Mac OS 9.0.2/Power Mac G4 odds and ends

Bootable CDs Last week, we reported that the current Norton Utilities CD could not boot off of the new G4s and PowerBooks. To be fair, this is true of any current bootable CD - because these new Macs ship with Mac OS 9.0.2 and will not startup with any older version of the Mac OS. Update: As Ronald Curlewis points out, this includes the TechTool Deluxe that Apple sends you when you sign up for AppleCare's extended warranty. Apple told Ronald that a fix for this was coming soon. A clarification: A reader found that this new Macs would boot from the special Mac OS 8.6 CD that shipped with the original G4s. Perhaps the G4 OS 9 CD would work as well. But they do not boot for the generic OS 8.6/OS 9 versions. DVD 2.0 not needed If you check for updates from the Software Update control panel on a new G4 or PowerBook, it will tell you that you need to upgrade to DVD software 2.0, even though 2.1 is already installed. I presume this is an error in the database that the control panel checks. SCSI cards and sleep Replying to my report of success with attaching an Iomega Jaz drive to the SCSI card that came with my G4, James Robertson replies that it did not work as well with his Jaz drive attached to an Adaptec 29160 card. He still gets the wake-from-sleep crash. Adaptec confirmed this when they tried it. On the plus side, the card does support the G4s "PCI power down" mode. Update: As far as I can tell, deep sleep also works with the SCSI cards now shipping from Apple, fixing the previous problem (see TIL article #58451). At least the Mac does go into a sleep mode where the power light pulses. On some occasions, I can still hear a slight fan noise (perhaps from the ATI card's fan?). But in recent tests, the G4 is now completely silent when asleep. Consistent with this, the Apple System Profiler message that states "Attributes: Low power mode disabled because of PCI cards in slots" does not appear. According to Apple System Profiler, my G4 came with an Adaptec 2930CU. Shawn Platkus bought a 2930U card directly from Adaptec. He asked them about the low power mode issue: "They told me that they have a fix for their 2930U card and that it was in the final stages of testing and should be available in a few weeks. The 2930 isn't flash upgradable, so Adaptec said they would be mailing me a free ROM chip for the card."