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Ethernet file transfer rate problems

David Patton (Senior Technical Consultant for Dessie Informatique) informs me of an Ethernet related problem with Power Mac 7300/180s. Specifically, the symptom is that, when a 7300 attempts to copy something over the network, copying is exceedingly slow (copying from the 7300 by another Mac works fine). The problem occurred with a coaxial cable connection, but not with a 10Base T one. After contacting Apple several times, he was told to remove any "large DIMMs" that he had. David writes: "All of the affected machines had at least two 64 or 32 Meg. third party DIMM'… Read more

Performa 6400 causes display problems?

David Sibley reports that the text and images on his Sony Multiscan 200sf were severely "ghosted or blurred." He was ready to blame this on the monitor until he transferred the monitor from his Performa 6400 to his PowerBook. When connected to the PowerBook, the problem went away. He said he spoke to tech support about this and was told: "Apple had discovered what has been causing the problem and is implementing a fix, but it might take as long as 6 weeks or more to realize the fix."

Update: Apple claims that this problem (which … Read more

Sound muting problems: FreePPP and more

a. FreePPP and sound muting Bean Landin writes that "Apple Tech Support acknowledges a bug in FreePPP which disables the sound on Power Mac 7300s."

Frederic Kayser claims that there is "a conflict between FreePPP 2.6b2 and the Apple AudioVision extension: the conflict causes sound to go mute. Reverting to FreePPP 2.5v3 fixes the problem."

I queried Steve Dagley (developer of FreePPP) about this. He replied that updating to Mac OS 7.6.1 should clear up most of these mute problems. However, "there's still some sort of conflict with FreePPP 2.… Read more

c. Shut Down freeze

Regarding the Shut Down freeze ( mentioned here before as a Mac OS 7.6.1 problem), Sy Kallhof writes that, after installing Mac OS 7.6.1 on his PowerBase 200, he would get a Shut Down freeze every time he selected Shut Down from the Finder's Special menu. However, when he selected Shut Down from the Apple menu, no freeze occurred.

d. Apple Menu Options Specifics are toovaried for me to want to go into details here, but I have gotten several reports of the Apple Menu Options control panel as a source of some of the freezes … Read more

b. The startup cursor freeze

Several readers have asked for more information on the mouse-related startup cursor freeze. First, let me clarify: there are many causes for startup freezes and most have nothing to do with the mouse. If you have the specific symptom described last time, check with Apple (calling SOS-APPL would be a good start) or take your system to an authorized Apple Service Provider. They will be able to diagnose if you have the critical symptoms that indicate mouse involvement (I could be a bit more specific myself, but I have gotten in trouble with Apple's legal department twice already for … Read more

a. The Views control panel freeze/crash

Every reader that emailed me on this subject confirmed this crash ( as reported last time). A few readers suggested that it was likely related to having a large number of fonts in your Fonts folder. While using a lot of fonts has been cited as a cause of the Views control panel taking a long time to open, it does not appear to be the cause of the current symptom.

Epson printer troubleshooting

a. Epson FAQ files We have previously commented on some problems with the new Epson Stylus Color 600 and 800 printers. For more information, check out the FAQ files that Epson has now posted. (Thanks, Michael Simmons.) They provide the answers to questions such as these:

Q: I installed the printer driver on my Macintosh, but it isn't showing up in the Chooser. What went wrong? Q: Whenever I power up my Macintosh the printer switches from the printer port to the modem port. How can I correct this? Q: I installed the printer on my Macintosh , but when … Read more

Norton Utilities version 3.5

While the expected arrival of Norton Utilities 3.5 ( mentioned previously here) has still not been announced on Symantec's web site (as of this morning anyway), you can find the details on it in a full page ad on the back page of the latest MacZone catalog. It states that the update include a bootable CD-ROM, making it easy to switch startup disks when needed. It also includes the new version of Speed Disk and the new CrashGuard utility that have been in public beta. However, CrashGuard requires a Power Macintosh.

PointCast points to OSL 1.2/CFM-68K 4.0 problem

a. A web page on PointCast's site includes the following statement: "We have found a serious bug in Apple's recently released ObjectSupportLib 1.2 (a component of the CFM-68K 4.0 fix). We have reported the bug to Apple, but have received no information on when a fix will be available. (It should be noted that this bug may ultimately affect all applications which rely on CFM-68K 4.0.)" (Thanks, Noah Fulmer.)

There is no date as to when this was posted nor any more information about exactly what the bug is. Reports of problems with … Read more

Internet security issues

Ric Ford, on MacInTouch, notes two articles describing security issues:

An article from c't details how a potential problem with Acrobat PDF documents accessed from the web: "The problem: PDF files can be changed in a way that for example a harmless link (like "next page") starts an operating system command."

An article from Princeton describes a possible security leak with some Java systems, although it does not affect Netscape or Explorer browsers.