Troubleshooting Mac OS 9.2: Initial reports

As Mac OS 9.2 now ships with new Power Mac G4s, it is officially "out." However, we have not had much coverage of the update as yet, mainly because we have received very few reports about it. It will probably not be until it is in more general release that troubleshooting info really starts to flow. However, we do have a few items that have trickled in. Here are the highlights:

Updated components Schoun Regan (of Complete Mac Seminars) reports: "The OS ROM file is now up to 8.3.1 and several system components have also been updated. The major change in 9.2 that we observed is Open Transport now always loads at the beginning of the startup process. This seems to be handled by the system, as placing older versions of Open Transport with the 9.2 system will still cause it to load early."

Scrolling bug? Garry Nevin writes: "There appears to be an issue with the new 733 G4s, Mac OS 9.2 and scrolling, particularly when using the scroll bar. This results in horizontal white bands of< varying widths across the image when scrolling. This has been observed in MT-NewsWatcher 3.1, GraphicConverter 4.08 (not always), and Adobe GoLive 4.1."

Update: Several readers contend that this is not a Mac OS 9.2 problem but is instead due to the GeForce 3 card in the new Macs.

Word 98 crash? John Woodward writes: "On my new G4 876, Microsoft Word 98 crashes with a Type 3 error when typing a Return in a new document. This is repeatable, and occurs with just the 9.2 extensions (with Microsoft First Run additions). This same version of Word runs fine under 9.1 on my PowerBook." John also found several other potential minor conflicts with third party applications, including Quicken 2001 and Presto PageManager 2.40.03. [Bryan Woodbury advises to make sure you have installed all Office 98 updates; Office 98 as it comes out of the box will almost certainly have problems with OS 9.x.]

OS CD works with other Macs Several readers now confirm that the OS 9.2 CD that comes with the new G4s can successfully install the OS on most (all?) Macs released in the past few years. In particular, as implied previously, it should work with all Macs that support OS X (all Macs that shipped with a G3 or G4).

Update: Consistent with this, a reader adds: "I tried to install OS 9.2 on a Power Mac 7600/132 that had been upgraded to a G4/450. The installer will not run ('This program cannot run on this computer' error message) and the computer will not boot from the CD ('This startup disk cannot run on this computer')."

For the record, Apple has said that OS 9.2 offers no new features. It is just a bug fix upgrade, including needed compatibility changes for new Macs and OS X 10.1.