ORB Tools 1.2: users report Type 3 errors, startup crashes and more;<br>

Update: Positive feedback arrives Castlewood released its Mac ORB Tools 1.2 last week. [Although not listed on its web page yet, it is available from its ftp site.]

Over the weekend, we received several dozen message from people who rushed to try it out. Unfortunately, if anyone had anything very nice to say about this application, they were keeping it a secret from us. Here is what people were saying:

Type 3 errors

Each time I tried to use Orb Tools, it crashed with a Type 3 error. This happened only if I select the Orb Drive when the new driver is loaded in memory. If I have the older driver loaded or the SpeedTools driver, the program doesn't crash but it asks to update the driver. [Herbert Alexander]

Orb Tools quit unexpectedly with a Type 3 error whenever media is present in the drive - either at launch or if the media is inserted later. I even tried with all extensions off but the Orb extension. No difference. [Pascal Meunier]

Clicking on the SCSI ID that the ORB drive resulted in a PPC Illegal Instruction Error [Note: This is a Type 3 error]. I noticed that the startup icon march yields two icons for the same Orb driver extension (no, another driver isn't in there). The first is the extension with a cross, then right after it loads again without the cross. Robert Covington

Startup crashes

The driver caused a startup crash on my G3-300 desktop running 8.6. [Tony Bentley]

My Mac G3 running Mac OS 8.6 crashes at startup if the ORB drive is on and a disk is in the drive. If I startup with the drive off, startup is successful. If I then turn on the drive and try to mount a disk, the disk does not appear on the desktop. Using ORB tools to mount the disk results in a message stating it is necessary to install the driver software before any action can be taken despite an already installed updated driver. The disk then mounts and is usable. Incidentally, ORB driver version 1.0.1 did not cause similar problems. [Michael Pécot]

Other problems

It showed 8 Orb drives on my external SCSI bus. I only have one. [John Tsombakos]

The first thing I attempted was to run the Media Verification tool, since I have found bad blocks with TechTool Pro 2.5.1 on several Orb disks I've had. Problem is, the software didn't seem to work! On two separate disks, the media checking routine would run for a while then stop. The LED on the drive showed there was no activity, and the number of blocks checked didn't change even after several minutes. I had to restart to make to Orb Tools quit. I tried all three settings (light, medium, and full intensity) in the Media tool, updating the driver on the disk, updating the Orb extension, and reinitializing the disk with the Orb tool formatter. Nothing worked. [Alan Lynn]

When I tried to update the media drivers on my previously purchased Mac disks, there was an error message saying that the disk had only one driver and needed to be initialized before the two new drivers could be updated. This is sort of OK but copying 2 gigs back and forth does take a lot of time when 10 disks are involved. The biggest problem, however, was that when I clicked OK to acknowledge the error message, the disk left the desktop and there was no response to "eject." The only way I found to eject the disk was a restart. A whole bunch of restarts and redoing each disk is not my idea of speed and efficiency. [Ronald Leppke]

I downloaded the new version of Orb Tools and installed them on my home computer. When inserting any cartridge, the Orb Tools prompted me to update the driver. Thereafter, the unit ejected the cartridge - no matter what I did. Thinking something might have been wrong with the EIDE drive, I tested the cartridges with the external Orb drive in my office. Same story - all cartridges were ejected regardless of extension (HDT, SpeedTools, Orb or none) used. [name withheld by request]

Update: Positive feedback arrives

Fabian Ramirez writes: "I installed the new ORB Tools and have had no problems on my 3 50-MHz G3/DVD. However, I should note that I did update/flash my Orange Micro Grappler 930 SCSI card to version 1.25 before installing the new ORB Tools. Prior to that I was using the Anubis software."

John Roche echoes: "I've had no problems with ORB Tools since its release - using a beige G3/300 running Mac OS 8.6 with an external SCSI drive."

Max Thibodeaux writes: "I have my ORB drive up and running with Tools 1.2. No type 3 problems at all to mention. The only thing I miss is the option to use the disk as a "regular hard drive" which is a feature that is supposed to be available with the release of the tools. (See booklet that comes with drive)."

Scot Kimball writes: "I had to write and tell you that I have had no problems with the new Tools on either of my computers (a beige G3/300 and B/W G3/400 each running MacOS 8.6). In fact, the new driver has fixed a problem that I have been having in backing up to the ORB drive using Retrospect."