Flexistentialism » Apple

Whamb Skin

Sam — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 09:40:25 +0000

I’ve spent my evening concocting an interface skin for Whamb, which is a lightweight audio player for OS X. It is freeware, and works nicely, with a very small footprint. The skin is basically a slapdash of standard UI elements and some iTunes elements. It is meant to be small, easy to use, and fully featured.

If you’d like to download it, go nuts. It is a zipped bundle, and needs to be unzipped and installed in /Library/Application Support/Whamb/Skins to work. You can also put it in the ~/Library equivalent if you want it enabled only for your user. If you want to try the skin out without installing it, just drop it onto the Whamb program logo. This skin may require version 1.2 of Whamb, but I don’t know for sure. When in doubt, upgrade!

Happy 20th Birthday, Macintosh

Sam — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 03:49:23 +0000

On January 22nd, 1984, Apple ran an advertisement during the Super Bowl that introduced the first Macintosh computer. Almost at once the Macintosh revolutionized the idea of personal computing. Tossing aside crude interfaces, and adopting the attitude that anyone, and everyone, can use a computer, they changed the entire industry. Apple hasn’t always been on the forefront, but they have deeply affected how our culture thinks about computers, and still provides a driving force of innovation that trickles through the entire computer industry. My family’s first computer was a Mac IIsi, and after years of using Windows, Linux and everything else, I’m right back where I started, on the Mac. I still use Windows, and I still love Linux, but for now, there’s nothing quite like Mac OS.

I’m pretty pleased to be using a Mac, and when I consider how far things have come in 20 years, I’m pretty excited about what the next 20 have to offer.

It Lives! Panther on the Beige G3!

Sam — Thu, 22 Jan 2004 06:25:13 +0000

Panther now lives on my Beige G3! Currently, the 10.3.2 update is installing, and things have been going well. For the curious, here was the basic procedure…

My Mac’s stats are as follows:

Beige G3 Rev. A
XLR8 G4/466MHz processor upgrade
768MB RAM
Stock 24X CD-ROM
Generic USB card
ATI Radeon Mac Edition

ATTO PSC UltraWide SCSI card
To install Panther, I removed all but one stick of ram, all my USB devices, and the ATTO card. I backed up my critical data onto another drive, and pulled it from the system for good measure.

I then partitioned my drive into two pieces, a 512MB and a 5.5GB from the remainder. I booted off of an OS 9.2.1 CD, and then installed OS 9.2.1 on the small drive. After running into an issue where OS 9 would crash on boot, which was solved by booting with extensions off (holding down ‘shift’ while booting) and removing some offending extensions, I proceeded.

I downloaded version 3.0a11 of XPostFacto and ran it. I inserted the Panther Install CD, and in the options menu, I specified a throttle of 10, set my input device to Keyboard, and my output device to my ATI card. The ATI card is required, because Panther does not support the onboard video on these Beige G3’s. It is a shame, but on the other hand, the onboard video sucks, so you really should be upgrading anyway.

Fiddling with the ‘options’ menu on XPostFacto can take the most time. I tried many different combos before finding something that worked. What worked for me may not work for you. I recommend checking out OWC’s Tech Forum and reading about other people’s experiences.

After initiating the installation from XPostFacto, the computer rebooted, and began loading the installer. I got all sorts of crazy text messages, which could be identified as the BSD kernel loading. Eventually, the installer loaded, and I began the standard procedure of installing and choosing options.

After the installation of the first CD finished, the computer booted up, but then failed, giving me CLAIM Failed errors in Open Firmware. I booted back into OS 9 (with the assistance of the Startup Disk control panel on the OS 9 boot CD), reran XPostFacto, and reinstalled BootX, the Extensions, and the Startup Items. Then I used XPostFacto to choose the 10.3 partition, and used it to restart the computer.

It booted back into Panther, I finished the installation, fiddled with my settings, and installed the 10.2.3 update, which seems to have gone fine!

I still have some things to do, mainly reinstalling my USB devices, my ATTO ExpressPCI PSC SCSI card (this will be the one to give me trouble, if anything does), the extra memory, and the Powerlogix CPU Director software to activate the cache on my processor. Then of course there is all the software reinstallation and backup restoration.

But for now I can breath a sigh of relief, and go to bed, confident that everything is going to be downhill from here.

Update: After a day of installing stuff, things are working quite well, with one exception. My ATTO ExpressPCI PSC card is detected by the system, but drives connected to it do not mount. The card was once an Apple BTO card, but has been reflashed to the ATTO firmware v.1.66. The system detects the card, and the ExpressPCI configuration lets me view the card’s details (even showing the connected drive), and the Panther drivers for the card have been installed, but still, no mounting. I may need to play with the termination settings some more, as it seems others have gotten this card working with Panther on Beiges.

In good news, my Wacom Graphire2 works great, my Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse work great, and early boot video is enabled thanks to XPostFacto (set the keyboard as the input device and your video card as the output in the NVRAM settings, then reboot and enjoy). The video looks great thanks to the new card, and I’m loving Panther’s speed and features. It is clearly faster than Jaguar, and the Finder finally feels like a real product instead of being sort of half-assed. Expose is a great feature as well. I’m also enjoying the improvements to Mail, mostly speed, improved Junk filters and threading! PDFs load lighting fast, and Photoshop and Illustrator (both CS) run like a dream. Sound works fine, including global volume control.

In terms of network performance, I’m amazed that finally, for true, OS X will detect and mount my PC’s shared drives! And the PC will mount OS X’s shared drives! Previously, this feature just wouldn’t work. Not at all. Along the same lines, I can now use my PC’s printer over the network. Unfortunately, I still have some driver issues to work out there, but the basic functionality is there, which is another first for OS X. I’m amazed at what Apple does with OS X in each revision. More and more this is feeling like the OS I really want to be working in.

Aside from this ATTO problem, I’d say things are working quite swimmingly. More updates as I try to work through that remaining issue.

Update II: The printing issue has been solved thanks to the Gimp-Print drivers included on Disk 2 of the Panther install! A driver for my Deskjet 1120C (connected to an XP box via the parallel port) was included, and works great.

Billy Rocks

Sam — Wed, 21 Jan 2004 00:52:13 +0000

Feeling sympathy for my mac problems of late, Billy has bequeathed to me a Radeon Mac Edition PCI, which is in fact, the perfect card to solve my problems! Now, I haven’t installed the card or Panther yet, and there is a dangerous road ahead fraught with alpha software, unsupported hacks, totally ridiculous lengths of SCSI ribbon cable, and a long handled spoon. But, Jebus willing, I’ll have Panther on this Mac by morning. I’ll post my experiences as soon as I’m able. Thanks, Billy!

Today has been a pretty good day in general. I got some good job-related news. A nice man sent me a copy of the service manual for the Phase Linear 700 Series II which Berg and I are attempting to repair. The procedures described in the manual will make life much easier for us. Also, I got to eat both sushi and falafel today. And when we went to get the falafel, the cheerful shop proprietor had several young women behind the counter so he could show them how to use a hookah. He sells them in the restaurant, and is quite skilled in their use, which isn’t immediately obvious to the novice. While we ordered, he had it drawing well, and was showing them how to place the coal, keep it drawing well, etc. I like that guy a lot.

Update: Its 3:30AM, and no luck yet. Curses! However, the video card is working great! Its just that dumb ol’e Panther does NOT want to install on this Mac. Not surprising, since it is technically unsupported, but I am failing where other’s have succeeded. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, but they may have to wait until tomorrow…

Mac Crashed

Sam — Sun, 18 Jan 2004 20:32:31 +0000

After trying to install Panther (OS X 10.3) on my Beige G3, I realized that it isn’t possible with my current configuration. Technically, the Beige isn’t supported by Panther, because it doesn’t have any built-in USB ports. However, some people have had success installing it with the assistance of XPostFacto a utility that previously allowed Old World non-G3 Macs to install OS X. Ryan, the author, is now updating the software to assist Beige G3 owners in the installation of Panther. It seems that it is possible, and some people have had success, but the major block at the moment is the fact that Panther does not support the internal video on the Beige. XPostFacto may solve this problem in the future, but currently it does not.

The only way anyone has had success with this install is by using an additional video card, such as the Radeon 7000 PCI or the Rage 128 PCI. There is a Mac version of the Radeon 7000 PCI, but unfortunately it still costs just over 100 dollars. There is a PC version of the same card which only costs $40. However, it lacks the second monitor output, and has a little less RAM. The card won’t work directly in a Mac, but a savvy user can flash a PC card with a Mac ROM and allow the card to be used on a Mac. This may be the path I have to take.

If anyone has one of these Radeon 7000 PCI 32mb DDR video cards they would be willing to part with for a reasonable price (20-30 dollars), let me know!

In the meantime, I’m trying to get Jaguar back on this Mac, but I seem to have misplaced my install disks. If I let you borrow them, please get them back to me soon! However, its possible I just lost them around the house…

So for now, the Mac is totally non-functional. Weep bitter tears for the last of the Old World Macs…

Update: I found my 10.2 disks! They were hidden amongst all the Space Ghost VCDs for some odd reason… I would never have found them if I wasn’t overcome with a desire to watch Space Ghost again last night.

Garage Sale Score

Sam — Sat, 14 Jun 2003 22:31:25 +0000

On the way into work this morning I passed a garage sale, and my eagle eye spotted an Apple monitor amongst the merchandise. I almost stopped, but then realized that I would be late to work, so I sighed and drove on. On my way home from work, I remembered the sale, and saw it was still running. I pulled over, jumped off my scooter, and ran over to find that my suspicions were correct, and that there was indeed an Apple monitor for sale, and it still hadn’t been sold! $15 dollars later, I was the proud owner of an Apple Multiple Scan 20 monitor. Its 20”, and supports 1280×1024 at 75Hz. Score!

I also bought a nice Swiss Army laptop bag, which was also $15 and brand new (it still had its original product tag on it). Its a very durable and cool bag, and I’m sure I’ll find something good to do with it. I even picked up a pair of shoes I thought would fit Madalene, because they are pretty sweet shoes. However, they were a bit too small. No big deal, I’m sure we can find someone that they will fit, they are a women’s 6 1/2.

I had to scoot home and get the car in order to pick up the monitor, but it was worth it. 20” of goodness is now gracing my PC. I’ve got a bit of a quandary now, because I have a very nice Hitachi 19” monitor on my Mac, which supports great resolutions and looks wonderful, but now there is this multiple scan 20” which doesn’t support as high of resolutions, and doesn’t look quite as good, but is still larger. The higher resolutions of the Hitachi aren’t in use right now, because I don’t have a very good video card in the Mac, though I’m planning on getting one at some point. So which monitor goes on which computer? Well, for now, the 20” will stay on the PC, because the slightly larger size doesn’t fully account for the slightly lower visual quality. Also, I like to watch movies on the PC, to keep the Mac open for real work, and the larger monitor will look nice for that, despite the fact that it isn’t as well converged.

Either way, I’m happy.

Happy Birthday, OS X!

Sam — Mon, 24 Mar 2003 20:09:14 +0000

I know its silly, but today I celebrate the birthday of Mac OS X, one of the most innovative and powerful operating systems of recent years. OS X 10.0 was released two years ago today, and its been nothing but improvements since then. Thanks, Apple, for a quality product, and the only operating system I’ve ever felt compelled to purchase my own copy of (excepting a CD of FreeBSD I bought for 10 bucks long, long ago, when my internet connection was too slow to download it). Here is to another year of improvements and creativity!

Camino 0.7 Released

Sam — Fri, 07 Mar 2003 04:17:49 +0000

Huzzah! The browser formerly known as Chimera has finally hit 0.7 after much waiting and trepidation. All Mac users go download and enjoy the goodness that is the new version of your favorite browser. Unless its not your favorite browser, in which case you should go download it anyway so you can give the new Camino a second chance.

A Browser By Any Other Name…

Sam — Tue, 04 Mar 2003 03:08:09 +0000

The browser formerly known as Chimera for OS X has been renamed “Camino” and now has a new webpage! Don’t go looking for downloads yet, however, because the new version isn’t available yet. However, I’ve heard that 0.7 is basically complete, they just need to finish going through and replacing every instance of Chimera with Camino. This means 0.7 should be available really soon now. An annoying setback for a project like this, but an unfortunate reality.

As to the name, some people are afraid that it brings to mind images of 70’s era half-car/half-pickup monstrosities, but I find the name perfectly acceptable. It means “path” or “road” in Spanish, and seems to be rather appropriate. And besides, I don’t care what its called, as long as it continues to bring forth all that delicious browser goodness that it has already brought me.

OS X Update and More!

Sam — Fri, 14 Feb 2003 03:58:54 +0000

Its X.2.4 time, peeps. Get on that software update, and lets pound the Apple servers silly!

Also, in a nice little flurry, we have Moveable Type 2.6 released, and Kung Log 1.3 released. So much great software out there, its both exciting and intimidating for a newbie developer like myself.