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More foam gaskets for the 3400 (now for display and battery problems)

We have previously discussed Apple's use of a foam gasket to prevent the unseating of RAM modules in PowerBook 3400s. It turns out that Apple now has two other foam gaskets to solve two other potential problems.

a. Display cable If the display cable works loose from the logic board, the video display will not appear. The solution here is to have an Apple Service Provider reconnect the cable and add a foam gasket to the underside of the brightness and speaker grill (service part number 875-0283). The gasket prevents a future disconnection.

b. Battery On a few 3400s, … Read more

Netscape Communicator and embedded audio glitches

Walt Z. claims that Communicator does not play embedded audio, "particularly embedded QT audio Moovs with QT plug-in 1.1." Regular QT Moovs do play.

Michael Macrone adds: "Communicator will not load QuickTime MIDI files (and perhaps other types of auto-playing embedded content) unless the <EMBED> tag is located in the viewable screen area while the page is loading." If you wait until the page has finished loading, it will not work.

Update: A source at Netscape claims: "QT Audio files do indeed work with Communicator and the QT plugin 1.1." … Read more

LaserWriter 12/640 print problem at high altitudes

Dan Jahn writes: "We just bought and setup an Apple LaserWriter 12/640 PS Plus. About eight out of ten prints has these strange bubbles that print along the left side of the page. After discussions with Apple, it turns out that this is a known problem at high altitude (we are at 6500 feet). Apple will not take back the printer, nor will MacZone, because Apple will not issue an RMA."

Norton Disk Doctor 3.5.1 work-arounds for -192 error install problem;

other thoughts on 3.5.1 upgrade a. A reader reports from Usenet posting: "If you have trouble updating Norton Disk Doctor 3.5 to version 3.5.1, just use ResEdit to add 6 empty 'TMPL' resources with the following ID's to Disk Doctor 3.5: 128; 129; 130; 131; 4622; 8104."

In this regard, I finally got around to trying out the NDD 3.5 prepatch I mentioned yesterday. I could not get it to patch my copy of NDD, although others have reported success. It appears to be trying to do essentially the same … Read more

Open Transport 1.2 (from Mac OS 8) runs in Mac OS 7.6.1?

A reader reports that: "I have manually copied OT 1.2 and OT/PPP 1.0.1 to a Mac OS 7.6.1 system. It is working fine. I know this is not supported by Apple but there does not seem to be a technical reason that OT 1.2 cannot be released for Mac OS 7.6.1. This configuration has been working for me for over 2 weeks. No problems and a lot more stable. Not one crash since I installed OT 1.2."

Iomega claims SCSI Probe and HDT can cause problems with Jaz cartridges

A reader in an AOL forum posted a description of problems he was having with Jaz cartridges sometimes not mounting, occasionally making a high-pitched whine as well - suggesting that the disk had gone bad. Iomega offered the following in reply (especially note the advice in the last paragraph):

"Check your drive carefully. Does the green light come on when there is power to the drive? Does the amber light flash 2-4 times when you first put a disk in? Check your connections. Physically disconnect and reconnect your cables. Check your cable ends. Do you have any missing or … Read more

Troubleshooting Mac OS 8 page updated again

The Troubleshooting Mac OS 8 page has had numerous updates since yesterday. Here are some highlights. Check the page for more details: a. New bugs reported: Drag icon crash Find File glitch AppleScript and desktop picture glitch b. Utilities to be updated PopUp Folder and Disk Express c. Mac OS 8 utilities A list of Mac OS 8 specific utilities has been started. d. Mac OS 8 reader reactions The press on Mac OS 8 has been deservedly very positive thus far. But no OS is perfect. Here readers get a chance to gripe about what minor and not-so-minor annoyances … Read more

Apple 5500-6500 Extras Update released; fixes at least some 7.6.1 virtual memory slow down problems

Apple has released a 5500-6500 Extras disk image file (Thanks, Leonard Ornstein). Among other things it contains three bug-fix extensions:

5500/6500 ATA Update 5500/6500 Video Input Update AudioTuneUp (presumably a new version)

Note especially that the ATA Update extension "improves performance when Virtual Memory is turned on in the Memory control panel." This seems to be a fix for the virtual memory slow down problem reported here previously. Check the Read Me file for more details on other fixes.

Power Macintosh 5500/225, 6500/225 and 6500/250 users, running Mac OS 7.6.1, who … Read more

Troubleshooting Mac OS 8: RAM Doubler 2 and floppy disk drive problem

Regarding the report of the Troubleshooting Mac OS 8 page that the floppy disk drive may be disabled after updating to Mac OS 8 - if RAM Doubler 2 is active:

a. This problem was also reported for System 7.6.x about a month ago - right here on MacFixIt. However, based on email messages I have recently received, it seems to be much more widespread in Mac OS 8.

b. Brian Yamanaka writes of one possible reason this problem occurs on some Macs and not others: "On my 8500/180 with Mac OS 8 GM installed, I … Read more