Odds & Ends: DVD Player 2.5 new features; Ircle and firewalls; Power Mac 9500 and Sonnet cards

DVD Player 2.3 and 2.5: new features Schoun Regan notes that DVD Player 2.5 (included with Apple's new G4s) allows you to "Enable DVD@access web links and play DVD files from a hard drive (by adding an Open Video_TS item to the File menu). This is also available in the 2.3 version included on the full Mac OS 9.1 CD.

Ircle and Firewalls FAQ Frank Piccolo alerted us to an Ircle and Firewalls FAQ. It begins: "Since a few months we are receiving more and more emails from people who got ADSL broadband connections or installed a small network in their home who cannot send files anymore using ircle, or who cannot connect to some IRC servers anymore. This document explains why this is happening and how it can be fixed."

Power Mac 9500 and Sonnet card glitch Michael Burns tried to upgrade a Power Mac 9500 with a Sonnet G3/400 upgrade card. Soon after starting up the computer it would crash with a type 10 error. Sonnet tech Support said the problem is caused by the L2 cache. The 9500 has the L2 cache soldered on to the mother board. Apparently the Sonnet software disables the onboard L2 cache in the majority of 9500's, but not all. In some 9500's the Sonnet upgrade card can't be used because the software is unable to disable the onboard L2 cache. The problem appears to be specific to the 9500.