Hi Greg,
Other good resources (the ones I frequent, anyway) which may help you in
your search for Mac knowledge:
http://www.macfixit.com/ Ted Landau's (author of "Sad Macs, Bombs, and
Other Disasters") Mac Troubleshooting Solutions web site, updated daily.
http://www.resexcellence.com/ Great for getting into the nuts and bolts of
the OS. (Don't let your users know about this one!) Updated regularly.
http://www.macwindows.com/ Web site for Macintosh-Windows Integration
Solutions. Updated daily.
http://www.mac-conflicts.com/ The Complete Conflict Compendium - a
database troubleshooting tool to help resolve software conflicts.
http://www.macaddict.com/ News, views, software & hardware reviews. Good
how-to's as well. Updated at least weekly.
http://www.versiontracker.com/ Tracks and links to software updates around
the world. Updated several times daily.
http://dealmac.com/ A Mac bargain hunter's paradise. :-) Hardware and
software specials, retail, auction, coupons, online and around the corner
bargains tracked and updated several times daily, and archives to boot.
Other comments:
> V9 does not work on older (non-PowerPC) Macintoshes, however, so if
> they've got any pre-1996 machines, they'll be running 8.x.
Or they may be running 7.x if they have a 68030 or lower processor. The
only '030s that will run 8.x are a Mac IIci, IIfx, and IIsi. All others
cannot go beyond 7.5.5. 68040 and above can run 8.0 & 8.1, but you need at
least a PPC (601 or higher) to run 8.5 and up.
> Avoid the Motorolas like the plague, at least get a PowerPC one. It's
> the de-facto standard. Many applications are no longer supported on
> Motorola platforms. Some others ship with "fat" binaries with both
> Motorola and PPC support (Reflection comes to mind).
This person is also referring to the 680x0 processors. They must not know
the PowerPC chips are also made by Motorola (under license from IBM). They
even have the Moto name and logo stamped on right on them, big as life!!
> I don't think the new "cube" has quite caught on.
The new G4 Cube (8" x 8" in a glass case) was just announced at MacWorld
Expo last month. It hasn't "caught on" because it isn't available yet!
(Though I think you can already buy one at the Apple online store, est
shipping date is still 3 weeks away.)
> The boot process is a nice, fat multicast. The server wants to play
> "root server". Make absolutely sure that it is configured with the right
> Appletalk cable ranges, and the Appletalk preferences in the boot image
> is set to the right cable range, else forget Appletalk routing on that
> subnet (yes, it boots via Appletalk, not IP). It's a network pig when
> they turn on (several at once), even with 100Mbps Ethernet switched to
> the desktop.
This person's experience, while probably not uncommon, is due to
misconfiguration of Mac networking. See one of the troubleshooting links
above for help with networking questions and problems.
> The worst thing about Apple is they introduce an upgraded OS about every
> 6 months which is a pain for maintenance and troubleshooting since each
> one adds/causes more headache with existing software.
In my experience, the worst thing about Apple's OS upgrades is that they
*don't* introduce an upgraded OS every 6 months. They *announce* a new OS,
then you wait and wait and wait for them to get it out the door. In the
meantime, everyone speculates about why it's taking so long, and why can't
Apple ever be on time with a release? As with all OS upgrades, the rule of
thumb for the 3000 applies: wait for the first "update" (i.e. PP1 in our
terminology or Service Pack 1 in MicroSpeak). 9.0 had as many bugs as 8.0.
9.0.4 has shaken out fairly well.
My .02,
Patrick
--
Patrick Santucci
Technical Services Analyst
Seabury & Smith, Inc.
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