<b>Mac OS 8.1 Miscellany

Open Transport 1.3 The Installer for Open Transport 1.3 says it won't install on anything less than Mac OS 8.1.

Mac OS 8.1 and Apple Video Player Several readers report problems with sound (low sound to no sound) when using the new version of Apple Video Player included with Mac OS 8.1. Reverting to an older version fixes this.

File sharing cannot be enabled after updating to Mac OS 8.1? More than a half dozen users have been unable to enable file sharing after updating to Mac OS 8.1. Although I doubt this is a general solution, one user claimed that this was due to his disk being almost completely full after downloading and installing the update. Deleting some files solved the problem.

Update: Mike Stockman claims that deleting the invisible AppleShare PDS file will solve this problem.

List view glitch "There is a cosmetic glitch in the 8.1 Finder's List view. If the only info column turned on under a window's view preferences is the 'Size' field, the size is right-justified to the edge of the window rather than the edge of its column." (Thanks, Scott Lahteine and Mark McCasey.)

Update: Readers are reporting an assortment of other cosmetic display problems with Finder windows (too many to detail here).

ATM conflict Jeroen Scheerder could not get any version of ATM to run after updating to Mac OS 8.1. It crashes the Mac. I have not gotten much confirmation of this although I have gotten one or two other similar reports. I am still investigating this.

Dayna Ethernet card conflict A reader claims that Open Transport 1.3 does not recognize the driver for the Dayna PCI Ethernet card (with thin Ethernet on it).

Update: Jeroen Scheerder and Aminadav Zakai both claim that a Dayna/PCI Ethernet driver update, available on Dayna's web site, fixes this problem.

Alternative sites to download Mac OS 8.1 Users are reporting good download rates by downloading from Download.com, Hotline sites, and AOL. Hotline notes: "All our transfers are fully resumable. This certainly beats restarting the 15 MB download from the beginning if something goes wrong."

MRP on Mac OS 8.1 The MRP yesterday had some excellent coverage of Mac OS 8.1. A couple of tidbits: Eric reported that the Mac OS 8.1 update file from Macworld's site is identical to the one on Apple's ftp site. It was also noted that the features in LaserWriter 8.5.1 that did not work in Mac OS 8.0, now work in Mac OS 8.1 (as Apple had promised). A number of HFS specific issues are also discussed.