to transfer files to a USB or
FireWire-equipped machine with a floppy drive will work. I have a SCSI
Zip drive and a Zip expansion bay module for my Pismos, so that's
another option for me as well.
A SCSI CD burner would work as well.
I won't say it's impossible to get the two IR
configurations talking to each other, but I'm skeptical.
Charles
Pismo Battery Question
From
Scott:
Hi Charles,
I enjoy your work on Low End Mac immensely. In your 5-07 column, you said you have
batteries from FastMac and
also the
NuPower ones as well. Which one have you had the best experience
with, and which gives you the most life? I've never ordered from
FastMac, but I'm a frequent flyer at OWC.
Thanks for your advice,
Scott
Hi Scott,
If you're pleased with the service you've been getting
from OWC, no reason not to keep flying with them for your battery
needs. I've had excellent service from them for RAM, hard drives, and
the extended life battery for the Pismo, which has given flawless
service for about 28 months now. The FastMac batteries have been good
too, but I haven't noticed any radical difference in runtime with
either brand. They both provide substantially longer charge life than
the OEM batteries.
Charles
Rebuilding a Pismo Battery
From Matt:
In response to Pismo Battery
Problems, I wanted to mention that I used a website www.batteryrefill.com about two
years ago to re-cell a laptop battery, and they did a great job. You
send your battery to them, and they take it apart and replace the cells
in the battery with brand new ones. My "new" battery has been going
strong ever since.
In case you might want to pass this on to Leo LeBron.
Matt
Thanks Matt,
Have sent the info to Leo.
Best,
Charles
Editor's note: John Hatchett raves about Battery
Refill in his Recycled Computing column. See Power Your Recycled
Laptop with a Rebuilt Battery. dk
G4 Upgrade for WallStreet PowerBooks
From John:
Hello Mr. Moore,
I always enjoy reading your articles on LEM. In fact, there have
been many many tips over the years that I have applied directly.
I am a proud double WallStreet owner. One was a gift, and the other
was purchased on
eBay as a teaching laptop (PowerPoint). It came wrapped in a $125
new sweater. I emailed the sender, and he said he broke up with
his girlfriend - and the sweater was her gift to him. Wow, a laptop for
$30 and a sweater.
I wanted to alert you to a problem with your story: the company
Wegener does not furnish Avanti upgrades anymore (they cannot
apparently get the chips any longer). Anyway, the cards are sometimes
on eBay, and usually they cannot boot into one or the other OS (10.2 or
9.x).
Thanks again,
John
Hi John,
Thanks for the heads-up on the Avanti availability. I
did check the link but must have not scrolled down the page far enough.
I've sent a request to Dan Knight, Low End Mac's publisher, to excise
the erroneous information from the article.
As for the specific matter of installing OS X on a
WallStreet, my own experience was a complete, multi-inning strikeout
with my stock (non-processor upgrade) 233 MHz WallStreet. I was never
successful in getting to first base on that machine with any OS X
installer, although Yellow Dog Linux and SuSe Linux installed just
fine.
I eventually gave up trying, as I figured that since I
was dissatisfied with Jaguar's performance on a 500 MHz G3 Pismo, I
wasn't likely to find it acceptable on a 233 MHz G3! It's lively in OS
9.2.2.
Anyway, while I can't say what the issue is with your
WallStreet, based on my experience it might not necessarily be
related to the Allegro upgrade.
Kindest regards,
Charles
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