Troubleshooting Macintosh extensions. An extensions conflict is where you lose your innocence with fixing a Mac. Not all extensions and control panels get along, and certain combinations can have disastrous results.

Here's my method. Create a folder on the desktop. Drag exactly half the extensions out of System Folder:Extensions and drop them in the folder. Select all the extensions in that new folder and give them a label, so they stand out (it makes them a different color). Now reboot and see if the problem goes away. If it doesn't, create another folder, move the remaining extensions into it and give them a label. Move the first batch back into the extensions folder and reboot.

Now, add half your extensions back from the folder on the desktop to the extensions folder. If the problem comes back, move that half back into the second folder on the desktop and move the now-known good half into the extensions folder. After each test, remove the labels from the extensions in the extensions folder. Just keep swapping halves until you narrow it down to one bad extension, using labels to keep yourself from getting lost.

I don't recommend Conflict Catcher because all it does is move the extensions around for you--it's no easier than this method, and this method doesn't cost $50.

This is how we build 'em in St. Louis. Neither Gatermann nor I are really in the habit of naming our PCs unless a name is just painfully obvious. In the case of his Linux gateway, the name was painfully obvious. One name and one name only fits: Mir.

This is how we build computers in St. Louis. This is Tom Gatermann's Linux gateway: a Micronics P75 board with a Cirrus Logic PCI SVGA card, a Kingston PCI NE2000 clone connecting to the Internet, and a Bay Netgear 310TX PCI 10/100 (DEC Tulip chipset) connecting to the local LAN. Yes, that AT case was as cheap as it looks. Maybe cheaper.

Inside the case, there's an IMES 8X IDE CD-ROM, an ancient 1.44 MB floppy drive of unknown origin, and a 1.2 GB Quantum Bigfoot HD, of which about 1.5 MB is used (booting's much faster off the HD than off the floppy).

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Mir is made from, well, a pile of junk. A Micronics P75 board. A Cirrus Logic PCI SVGA card. Whatever 72-pin SIMMs we had laying around. A Quantum Bigfoot 1.2-gig HD. A really trashed 3.5" floppy drive. The cheapest-looking AT case ever. But we did skip the Linksys NICs. The NICs are a Kingston PCI NE2000 clone and a Bay Netgear 10/100 based on the DEC Tulip chipset.

We assembled it outside the case because we had so much trouble getting it going correctly--it's much easier to swap components when they're accessible. Once we got it going, we never bothered to put everything back inside the case. Maybe we're trend-setters and this is the next fad in computing. After all, what's the logical next step after translucency?

I'm all over the place today. So fasten your seat belts. We're going for a ride.

How do you make a Power Mac 7200/120 feel like a G4? Install vintage software on it. We're dumping some old Power Macs at work, but since they've recycled some of the software licenses (and lost most of the rest), the only legal thing to do is to wipe the drives, install the now-free Mac OS 7.5.5 on it, and perhaps another free package or two. I went ahead and threw in WordPerfect 3.5, which Corel has made available free of charge. The systems boot in 45 seconds (even less if I defrag the drives and then run DiskWarrior) and WP loads in 7-9.

I hear System 6.0.8 on an SE/30 running programs like WriteNow is even nicer. From what I remember of using such a machine in 1992-93, it's probably true. Memories fade and tales grow taller with time, but I remember that SE/30 was just about the fastest computer I ever used. It didn't multitask, but then again, the PCs of the time didn't multitask well. In those days if you wanted real multitasking, you had to get a Unix workstation or an Amiga.

In those days I used the SE/30 at school and had an Amiga 2000 at home. The SE/30 was definitely faster, but the Amiga let me multitask, and I abused the privelige. It's arguable which machine made me more productive, as much as it pains me to admit.

I've also heard arguments that the SE/30 makes you more creative. That's absolutely not universal. Having strong emotions about the tools you're using certainly helps--and that can go either way. Intense hatred is as inspiring as intense love. Why do you think we hear so many love songs and love-gone-wrong songs? It might be more inspiring. I find it much easier to write angry angst-ridden punk or self-loathing goth (the two extremes of love gone wrong songs) than to write worship music, which, face it, is basically love songs to God.

I think a 1.2 GHz Athlon with a 15,000 RPM SCSI drive and 256 megs of RAM would make me more creative, but mostly because it wouldn't stand in my way or slow me down.

And a stolen insight. I was talking and praying with another church member Wednesday night. He's a psychology PhD, brilliant mind. We talked about work, and he was talking about a couple of his more extreme cases, and at one point, remembering what my own mind can do sometimes, I asked, "Is anyone normal?" Then he let loose with a pearl of wisdom.

Don't focus on the disorder. Focus on the order, the things that work right.

Like my creative bursts! They're usually accompanied by a mood swing. Focus on the creativity, good stuff happens. Focus on the mood swing, bad stuff happens.

We do this in other stuff. Nobody cares that the x86 is quite possibly the worst CPU architecture mankind ever foisted on itself. Trust me, it's awful. I can program every other chip I've tried. OK, so me not being able to program something doesn't make it awful, so let me state that another way. I can program other architectures. They're easy, so they're awesome. Not the x86. But the x86 has so much software for it--because programmers gave up and just decided to write in high-level languages--so no one cares how awful it is.

Nobody seems to care that the Mac never had preemptive multitasking or memory protection because it looks cool and makes you feel warm and fuzzy when you use it. It's got that cuteness factor that people go ga-ga over.

Why is it we give these stupid machines the benefit of the doubt, but not each other? I don't get it.

~~~~~~~~~~

Mac Norton AntiVirus tip. If this affects you, you probably already know this, but just in case, I'll metnion it. NAV under Mac OS 9 isn't exactly reliable. Its autodetection of installing software (so it can offer to disable itself during the process) likes to crash the system. The conventional advice of rebooting without extensions to install software is no longer a suggestion in this environment. It's a must.

I don't like having antivirus software running all the time personally (it slows down systems something fierce and I find it preferable to just not engage in high-risk activities because sometimes things slip past antivirus software--I've always thought it's better to promote responsible behavior than it is to try to make irresponsible behavior safe), but sometimes that's unavoidable, e.g. in corporate environments where there are policies mandating such things.

Weird day yesterday. My boss and I had talked about moving me on to bigger and better things. Yesterday was the day. I totally forgot. I was wondering about mid-day why I hadn't had anything to do when someone else mentioned it. Oops. So now I'm Office 2000 Deployment Czar. Sort of. Yuck. Didn't I see a pile of IBM Selectrics somewhere...?

And then this... My songwriting partner asks about the feasibility of writing an original Christmas song for the Christmas Eve 11 pm service. Ooh. Is there such thing as an original Christmas song? But this is like being asked to write a song for your best friend's wedding or something, so if there's a way to still write an original Christmas song, I'll find it.

~~~~~~~~~~

From: "Gary Mugford" <mugford@nospam.aztec-net.com>
Subject: The definition of rich

SpinRite is your friend. Gatermann was telling me about instability with one of his Win98 boxes; he re-installed about 6 times with no better results when he ran SpinRite on his drive. It found tons of bad sectors that Scandisk wasn't finding. He swapped out the drive and Win98 went back to its normal rate of instability.

Unfortunately, SpinRite doesn't yet support NTFS, making it less useful for those who run NT or W2K.

More Mac troubleshooting. If your Mac crashes while printing, there's a decent chance it'll crash at bootup immediately afterward. I was troubleshooting a startup problem on a G4 and spent a good two hours before I noticed a document in one of the printer icons on the desktop. I rebooted without extensions, opened each printer and deleted any and all documents in them, and rebooted again. Then the G4 went back to its normal rate of instability.

Election "troubleshooting." If you're wondering why recounts can be different each time, here's a perspective you're not finding in the mainstream media from WorldNetDaily. You probably suspect, like I do, that this is less about recounts than it is about looking for Gore votes. It may actually be manufacturing Gore votes.

These guys are definitely right-leaning, which bothers me about as much as left-leaning, but at least they're honest and not trying to push leftist coverage off as objective.

I continue to contend that objective coverage is very difficult, if not impossible, but that doesn't matter because no one even wants to practice objective news coverage anymore. That's why I left the news business.

This is why I don't like Apple. Yesterday I worked on a new dual-processor G4. It was intermittent. Didn't want to drive the monitor half the time. After re-seating the video card and monitor cable a number of times and installing the hardware the computer needed, it started giving an error message at boot:

The built-in memory test has detected a problem with cache memory. Please contact a service technician for assistance.

So I called Apple. You get 90 days' free support, period. (You also only get a one-year warranty unless you buy the AppleCare extended warranty, which I'm loathe to do. But I we'd probably better do it for this machine since it all but screams "lemon" every time we boot it.) So, hey, we can't get anywhere with this, so let's start burning up the support period.

The hold time was about 15 seconds. I mention this because that's the only part of the call that impressed me and my mother taught me to say whatever nice things I could. I read the message to the tech, who then put me on hold, then came back in about a minute.

"That message is caused by a defective memory module. Replace the third-party memory module to solve the problem," she said.

"But the computer is saying the problem is with cache, not with the memory," I told her. (The cache for the G4 resides on a small board along with the CPU core, sort of like the first Pentium IIs, only it plugs into a socket.) She repeated the message to me. I was very impressed that she didn't ask whether we'd added any memory to the system (of course we had--Apple factory memory would never go bad, I'm sure).

I seem to remember at least one of my English teachers telling me to write exactly what I mean. Obviously the Mac OS 9 programmers didn't have any of my English teachers.

I took the memory out and cleaned it with a dollar bill, then put it back in. The system was fine for the rest of the afternoon after this, but I have my doubts about this system. If the problem returns, I'll replace the memory. When that turns out not to be the problem, I don't know what I'll do.

We've been having some problems lately with Micron tech support as well, but there's a big difference there. With Apple, if you don't prove they caused the problem, well, it's your problem, and they won't lift a finger to help you resolve it. Compare this to Micron. My boss complained to Micron about the length of time it was taking to resolve a problem with one particular system. You know what the Micron tech said? "If this replacement CPU doesn't work, I'll replace the system." We're talking a two-year-old system here.

Now I know why Micron has more business customers than Apple does. When you pay a higher price for a computer (whether that's buying a Micron Client Pro instead of a less-expensive, consumer-oriented Micron Millenia, or an Apple G4 instead of virtually any PC), you expect quick resolution to your computer problems because, well, your business doesn't slow down just because your computer doesn't work right. Micron seems to get this. Apple doesn't.

And that probably has something to do with why our business now has 25 Micron PCs for every Mac. There was a time when that situation was reversed.

The joke was obvious, but... I still laughed really hard when I read today's User Friendly. I guess I'm showing my age here by virtue of getting this.

Then again, three or four years back, a friend walked up to me on campus. "Hey, I finally got a 64!" I gave him a funny look. "Commodore 64s aren't hard to find," I told him. Then he laughed. "No, a Nintendo 64."

It's funny how nicknames recycle themselves.

For old times' sake. I see that Amiga, Inc. must be trying to blow out the remaining inventory of Amiga 1200s, because they're selling this machine at unprecedented low prices. I checked out www.softhut.com just out of curiosity, and I can get a bare A1200 for $170. A model with a 260MB hard drive is $200.  On an Amiga, a drive of that size is cavernous, though I'd probably eventually rip out the 260-megger and put in a more modern drive.

The A1200 was seriously underpowered when it came out, but at that price it's awfully tempting. It's less than used A1200s typically fetch on eBay, when they show up. I can add an accelerator card later after the PowerPC migration plan firms up a bit more. And Amigas tend to hold their value really well. And I always wanted one.

I'm so out of the loop on the Amiga it's not even funny, but I found it funny that as I started reading so much started coming back. The main commands are stored in a directory called c, and it gets referred to as c: (many crucial Amiga directories are referenced this way, e.g. prefs: and devs: ). Hard drives used to be DH0:, DF1:, etc., though I understand they changed that later to HD0:, HD1:, etc.

So what was the Amiga like? I get that question a lot. Commodore released one model that did run System V Unix (the Amiga 3000UX), but for the most part it ran its own OS, known originally as AmigaDOS and later shortened to AmigaOS. Since the OS being developed internally at Amiga, Inc., and later at Commodore after they bought Amiga, wasn't going to be ready on time for a late 1984/early 1985 release, Commodore contracted with British software developer Metacomco to develop an operating system. Metacomco delivered a Tripos-derived OS, written in MC68000 assembly language and BCPL, that offered fully pre-emptive multitasking, multithreading, and dynamic memory allocation (two things even Mac OS 9 doesn't do yet--OS 9 does have multithreading but its multitasking is cooperative and its memory allocation static).

Commodore spent the better part of the next decade refining and improving the OS, gradually replacing most of the old BCPL code with C code, stomping bugs, adding features and improving its looks. The GUI never quite reached the level of sophistication that Mac OS had, though it certainly was usable and had a much lower memory footprint. The command line resembled Unix in some ways (using the / for subdirectories rather than ) and DOS in others (you used devicename:filename to address files). Some command names resembled DOS, others resembled Unix, and others neither (presumably they were Tripos-inspired, but I know next to nothing about Tripos).

Two modern features that AmigaOS never got were virtual memory and a disk cache. As rare as hard drives were for much of the Amiga's existance this wasn't missed too terribly, though Commodore announced in 1989 that AmigaDOS 1.4 (never released) would contain these features. AmigaDOS 1.4 gained improved looks, became AmigaOS 2.0, and was released without the cache or virtual memory (though both were available as third-party add-ons).

As for the hardware, the Amiga used the same MC68000 series of CPUs that the pre-PowerPC Macintoshes used. The Amiga also had a custom chipset that provided graphics and sound coprocessing, years before this became a standard feature on PCs. This was an advantage for years, but became a liability in the early 1990s. While Apple and the cloners were buying off-the-shelf chipsets, Commodore continued having to develop their own for the sake of backward compatibility. They revved the chipset once in 1991, but it was too little, too late. While the first iteration stayed state of the art for about five years, it only took a year or two for the second iteration to fall behind the times, and Motorola was having trouble keeping up with Intel in the MHz wars (funny how history repeats itself), so the Amigas of 1992 and 1993 looked underpowered. Bled to death by clueless marketing and clueless management (it's arguable who was worse), Commodore bled engineers for years and fell further and further behind before finally running out of cash in 1993.

Though the Amiga is a noncontender today, its influence remains. It was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature color displays of more than 16 colors (it could display up to 4,096 at a time), stereo sound, and pre-emptive multitasking--all features most of us take for granted today. And even though it was widely dismissed as a gaming machine in its heyday, the best-selling titles for the computer that ultimately won the battle are, you guessed it, games.

~Mail Follows Today's Post~

Scanner wisdom. One of the things I did last week was set up a Umax scanner on a new iMac DV. The scanner worked perfectly on a Windows 98 PC, but when I connected it to the Mac it developed all sorts of strange diseases--not warming up properly, only scanning 1/3 of the page before timing out, making really loud noises, crashing the system...

I couldn't resolve it, so I contacted Umax technical support. The tech I spoke with reminded me of a number of scanner tips I'd heard before but had forgotten, and besides that, I rarely if ever see them in the scanner manuals.

• Plug scanners directly into the wall, not into a power strip. I've never heard a good explanation of why scanners are more sensitive to this than any other peripheral, but I've seen it work.
  
• Plug USB scanners into a powered hub, or better yet, directly into the computer. USB scanners shouldn't need power from the USB port, since they have their own power source, but this seems to make a difference.
  
• Download the newest drivers, especially if you have a young operating system like MacOS 9, Mac OS X, Windows ME, or Windows 2000. It can take a little while for the scanner drivers to completely stabilize. Don't install off the CD that came with the scanner, because it might be out of date. Get the newest stuff from the manufacturer's Web site.
  
• Uninstall old drivers before installing the new ones. This was the problem that bit me. The new driver didn't totally overwrite the old one, creating a conflict that made the scanner go goofy.
  
• Buy your scanner from a company that has a track record of providing updated drivers. Yes, that probably means you shouldn't buy the $15 scanner with the $25 mail-in rebate. Yes, that means don't buy HP. Up until a couple of years ago, getting NT drivers out of HP was like pulling teeth; now HP is charging for Windows 2000 drivers. HP also likes to abandon and then pick back up Mac support on a whim. Terrible track record.

Interesting day yesterday. I talked with my agent about where I'll be writing next. There's a UK magazine editor who is expressing interest in my work. We'll see where that goes. My college degree is in journalism, and my field of emphasis was in magazine editing and publishing, so writing for computer magazines doesn't seem foreign to me at all. I actually have been published before in computer magazines, but the last time was in 1997, and the time before that was in 1991. And I think the UK attitude towards technology is a bit more sensible than the US attitude--the UK seems more interested in making the most of what they have, as opposed to the US philosophy of replacing right away. (My English, Scottish and Irish ancestry must be showing through right about now.) So I like the idea of writing for magazines in the UK.

Dave flying solo. Sorry about not getting the post up there yesterday. So here's two days' worth, divvied up however I want.

I'm scaring myself. I've been playing around with Mac emulation on my PC at home (I can get an old Quadra or something from work for nothing or virtually nothing, but finding space to set it up properly in these cramped quarters would be an issue, especially since I'd have to give it its own keyboard and mouse and possibly its own monitor). My Celeron-400 certainly feels faster than the last 68040 I used, and I greatly prefer my clackety IBM keyboard and my Logitech mouse over anything Apple ever made, so this emulation setup isn't bad. I've got MacOS 8.0 running on my Celeron 400, though on an 040 (especially an emulated 040), 7.6.1 would be much better if I can track down an installation CD for it by some chance.

Apple obsession continues. See if you can guess who said the following: