Odds & Ends: AirPort network guide; Font issues; Rio firmware update solves kernel panic; more

Designing AirPort Networks with Mac OS X is an Adobe Acrobat pdf document that includes important information on extending the capabilities of the AirPort Base Station.

Font issues This Register article describes a crash that was caused by installing an OS 9 third-party font in an OS X Library directory. It also reminds users that OS X reads fonts from an OS 9 partition, even when you are not using Classic (see also our previous mention of this). (Thanks, David Klaus.)

Rio firmware update fixes kernel panic William Perez writes: "When running iTunes 1.1.1, a Rio 500 USB shows up fine as connected. However, if I try and copy a group of song files, it will cause a kernel panic that shows up on the screen of my second monitor (connected via an ATI XClaim VR 128). If I copy one song at a time it seems OK but 2 or more can trigger the fatal error. The problem did not occur in OS 9. After several crashes, my Rio's internal memory card was so corrupted, it would get stuck in a loop until I unplugged it. The only way I was able to fix this was to upgrade the Rio's firmware to version 2.15 using VirtualPC 4.0. It erases the internal memory card as part of the upgrade process and now it's working fine. This version of the firmware is newer than the latest 2.12 version for Macs."

Advice: Backup/compress before installing update Readers who have had problems with Explorer 5.1.1 (see previous coverage) have discovered that downloading back to the prior version is not simple, as neither Microsoft nor Apple offer a separate Installer for the prior version. Dan Shoop offers advice for those who have not yet installed the update (which is worth noting for future similar situations in any case): "Backup before upgrading. This is easily done using tar, and thanks to Apple choosing GnuTar, it even can compress the data using zip as it writes the archive!" Note: tar is a UNIX function accessed via Terminal. However, you could also compress the needed files with DropStuff or other competing compression utilities, such as OpenUp.

The state of Mac OS X: what is missing: a follow-up Jennifer Scott adds two more items to the list of "missing features" in OS X, as posted in a MacCentral article (see yesterday's coverage): "(1) Can't sufficiently customize the Dock. In particular, the "hacks" to reposition the Dock are lost after a restart. (2) Can't shut off antialiasing or make the menu font size larger. You could also get performance gains if you had an option to turn off "Show window contents when dragging."

Update: Another request: Andrew Shalit notes the absence of PC card support. "I use an Olympus digital camera, and rely on a PC card to move pictures onto my PowerBook."