[M.J. Ejenbaum] I had been having a few problems with my 15' Aluminum 1GHz PowerBook, including wake from sleep issues. Today, I ran a backup in the office on my FireWire 400 backup, and then went to work at my home. I decided to run the FireWire 800 backup as well, since I try to keep two (2) separate external hard drives as redundant backup drives. I plugged in the FireWire 800 'cold', i.e., when the PowerBook was completely shut down. Got a kernel panic. Hit the power button, waited 2 minutes, and no startup. Tried to boot from PowerBook G4 DVD which has Panther 10.3 on it, no go. CD would spin up, computer would not start no matter what.
I hightailed it over to the Apple Store in Aventura, Florida, and waited to see the resident Genius for about 10 minutes. He pulled out the battery, and then the Airport Extreme card. Lo and behold, the machine ejected the DVD, and started right up.
He gave me a new Airport Extreme card. All issues resolved. The Firewire 800 backup works fine, the computer wakes from sleep with no problems, and now, I am picking up a network near my residence that I had not detected before. The Genius told me that the bad Airport Extreme cards are responsible for a variety of problems, and one of the first suspects he has.
[Robert Lenoil] I have a Trendware 802.11g PC Card installed on my 500 MHz TiBook, which Mac OS X 10.3.5 treats as an Airport Extreme card because it uses the same Broadcom chipset. Yesterday I closed the lid on my PowerBook, but instead of going to sleep it just hung with the fan still on. After I rebooted, I got a kernel panic as long as the card was plugged in. I removed the card, and installed the Airport 4.1 update. The computer would then boot, but it no longer recognized the card - the PCCard menu showed 'unsupported legacy card' or something like that. I reinstalled the Airport 3.4.3 drivers and the PCCard menu didn't appear at all and Airport didn't see any AirPort card. I plugged the card into a PC laptop and it worked fine, so I didn't think it is a problem with the card itself.
I removed the wireless card, ran System Profiler, and it reported the same results - meaning that it wasn't seeing my card at all. I then opened up the TiBook and found the cardbus connector to the motherboard had worked itself loose. Just re-seated it, and I'm back in the saddle.
Tight integration of hardware and software can have pernicious side-effects. This is an OS design problem. Modern personals are too complex and unpredictable.
If a system seems very unstable, strip it down, boot off a CD, and retest.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Defective Airport cards can disable a Mac (Macintouch)
MacInTouch Home Page
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Camino - Firefox with a better GUI?
Camino: "Upgrades the Gecko HTML rendering engine from Mozilla 1.0 to Mozilla 1.7, resulting in performance, stability, and rendering improvements"
I don't like the Firefox GUI and font management on OS X. It's ugly. Also FF is slower than Safari on my machine. I'll try this one too.
I don't like the Firefox GUI and font management on OS X. It's ugly. Also FF is slower than Safari on my machine. I'll try this one too.
Migrating from one system to another (OS X)
Mac OS X 10.3.6: "Re: Anthony Burokas question: How to migrate to a new Mac without Setup Assistant. I have done this using the free utility Carbon Copy Cloner.
1. Download Carbon Copy Cloner onto the old Mac.
2. Shut down the new Mac.
3. Connect the Macs with a FireWire cable.
4. Start the new Mac in Target Disk Mode (hold down the T key)
5. On the old Mac, use disk utility to format the new Macs hard disk. (Anthony will need to copy any data he needs from the new Mac first)
6. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your old Mac's hard disk onto the new Mac.
7. Disconnect and restart your new Mac.
8. Reinstall iLife and other goodies from the System Restore disk.
I have done this 5 or 6 times. One time the new Mac wouldn't start up with the OS from the old Mac. I simply used the system CD or DVD that came with the new Mac and did an Archive and Install."
Nice discussion, but this is all way harder than it ought to be. In the old Classic days sytem migration was trivial. XP, btw, can handle a similar transition by mirroring then doing a repair install. Neither solution is really satisfactory.
1. Download Carbon Copy Cloner onto the old Mac.
2. Shut down the new Mac.
3. Connect the Macs with a FireWire cable.
4. Start the new Mac in Target Disk Mode (hold down the T key)
5. On the old Mac, use disk utility to format the new Macs hard disk. (Anthony will need to copy any data he needs from the new Mac first)
6. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your old Mac's hard disk onto the new Mac.
7. Disconnect and restart your new Mac.
8. Reinstall iLife and other goodies from the System Restore disk.
I have done this 5 or 6 times. One time the new Mac wouldn't start up with the OS from the old Mac. I simply used the system CD or DVD that came with the new Mac and did an Archive and Install."
Nice discussion, but this is all way harder than it ought to be. In the old Classic days sytem migration was trivial. XP, btw, can handle a similar transition by mirroring then doing a repair install. Neither solution is really satisfactory.
Monday, December 06, 2004
The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Beta
The Omni Group - Applications - OmniOutliner - Beta
Sounds more like .... MORE 3.1 (Symantec). I'll write and ask if they're going to import MORE files into the Pro version.
Coming soon! OmniOutliner Professional has in-depth outlining features like folded editing, named styles, clipping service support, audio recording, saved templates, and much more.
Sounds more like .... MORE 3.1 (Symantec). I'll write and ask if they're going to import MORE files into the Pro version.
OS X firewire problems: occult solutions
MacInTouch Home Page:
Firewire is too bizarre to live. It reminds me of SCSI.
About a week ago, I decided to add some new music to my 4G click-wheel (40 GB model). I placed the iPod in the dock and waited for the appearance of iSync and iTunes. And neither appeared. The iPod did not mount. Took the iPod out of the dock and put it back in. Still no joy. Checked all cables and connections (FireWire in my case) and nada.
I'm running 10.3.6. and iTunes 4.7, plus latest updaters for iPod on a MDD 1.25 ghtz G4.
So I ran the Apple Hardware test and it reported a problem with my FireWire bus. (I have no other FireWire peripherals.) The diagnostic suggested that I read over my warranty information and get in touch with AppleCare.
So I went to the Apple website in search of a link with which to do this. Decided to check the Knowledge Base and, lo and behold, I found an article about FireWire problems. The article suggested that I shut down the machine, disconnect the power cord and all peripheral inputs EXCEPT for the FireWire line, and wait at least five minutes and then reconnect everything and then boot up.
I followed this procedure and the FireWire bus came back up. iPod mounted normally and has done so since. No explanation in the article as to what causes this or how the fix works, but it did work.
Firewire is too bizarre to live. It reminds me of SCSI.
Friday, December 03, 2004
Xcelis: cell phone to VOIP
Xcelis
This peculiar service is primarily useful for making international calls via a cellphone. In my case I all Canada several times a week. My employer has no trouble with personal calls on my corporate cellphone -- but not with calls to Canada! So if I switched to a corporate phone, this service could be very interesting.
This peculiar service is primarily useful for making international calls via a cellphone. In my case I all Canada several times a week. My employer has no trouble with personal calls on my corporate cellphone -- but not with calls to Canada! So if I switched to a corporate phone, this service could be very interesting.
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