Odds & Ends: Adobe Fix; RailRoad Tycoon work-around; more

Adobe's Disappearing Illustrator Files and Memory Plug-insresolves the following problems in Adobe After Effects 4.0 for Mac OS: Out of memory errors occur while rendering; "Internal structure damaged" errors occur; Rendering slow-downs occur when the cache is full. It also fixes a "disappearing files" problem for Adobe After Effects 4.0 for Windows.

Railroad Tycoon and CDR conflict: a work-around Regarding the report last time of a Railroad Tycoon II and Yamaha CDRW conflict: Hugh Johnson had the same problem, but has a Teac drive. He writes: "I believe the actual culprit of the slow, jerky gameplay is the Toast CD Reader extension. I swapped in FWB's CD-ROM Toolkit 3.02 for the [Apple CD/DVD Driver + Toast CD Reader] extension combo, and it worked fine."

Update: Norm Gilbert replies: "The fix for the Teac drive does not work with the Yamaha CD-RW drive. In fact, when I first noticed the problem I was using the FWB drivers. Secondly, Yamaha specifically cautions against using the FWB driver, claiming its use introduces errors in the CD writing process. The only third party drive besides the Adaptec Toast CD Reader endorsed by Yamaha (per their web page FAQ) is CD Speed Tools." In any case, Norm's problem was not "slow, jerky" play, it was "no" play.

iMac mouse vertically challenged: a follow-up Regarding our report last time of USB mice that sometimes only track horizontally: Kathryn Jenkins had the same problem with three different mice (one Logitech MouseMan, two Contour). She writes: "In each case, the cause was a defective mouse cable. Fortunately, the Contour cables can be easily replaced by the user. The Logitech cable could also be replaced, if one could find a replacement anywhere. I doubt this is the case with the Apple mouse, though."

Opening MP3 files: a follow-up Last time, we noted a MacInstruct web page that explained how to open MP3 files that won't seem to open. It required using ResEdit. A reader responds: "I've downloaded hundreds of MP3 files. About 90% were PC-based, and I opened them - either by changing the last 3 letters of the name (example: .mid to mp3) and thereby turning them into QuickTime icons - or by simply dropping or importing the file into MacAMP. This is much easier than using ResEdit."

Update: The MacInstruct web site has been updated to reflect several comments that they received similar to this one.

Norwich Bulletin suggests that MusicVac Beta 5 or mp3 tool are also useful for cleaning up MP3 problems.

ScanWise and ColorSync: a follow-up We have previously reported (see a and b) on a conflict between the Agfa1212U scanner, the ScanWise software and ColorSync 2.6.x. One suggestion was to downgrade to ColorSync 2.5.1. If that does not work, or you cannot locate a copy of 2.5.1, Daniel Crowley found that ColorSync 2.1 works fine with FotoLook 2.09x (instead of ScanWise).

Another stall fix suggested Brad Allen found that the Mac OS stalls he was having on several G3/BW Macs were fixed by installing a new NIC card in the Macs.

Quicken update and AppleScript Mike Hinckley informs us that the Quicken Y2K fix CD installs AppleScript1.1. AppleScript 1.3.7 is the current version (see Troubleshooting Mac OS 8.6).