Troubleshooting Mac OS X 10.2.8 (6R73): Palm confirms problems with Desktop Software 4.1; Fix for DHCP problems; more

Palm confirms problems with Desktop Software 4.1 Steve Friedberg wrote to Palm's technical support department regarding problems installing the Palm Desktop 4.1 software under Mac OS X 10.2.8, and received this confirmation:

"Please note that we are aware of this issue.  We have received this issue from many of our customers installing the Palm Desktop software v4.1 on Mac OS X v10.2.6 or higher. Our Engineers at Palm, Inc., are working on this issue to develop a software patch to resolve the issue. They will resolve this issue in all the future versions of Palm Desktop software. However, we are not in a position to comment on future releases of Palm, Inc."

I have forwarded your comments to the appropriate department for review. Please feel free to continue sharing your comments or concerns with us in the future.

Fix for DHCP problems We previously reported DHCP problems in Mac OS X 10.2.8 where, since updating updating to the latest release, networked systems do not obtain an IP addresses. Instead of obtaining an address the router, each Mac self assigns itself a number in the 169.x.x.x range. MacFixIt reader Paul suggests a fix:

"I've found a way around it by changing the network setting on each Mac to give them a static IP address, router address and DNS addresses. I knew that my ADSL router had the address 10.0.0.2, so I gave my Macs the following settings:

"IP address: 10.0.0.x (I kept it in the range 10.0.0.3 to 10.0.0.14 as that seems to be what my ADSL router tries to assign to DHCP clients) Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0 (The system will calculate this from the IP address entered)

• Router: 10.0.0.2 (the address of my ADSL router)
• DNS: 10.0.0.2 (same as the ADSL router)

"I can now get online again, but I hope this problem is fixed soon.

Other users experiencing this problem have found that requesting a new lease restores connectivity. An easy way to renew your DHCP lease is the utility Cocktail; choose the Network screen, click the DHCP tab, and then click the Request button.

More observations on the black screen issue Geoffrey Plank has some interesting observations on the widely reported black screen issue affecting iMacs, beige G3s and some PowerBook G3s:

"I just want to confirm an issue recently mentioned about Mac OS X 10.2.8, Disk Utility and G3 Power Macs and iMacs, where running Disk Utility will cause the computer?s screen to turn off (go black) and/or apparently enter a permanent sleep.

"I first experienced this with my Bondi Blue iMac 233 right after updating to the re-released 10.2.8. However, this would occur when running just about any application, like Safari or Excel. Suddenly, the screen would go blank and the computer unresponsive. Since this iMac does not have a reset button, I would have to unplug it and plug it back in. Sometimes, it would remain unresponsive even when plugged back in. In fact, at one point I thought the power supply had gone bad. But then the next day I plugged it in again and it worked. I was planning on putting in a larger hard drive anyway, so I did and installed a fresh version of  10.2.6 on two partitions. I also replaced the lower 32 MB SODIMM with a 256 mB. A 64 mB upper remained."

"Everything worked fine for two days. Then, just to experiment, I upgraded one partition to 10.2.8. Again, all was fine until I tried to fix permissions using Disk Utility. It would begin the process, but then after a few seconds, the screen would go black and the computer apparently entered a permanent sleep -- no matter how much I banged on the keyboard. Only unplugging the iMac would bring it back to life. I could repeat this again and again. However, this time, Safari and other apps still worked fine; only problem was with Disk Utility."

Using different drivers to make Orange Micro cards work We previously reported problems using Orange Micro's Grappler SCSI cards with Mac OS X 10.2.8. Some readers have suggested trying some different versions of the Grappler firmware:

"I have an Orange Micro Grappler 906F SCSI card in my Dual 800 G4 running OS 10.2.8 without any problems. I suggest to those having problems that it may be the flash ROM version used. There are four different versions with a read me describing the differences. I used the 'FX9NB136.bin' flash ROM which is a non boot version. It works under OS9 and OSX without installing the Mac OS X 'grappler.kext' driver package. [...]"

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