Odds and Ends: Titanium PowerBook begins shipping; MiniDisc audio echo; FireWire Enabler and ScanWizard; more

Inside the new PowerBook It appears that a lucky few are getting their hands on the Titanium PowerBook. Schoun Regan (from Complete Mac Seminars) sent us a photo of the new laptop with its bottom cover removed, exposing the motherboard and internal components.

MiniDisc audio echo and Apple Cinema Display A reader found that the HHB MDP500 Portable Minidisk Recorder could connect to the USB port, and the audio could be transferred both ways. However, when plugged into the Cinema display's USB port, the sound was distorted with a "weird echo effect." Connecting the player directly to the Mac solved the problem. (Thanks, Dave Hull). Also see our previous MiniDisc coverage.

Belkin USB VideoBus incompatible with Mac OS 9.1? Andre Persson has found that Belkin's USB VideoBus video capture unit stopped working after upgrading from Mac OS 9.0.4.

Update: Evidently there is a third factor involved here. Steve Schrier reports that the above combination works just fine on a stock PowerBook G3/500 (Pismo) with 256 MB RAM using Strata VideoShop 4.5.1.

FireWire Enabler 2.7 and Microtek ScanWizard James Ehrler notes that his Scanmaker X6 USB with ScanWizard 1.03.3 stopped working after upgrading to 9.1. Disabling the FireWire Enabler 2.7 extension fixed the problem.

Update: Several users have pointed out that the most recent U.S. version of ScanWizard USB is 1.03.1, and that it works fine on their machines with the FireWire Enabler 2.7. Version 1.03.3 is a European version (thanks, Robert Leatherwood.) Others report success with 1.03.0. We are investigating further.