Troubleshooting

Secret Word Contest Winners

The Secret Word contest is over. The first person to find the secret word was David Lee Matuszek. The randomly selected winner was Kjell Hult. Congratulations! You both win a free copy of Sad Macs. Only five people found the word (although several dozen more came very close).

The secret word was MacGuffin (with apologies to Alfred Hitchcock). If you want to know how to find it, click here.

PowerBook 3400 Modem AT Command Set missing

Steve Martin writes: "I have a new PowerBook 3400c and can't find a reference for the internal modem's AT command set anywhere. The "Modem/Ethernet User's Manual" in the Apple Extras folder makes reference to a file called "Modem AT Command Set (a file on your hard disk)" but no such file exists." He contacted Apple about this and received this reply:"Someone messed up and it's not there. I'm tracking down a copy to get posted online."

"MacFixIt / Sad Macs" secret word contest starts today

Events may have dampened my enthusiasm a bit - but the promised "web site anniversary and third edition of Sad Macs" contest still arrives today. Here's the deal: The path to a secret word is now somewhere on this web site. I have tried not to make it too hard nor too easy to find. In any event, the first person to find it and email me the correct word wins a free copy of Sad Macs. One other winner will be randomly selected from everyone else who finds the word within 24 hours of the first … Read more

Apple Blues

I admit it. I was almost too down to even put today's page online. On days like this, I start to wonder if Apple and the rest of us are persisting in playing a game whose outcome has already been decided - and that finds us on the losing end.

Yes, it is Friday's announcements from Apple that have me down. For those of you who are somehow unaware of these events, a MacWEEK story has the main details - including the layoff of 4100 workers (of which 1400 are "temps"). A related story details the … Read more

Ask AppleBoy moves to new digs

" Ask AppleBoy," a free Macintosh help area which originated at the " Boffo MacOS Helping Hand" site, has moved to a new location. Boffo plans to have a new technical support area called "Ask Dr. Mac."

CyberFinder 2.1.1 upgrade: It fixes an bothersome bug

CyberFinder 2.1.1 is on Aladdin's ftp site. It's actually been out for a couple of weeks. I have held off posting this here until I had time to download the file and check it out. I was particularly curious as to whether it remedied a bug that had bothered me in the 2.1 version (that I had obtained from the Internet Explorer CD at Macworld Expo): a bug where a URL "grabbed" by CyberFinder was converted to all lowercase - thus causing a URL with uppercase to fail. Happily, this is indeed fixed … Read more

QuicKeys 3.5.2 is now online

CE Software has posted the QuicKeys 3.5.2 update to their web site. It is the PowerPC native version. You can only use it if you already own version 3.5. (Thanks, Glenn Boley.)

PowerBook VM Tuner and ATA Flash extension for PowerBook 1400

A new pair of files join a growing list of PowerBook 1400 fix files from Apple (as listed on my Apple Links page):

The PowerBook VM Tuner is a system extension that enhances system stability on PowerBook 1400 models when running memory intensive applications. While it comes with PowerBook 1400s, you may need to reinstall it manually if you do a clean install of Mac OS 7.6.

There is also an ATA Flash Extension for the 1400. This fixes an error in the 1400's ATA driver. Without it, "when you insert an initialized Flash card, the PowerBook … Read more

Shockwave security hole: It's worse than you think

The Shockwave security leak ( as mentioned here last time) appears to be more dangerous than first thought. The " webcomics" page that first reported it now says: "Shockwave has access to any local file on the users hard drive" not just certain email files. On the plus side, the site also reports that all three potential Shockwave security holes "are fixed with a pre-release version of Streaming Shockwave." They further state: "Information in your email, on your hard drive or on your corporate intranet could all be copied to a distant server. All three … Read more

Snitch and reporting native PowerPC code: a follow-up

Regarding our previous note about Snitch erroneously reporting ObjectSupportLib as a "Native Only App," Snitch author Mitch Jones explains that this message appears as a result of a check for certain CODE and cfrg resources; it doesn't actually check whether the file is an application or not. "I think what Snitch really should say is that the shared library 'contains PowerPC native code'." He also adds that, in order to save time, its check for native code is not exhaustive and that some files with native code (especially extensions and control panels) may not be … Read more