Troubleshooting Mac OS X 10.1: Problems & Solutions: Update arriving; PC Card and wake-from-sleep panic; single-user chang

Update arriving Good news! Several readers inform us that they have already received their OS X 10.1 Update, approximately only a week after mailing in the Up-to-date coupon.

PC card causes kernel panic when waking from sleep After updating to Mac OS X 10.1, Frank Marder started getting a kernel panic when his Pismo PowerBook would wake from sleep. He eventually diagnosed the cause: an Adaptec 1480 card in the PCMCIA slot. Removing the card fixed the problem. The panic did not occur in Mac OS X 10.0.4. Gary Comeau confirms this with his Adaptec Slim SCSI PC card. It appears to be a general problem with many, if not all, SCSI PC cards.

Change to single-user mode A reader found (and we can confirm) that, when starting up in singe-user mode (by holding down Command-S at startup), the amount of text that appears before it stops for your input is much much less than in previous versions. In particular, virtually all of the yellow text (indicating some sort of "error") is gone.

IrDA support coming? Mats Anderling notes that, while OS X 10.1 still does not support IrDA (Infrared), the Menu Extras folder (see previous item) includes an IrDA.menu extra. This would indicate that such support may soon be coming.

Update: Riscky Abacus notes that IrDA support is already here. Under 10.1, it is listed as a connection option (along with modem, Ethernet, and AirPort, in the Networking System Preferences on his Mac (presumably one that has IrDa hardware).

Widescreen DVD A reader notes a "nifty new addition" to DVD Player 3.0. He writes: "For lack of better terminology, 2.x emulates a normal 4:3 ratio screen. Version 3.0 emulates both 4:3 and 16:9. I discovered this when I put in a widescreen DVD and saw the window grow wider and not display the black letterboxing bands. It depends on how the DVD was created, however. Key words to look for are 'Enhanced for 16x9', 'Presented in original aspect ratio', and 'Anamorphic'. These should let the 16:9 emulation kick in." Another reader confirms this. This appears to answer the query previously noted.

New StimpSoft software coming/here John Schilling, of StimpSoft, Inc., writes: "I've had many, many reports of odd behavior of all of my applications that run under Mac OS X, from glitches in the dock display to weird font colors. I wanted to let everyone know that I will indeed be addressing these issues as soon as I have a copy of Mac OS X 10.1, which should be either today or tomorrow. Expect new releases of Solscape, Son of Grok, Smell-O-Mints and others within the next week or so."

Actually, several of the products, including Smell-O-Mints and Son of Grok, were updated yesterday.

Updater needed for FireWire drives? Andrew Nielsen writes: "A manufacturer of FireWire drives has confirmed that a flash update of the Oxford 911 chipset is needed in order for FireWire drives to properly mount with Mac OS X 10.1. At the moment, there is a Windows-only updater. Hopefully a Mac updater will be available shortly." Update: A. Brody reports no problem here.

GoLive slow: a work-around When run from Classic in 10.1, GoLive can get really sluggish. We can definitely confirm that. Kerry Murphey adds that it ran much faster when using 10.0.4. Update: We found that reducing the number of fonts, including many PostScript fonts, in the OS 9 Fonts folder resulted in a substantial improvement in GoLive's responsiveness.

Seeing Windows from Macs Readers continue to report an inability to connect to Windows servers in 10.1 without using third party software such as DAVE.

REALbasic and 10.1 A reader found that programs that were created in REALbasic prior to version 3.5.1 (the latest) looked "unpleasant to the eye" in OS X 10.1. The actual functionality of the program was not hindered, juts the appearance. The fix for developers is to upgrade to 3.5.1 and recompile the program.

HP 950 All-In-One glitch? Thomas Claburn writes: The 950 combo printer (printer, scanner, fax, copier) is supposedly compatible with Mac OS X 10.1. However, I could not get it to work. It worked fine on System 9.2.1. After running the OS X installer, I tried to add the 950 using the Print Center, but the Add New Printer option asked for the printer's IP address, not recognizing it as a USB printer."

Update: A reader replies: "I spoke with HP on Saturday and the 950 is not yet compatible for OS X 10.1. The driver needs some updates to get it working, which they say will be out in a couple of weeks."