Odds & Ends: Failure to boot from older OS CDs; Acrobat 5 registration fix; DAVE logon bug?; more

Failure to boot from older Mac OS CDs: a follow-up Regarding our previous item titled "Firmware update disables Pre-Mac OS 9 bootable CDs?": Daniel Smith believes that the culprit may be Drive Setup 2.0.3, not the firmware update. My experience of a few days ago lead me to believe that if you initialize the main drive of a blue-and-white G3 Mac with Drive Setup 2.0.3, that Mac will no longer boot from pre-9.x CD-ROMS."

Update:Jim Mueller confirms: "This problem and a related one (booting from an OS CD causes a 'This drive is unreadable, do you want to initialize?' message) afflicted many Mac models after installing 9.1. The source of the problem is the Apple drivers installed by Drive Setup 2.0.3, and the fix is to downgrade the drivers by running Drive Setup 1.9.2 from 9.0x. After the drivers are downgraded (e.g., from ATA v3.2.6 installed by DS 2.0.3 to ATA v3.2.5 installed by DS 1.9.2), you can boot again from any OS CD that's compatible with a given Mac model."

Acrobat 5 registration number fix Regarding the Adobe Acrobat 5 registration number problem (see previous coverage), Michael Pantoja writes: "I had the same problem installing Acrobat 5.0. My serial number was a 3 that had been upgraded to 4 and now 5. I was even told by Adobe that the problem was the version 3.0 serial number. The problem isn't the serial number itself. The problem is 5.0 trying to extract the serial number from a version 3.0 install. I had Acrobat 3.0 and 4.05 installed at the time of install. After I deleted Acrobat 3.0, the 5.0 install proceed properly."

Frank Lord similarly reports: "My experience trying to install Acrobat 5 from the CD was disappointing. At the very end of installation, the Acrobat 5 folder was being removed from the hard drive! I finally got it to work after removing Acrobat 3 from my computer!"

Also see the update to this related item on Create Adobe PDF.

FireWire extensions on DiskWarrior CD Lew Nelson notes: "The Apple FireWire extensions found in the 9.1 System Folder on the DiskWarrior 2.1 CD are both version 2.8.1. The versions that I find in OS 9.1 System Folders on all Macs that I have checked are 2.7." This is the same new version that appears on the latest shipping Macs (see this item).

DAVE 2.5.2 logon at startup problem Ashley Boyd writes: "I upgraded 5 machines to DAVE 2.5.2 and now the Logon at Startup option comes up, and seems to work, but then it still asks for login info on each disk mount request (from Aliases). Happening on systems with Mac OS 9.0.4 and 9.1. Thursby replied: 'We've reported this behavior to our engineers as a bug. I'll contact you as soon as a patch or work-around is available.'" Update: Reader replies have been mixed: some confirm the problem, others do not see it.