Odds & Ends: DirectCD, GeForce 3, Titanium too tough?; VPC and Epson work-around

DirectCD: no more updates? Jim Reffner writes: "The new Yamaha CRW 2100FWZ (16x10x40 FireWire) doesn't work with DirectCD 1.0.4, or perhaps I should say that DirectCD doesn't support the new Yamaha FireWire CD-RW drive. The Yamaha 2100 supports packet writing so it's clearly DirectCD that is at fault when UDF discs can't be written to, or even read. I contacted Adaptec/Roxio about this and was told that a new version of DirectCD will not come with Toast 5, and that it wasn't known if they would even update DirectCD at all to work with newer drives." He received later confirmation that Adaptec has no plans to update DirectCD.

Update: For more on DirectCD, including a mention of a 1.1 update that never appeared as scheduled, read this Adaptec article titled: "DirectCD for Macintosh - A Packet Writing Primer" (thanks, Prashant Joshi).

Smokey Ardisson adds: "An alternative (patch) to support some drives can be found here, but whether it will/can continue to be updated is unclear."

GeForce 3 cards: only for new G4s? Mathew Fleming noted the following statement on Apple's web site: "The new NVIDIA GeForce3 graphics card represents the state-of-the-art in graphics acceleration for your Power Mac G4 desktops (requires 4x AGP support). Available late April." The key phrase - 4x AGP support - apparently means it will work only with the newest Power Mac G4s.

Titanium too tough? Peter Thomas writes regarding the PowerBook G4: "While it may not feel like it, the pad for your wrists and hands (right below the keypad) is titanium. It's a darker gray than the case, and I didn't realize it was metal. After two days of use, the coolest laptop on the planet just ruined the band on my Rolex watch. Just a word of caution."

Solving VPC and Epson printing problem Howard Model writes: "I have solved (for me, at least) the problem of printing from Virtual PC running under Mac OS 9.1 to a serial Epson printer (see previous item). It is unfortunately a limited and not inexpensive solution: Add an Axis 1440 print server which connects to the parallel port of the printer and then to your network. I got mine for $159."

Print Explosion update coming Regarding yesterday's item on Print Explosion, Peter Mazurowski replies: "The work-around suggested by Barbara Schumann doesn't work for me. However, Derek Jacobsen of Nova Development stated that 'We are revamping the software to be compatible with Mac OS X. While doing this we are fixing any bugs that we have come across and adding a few extra features.'"