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ARA 3.0 conflict with Global Village (and more?)

Two readers have confirmed essentially the same problem:

Allen Sher writes: "I just installed ARA 3.0 on a Motorola MT4200 running Mac OS 8 and a Global Village 33K external modem (with their latest software). Global Village call sensing worked fine between fax and ARA incoming calls under ARA 2.1. Under 3.0 it does not work, and just turning on ARA call answering causes major problems." Allen claims that Global Village tech support confirmed this incompatibility, adding that "Global Village said that Apple made changes to ARA which was unexpected and not disclosed to … Read more

PowerBook 3400 modem driver update: a follow-up

Last time, I mentioned a soon-to-be-released update to the modem drivers for the PowerBook 3400. It is most especially supposed to address the problem where you cannot reconnect after a disconnect. I have been using a final candidate version of the drivers since Friday and have not had one reconnect problem since installing them. It is definitely working so far. Unfortunately, it appears to have had no effect on other issues regarding the 3400 modem, such as its slower than expected connect speed.

Meanwhile, D.J. LaChapelle writes that he worked around the reconnect problem by unplugging the phone cord … Read more

IBM exits Mac OS licensing arena; and more thoughts on Apple's policies

To no one's surprise at this point, as covered in a article from Macworld: "IBM Microelectronics has decided not to pursue the Mac OS business, given Apple's refusal to certify new technologies such as the PowerPC 750 and Common Hardware Reference Platform and Apple's decision not to honor its Mac OS 8 pricing agreements made in June."

Frankly, I continue to have trouble deciding who and what to believe here. This quote from the San Jose Mercury News captures the essence of the dilemma: "In an interview last week, Jobs said Apple had been … Read more

Power Computing PowerBase blinking question mark issue: a follow-up

A while back, we reported a warm restart blinking question mark problem that was especially prevalent in PowerBase clones running Mac OS 8. At the the time, Power Computing said it was investigating this and had no sure solution (although it appeared related to disk driver software).

Wes Ferguson sent me a recent follow-up on this matter: "I have a PowerBase 603e/200 with a 1.2 Gb Seagate IDE (ATA) hard drive. It had the warm start blinking question mark problem. I contacted Power Computing yesterday and was told, after providing the serial number of my computer, that … Read more

MacTools Pro fixes "blinking question mark" startup bug: a follow-up

The report last time that MacTools Pro may be able to repair at least some disks that fall to the blinking question mark startup bug in Mac OS 8 - even when other utilities (such as Norton Utilities) fail - stimulated a good deal of reader response.

Jason Cowart writes that he was not surprised to learn about MacTools Pro's success: "In the past six months we've had three machines go down with different problems that Norton was unable to repair and that MacTools Pro was."

Damion Michaels echoed similar sentiment: "I wholeheartedly confirm that … Read more

Week-end updates

CopyThru 3.0, Fonts Manager 3.7.2, and GURU 2.5.1 have all been released. Their postings in MacFixIt's Download Library have been appropriately updated.

NameCleaner 1.7 is out. "NameCleaner is a utility for the Macintosh OS to manipulate file names and types. It is specially designed to help move files to and from foreign file systems such as MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows95, Windows NT, NetWare and Unix."

Hi's Universal Saver is a new auto-save utility.

Compression Contextual Menu Manager plug-in has been updated to version 1.0.1. This fixes a … Read more

PowerBook 3400 modem fix

O'Grady's PowerPage is reporting that a software fix for the disconnect problem with PowerBook 3400 modems ( see previous MacFixIt item) should be out soon.

Update: I have obtained a copy of these new drivers and will report back on how they work next time.

PowerBook 3400 and external modem issue Rob Costain had problems using his Global Village Teleport 33.6 Internet Edition using OT/PPP on a PowerBook 3400. The internal modem worked fine. He found that the GV modem would work if he disabled Mac OS 8's Internet Access Extension

CD-ROM ToolKit does not support … Read more

Odds & Ends

A reminder: Netscape Prefs Patch (as mentioned earlier this week): MacFixIt has posted Adam Wunn's fix for Navigator's Preferences STR glitch (that causes problems with registering protocols). It's called Netscape Prefs STR Patch. It includes instructions on why you may need it and how to use it. Check Adam's web page for more details.

Update: Adam writes: "A problem that causes the STR Patch to crash some computers has been identified and fixed. The crash occured when someone tried to patch a pref file that already had a STR#=2003." The link above now … Read more

Another one bites the dust...

Due to its failure to reach an agreement with Apple, Motorola has announced that it will discontinue its StarMax line of Mac OS compatibles by the end of this year (as reported in MacWEEK and other news sources). It will never ship the PowerPC 750 based system that was shown at Macworld Expo in Boston last August. In doing so, Motorola joins Power Computing's exit from the clone market. The difference is that Apple obviously has not purchased Motorola's assets. In fact, Motorola will still be selling the hardware needed to make Mac clones to other companies, such … Read more

More news on blinking question mark problems

MacTools Pro repairs blinking question mark problem? Rodney Simon claims that he was able to repair his PowerBase 240 that had the now infamous corrupted partition and blinking question mark at startup by using MacTools Pro, even though Norton Utilities and Disk First Aid were unsuccessful. He set up Mac OS 7.6 on an external drive to run MacTools.

Blinking question mark and Energy Saver On a related note, Benjamin Fiore had blinking question mark problems in Mac OS 8 that only occurred after a restart following waking his Mac 7300 up from sleep mode. He found that disabling … Read more