Odds & Ends: ZIP disks in DOS format; Kodak DC4800; Visoneer and 9.1; iBot memory leak; more

Mac OS 9.1 no longer able to format DOS ZIP disks Kelvin Tsang was told by Iomega tech support that Mac OS 9.1 will not allow ZIP disks to be formatted with DOS. He writes: "Apparently its an issue with Mac OS 9.1. The same version of Iomega Tools under Mac OS 9.0.4 allows you to format to DOS." This is the first time we've had confirmation from Iomega tech support on this issue, which we also covered in our Troubleshooting Mac OS 9.1 Report. The work-around is to use the previous version of the File Exchange control panel (3.0.3).

See also this Iomega web page, which includes an offer to send the older version of File Exchange, if needed.

Kodak DC4800 camera and 64MB cards Unmounting 64MB cards installed in a Kodak DC4800 will cause the Mac to crash. Ian Kim writes: "Kodak tech support told me there is a particular problem with 64MB cards. Cards smaller or larger than 64MB would work, but for some unknown reason, that particular size was problematic. He suggested I either buy a compact flash card reader, or replace my 64MB card with two 32MB cards. I replaced the modules, which has solved the problem."

Visioneer and Mac OS 9.1 A reader sent us a copy of a response he received from Visioneer in response to a question seeking help with Strobe Pro producing only blank images. The response reads: "Some Strobe Pro scanners work with system Mac OS 9.1. However, Visioneer is still testing the full compatibility. We suggest that you try to install the scanner on Mac OS 9.0.4 that Visioneer is currently supporting."

iBot 1.0.1 driver memory leak Every time a single image is grabbed from iBot 1.0.1, the free memory available to the capture application is decreased by about 128k and is not recovered. This continues until the available memory is exhausted at which point an error occurs. Downgrading to the original version 1.0 of the driver alleviates the problem. (Thanks, Randy Noranbrock)

Web site reports vendor policies on recent firmware upgrade Ramseeker.com has posted a list of about 25 memory vendors, along with a brief explanation their respective policies for sticks rendered unusable by the latest firmware upgrade. We reported on many of these already, but this list collects them all in one place.