WWDC, Mac Problem, and Best Buy Rebates
For those of us who are Mac-heads, WWDC is now only two weeks away. For the uninitiated, the big point of the World-Wide Developer's Conference isn't that Apple will be showing off its next operating system but whether or not that Apple will reveal its new PowerMacs. If the rumors are true, they will be the first machines using a new PowerPC chip from IBM called the IBM 970. Not only do these chips sport faster speeds that the Motorola G4 chips Macs are currently using, but they are 64 bit processors capable of running 32 bit software without resorting to emulation.
I'm not in a position to afford a new PowerMac. Still, there will come a day; and a faster more capable CPU, especially if in a dual processor machine, is something I look forward to.
While OS X's installations have proven to be superior to Windows XP's, OS 9's just proved to me that they are almost equally problematic as XP's. This weekend, I replaced my PowerMac's 120MB Western Digital hard disk with a 2 MB buffer with a Maxtor of the same size and an 8 MB buffer. I had to reload the operating system and application software, of course. All of it went very smoothly on the OS 10 side of the house. When I booted into OS 9 to check it out, the system immediately locked up on the desktop. I did a quick reinstallation of the OS, but it didn't help.
I suspected the problem was between OS 9 and my video card, an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro. I had installed the 9000 Pro sometime after I had bought the machine; and I thought I remembered a caution about installing the drivers before installing the card. Searching the information on the CD and the ATI website, though, yielded no references to that; and there was no way I could have done that easily anyway.
Information from Apple's Support website revealed that the problem probably had to do with the operating system's extensions. Ahhh, the dreaded extensions, those extra features that used to help make the Mac operating system more functional. Apple's info informed me that by booting my PowerMac and holding down the Shift key, the OS would start with all extensions turned off. That was true, and the machine did boot up. However, it was useless for doing anything. I couldn't open my DVD drive (it would not respond to keyboard commands) nor would the ATI software installer run. I had to try something else.
While at Apple, I had also learned that holding down the Space Bar while the machine was booting would bring up a utility called Extension Manager. This utility let me see all the extensions the operating system was using and turn each one or a group of them on or off as I desired. I tried turning off the ATI extensions and rebooted but the system still locked up. What finally worked was turning off all the ATI extensions, all the Nvidia extensions (which were probably conflicting with my ATI card), and all the Airport and Ethernet extensions. After several hours of playing with it, that got the system to boot into OS 9 and let my DVD drive work. Using the ATI supplied CD, I was then able to install the 9000 Pro extensions and turn the others back on. It's all working honkey dorey now. But it took me three hours to figure it out, only a little better than the time it took me to install my ATI Radeon 9000 in XP!
That made me glad I'm not working with OS 9 all the time and actually made me regret reinstalling it. After all, no major applications on my PowerMac required OS 9. I really did it just because that's how the machine had been set up and just in case something popped up where I needed OS 9. That's not very likely, however.
As I reported here, I upgraded my iMac not long ago by installing a Western Digital 120 GB hard drive. There were two rebates associated with that purchase, one for $10 and one for either $50 or $80 (I don't remember). I submitted paperwork to get both. Well, today, I got the $10 rebate. We'll see if I get the other one. They were both sent in to Best Buy.
Speaking of Best Buy, be careful about both rebates and what you actually are buying if you're responding to their Sunday ads. On two occasions recently, I discovered that they were advertising 7200 rpm 8 MB buffer hard drives at discount prices that turned out to be 2 MB buffer hard disks when I got to the store. Also, be cautious about multiple rebates on a single item. Make sure you qualify for all parts of the rebate and be a little getting more than one. I am. That's why I said the above. From everything I could see at the store, I was eligible for both rebates simply by buying the hard disk.
I'm not in a position to afford a new PowerMac. Still, there will come a day; and a faster more capable CPU, especially if in a dual processor machine, is something I look forward to.
While OS X's installations have proven to be superior to Windows XP's, OS 9's just proved to me that they are almost equally problematic as XP's. This weekend, I replaced my PowerMac's 120MB Western Digital hard disk with a 2 MB buffer with a Maxtor of the same size and an 8 MB buffer. I had to reload the operating system and application software, of course. All of it went very smoothly on the OS 10 side of the house. When I booted into OS 9 to check it out, the system immediately locked up on the desktop. I did a quick reinstallation of the OS, but it didn't help.
I suspected the problem was between OS 9 and my video card, an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro. I had installed the 9000 Pro sometime after I had bought the machine; and I thought I remembered a caution about installing the drivers before installing the card. Searching the information on the CD and the ATI website, though, yielded no references to that; and there was no way I could have done that easily anyway.
Information from Apple's Support website revealed that the problem probably had to do with the operating system's extensions. Ahhh, the dreaded extensions, those extra features that used to help make the Mac operating system more functional. Apple's info informed me that by booting my PowerMac and holding down the Shift key, the OS would start with all extensions turned off. That was true, and the machine did boot up. However, it was useless for doing anything. I couldn't open my DVD drive (it would not respond to keyboard commands) nor would the ATI software installer run. I had to try something else.
While at Apple, I had also learned that holding down the Space Bar while the machine was booting would bring up a utility called Extension Manager. This utility let me see all the extensions the operating system was using and turn each one or a group of them on or off as I desired. I tried turning off the ATI extensions and rebooted but the system still locked up. What finally worked was turning off all the ATI extensions, all the Nvidia extensions (which were probably conflicting with my ATI card), and all the Airport and Ethernet extensions. After several hours of playing with it, that got the system to boot into OS 9 and let my DVD drive work. Using the ATI supplied CD, I was then able to install the 9000 Pro extensions and turn the others back on. It's all working honkey dorey now. But it took me three hours to figure it out, only a little better than the time it took me to install my ATI Radeon 9000 in XP!
That made me glad I'm not working with OS 9 all the time and actually made me regret reinstalling it. After all, no major applications on my PowerMac required OS 9. I really did it just because that's how the machine had been set up and just in case something popped up where I needed OS 9. That's not very likely, however.
As I reported here, I upgraded my iMac not long ago by installing a Western Digital 120 GB hard drive. There were two rebates associated with that purchase, one for $10 and one for either $50 or $80 (I don't remember). I submitted paperwork to get both. Well, today, I got the $10 rebate. We'll see if I get the other one. They were both sent in to Best Buy.
Speaking of Best Buy, be careful about both rebates and what you actually are buying if you're responding to their Sunday ads. On two occasions recently, I discovered that they were advertising 7200 rpm 8 MB buffer hard drives at discount prices that turned out to be 2 MB buffer hard disks when I got to the store. Also, be cautious about multiple rebates on a single item. Make sure you qualify for all parts of the rebate and be a little getting more than one. I am. That's why I said the above. From everything I could see at the store, I was eligible for both rebates simply by buying the hard disk.
posted by Andy Foster at
3:56 PM
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