PowerMac G4 Hardware Help

Any part in RED means you should "Read and Heed". Do this or else type topics are covered. Just because you have looked at this once you may want to reread it again. I frequently add new material as I learn new things or get reminded that not everyone knows something that I do. I hope you find the answers you need here. If not use the form to Contact Us and we will be happy to help. More about Power Mac G4 Power Supplies

New! OSX Install Notes for G4 Systems - a quick read may save you some trouble.

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G4 MIRROR DRIVE DOOR FAILURES - Keep your vent clean!

If you are on a G4 Mirror Door system (G4MDD) the one with the Mirror Front and 4 Buick Roadmaster Vent Ports, shut down your system and look up under the front foot (you will have to pick the unit up). This is where your machine draws cooler air and it probably is packed with dust. Every unit I have checked had more lint on it then a dryer screen after drying a load of new cotton towels. No air flow means parts heat up and the fans run all the time. Eventually your processor will fail and it is even worse on the dual processor units since one is not cooled as the other. Keep it clean or suffer the consequences. Failed power supply, processors and ram are what happens. I use a dampened rag and brush all the lint and dust out and then a can of air to blow out the dust.

MAKING INCREMENTAL BACKUPS OF OSX

For my servers I use a small program called RsynchX 2.1. It has a decent and fairly uncomplicated interface. The scripting is a bit daunting but you can automate your jobs. I simply just do it each evening. You simply drag your source and destination to the graphic interface and select what you want to do from the buttons. They can even be a network drive you are connected with. It is free to use but I think they take donations. You can choose to make the drive or partition you are backing up to bootable and it even handles the older OS9 files if you have them on your system. It has proven reliable to me. It requires OSX 10.1.5 or later and I have used it personally all the way up through Tiger. I haven't tried it with Leopard but suspect it will work as well since it calls to the built in rsync that normally is only available to terminal users. It is on the OSX Kitchen Sink in the utilities folder, but can be downloaded from the link above or your favorite Mac Shareware site.

BURNING ELECTRONICS SMELL

Cheryn said something is not right as we were about to retire last night. She noticed an odd smell in the server area. I noticed the black screen on our Filemaker server and noticed that same aroma. We quickly unplugged the unit. For some reason the power supply thought it was a good time to die. I pulled the machine down to the test bench and noticed that the power supply was extremely hot. Other components in the system were quite warm as well. I pulled another G4 DA and moved my old components over one at a time. I was back up and running in about 1/2 hour and hope it was just the power supply. Since we were on a good quality UPS I am fairly certain a power fluctuation was not the reason it decided to die. I always tell folks replacing a power supply to make sure their other components are responsible. I have been doing this long enough to have learned that sometimes dual processor systems sometimes have one processor starting to go out and they take the power supply out. Putting a new power supply in will only fix it for a while and the same problem will occur again if you don't fix the problem. I hope the processor on my unit was not responsible and it was just a fluke. In all these years this is the first time I have ever had a power supply go out. I added an upper level fan to our server rack. It has started to warm up here and perhaps that may have contributed.

SLEEPLESS - NODDING OFF AND NOT ABLE TO WAKE UP

A couple of times now I have had folks describe their machines as shutting down or locking up. I eventually figured out that they had USB2 cards installed and had turned the sleep feature back on. What happens is the machine goes to sleep and cannot wake up. You sit there with a black screen and have to force a power down by holding in the button before the machine will restart. If you are running OS9 you can't just turn off or discard the Energy Manager parts it leaves the preferences that were already set. You need to go into the energy manager and swing the slider to the off position. In OSX the same holds true. Turn off the sleep totally. You can use the screen saver mode on most units but do pick something simple. The more complex the screen saver the more likely you are to have trouble. A few of you may not have trouble with sleep mode in X. Apple did fix a few problems with the later software. Do be aware though that a USB2 card or even perhaps a device you have plugged in can cause sleep related issues. I choose to turn mine off totally and shut down the machines when they are not in use, since I will not do without the device or USB2 card.

DON'T GET RIPPED OFF - WIRELESS RANGE EXTENDER SCAMS

Do you remember the little stickers they use to sell to extend the range of your cell phone? Those people should have been put in jail but nothing ever happened. I have talked with what I thought were intelligent people who though the little stickers actually worked. Well now there are companies selling gizmo's to extend your wireless computing range. Be wary of anyone making outrageous claims. Adding a higher gain antenna is sound science. Adding another wireless access point is also sound science. People who make networking equipment like LinkSys, Netgear and Dlink would be in this business if real improvements could be had and do make products that work. If you travel look for a directional antenna (like a cantenna) that will hook to your existing setup and enable you to point directly at the wireless source where you are at. Like anything else on this earth though look for the misdirection, there is no real magic.

OSX Tip - Stool Softener For Your Constipated OSX System?

OSX is supposed to perform maintenance automatically. They improved it in Tiger so that it supposedly runs even if your computer was off or asleep when it was scheduled but it doesn't always. You certainly want to do this if you are on Panther or Jaguar, but folks on Tiger or Leopard systems may benefit from running it regularly.

• Open terminal from the utilities folder on your system.
• Type the following in the command line and then leave the computer alone until it finishes.
• sudo periodic daily weekly monthly (you may get a warning and indeed you do not want to play around with the sudo command).
• Press return and it will prompt you to type in your password before it runs.
• Once complete you can type in exit and logout and or just simply quit the Terminal program.

This forces the daily, weekly and monthly maintenance to run on your system. Do this about once a month or get system optimizer off the Kitchen Sink CD (Tiger and below) which does more and run it weekly. NOTE THIS MAY TAKE SOME TIME IF YOU HAVE NEVER RAN IT, BE PATIENT. Prepare to be amazed on how much better your system runs if the maintenance hasn't been running!

Apple does have an Automator Script that will do this for you without terminal. It is called Maintenance and it is in there Automater Actions Section. The version is for both Tiger and Leopard. It works well and should be safe to use since it only runs the built in maintenance.

It's hard for me to think that way?

It sometimes helps if you understand how things work. This sometimes surprises me, but I guess it really shouldn't. I had a user call recently and say they were disappointed with their purchase and that many of the applications were not working. After a bit I finally figured out they were using the recent applications folder from the OS9 menu bar. Of course when I configure a system I load various test applications from attached hard drives as well as a few applications from the actual hard drive but not very many. I hope they understood but am not sure they really got it. The recent application folder (from the OS9 Apple Menu) is up to the last 10 applications loaded on the machine. I guess I should clear this folder out but in all these years this is the only time it was ever a problem. Most people have been taught to open an application you open up the hard drive and then the applications folder. Of course it is a shortcut once you have recently loaded an application and that is what makes the Mac OS great. They give you easy ways to do repetitive work. The correct way though to open an application though is to find it in the actual applications folder and open it from there. I guess the last computer they had someone had used it a bit and luckily the recent application folder was fairly populated. Unfortunately for them they may have missed dozens or more programs that may have resided on their hard drive simply by looking in the applications folder on the hard drive.

Since I use dozens of progams regularly I never go into the habit of looking for them in the recent applications folder. I do use it though when I know I was just in the application recently and it saves a step.

I also see folks pull the application out of its install folder and move it to the desktop. Then they wonder why the plugins stopped working or they lose their bookmarks or the dictionary breaks, etc. You must leave the applications in the install folder, there may be other parts that load and when you move the actual app you change the path to the accessories breaking them. You can make an alias and drag it to the desktop or in the case of OSX and the dock you can drag the app to the dock and it will automatically make an alias in the dock. Oh yes, the ? mark symbols in OS9 stand for the help files and are not a motherboard problem.

Bad News for us Mac G3-G4 users - no more 120GB Hard Drives

I had a hunch that this day would come. Most of you know that the largest hard drive you can install on a G4 prior to the 2002 QuickSilver was 132GB's. Practically that means that the largest drive you can install on the stock bus of the G3 or G4 is 120GB's. We have sold many hundreds of this size drive over the past years. It seems that everyone has stopped producing them moving up to the 160GB and larger. These of course do not format properly. We can still get 80 GB drives and a pair of them will do most people nicely but if you really needed that extra space, then your affordable option is to go to the SATA card and drives that do not have the limit problems. We are working on a lower cost solution. Watch our feature pages and store. In the meanwhile we were able to find a small supply of 120GB Reburbished Hitachi Drives. I would use these as data drives and put in a new 80 as my main drive. Oh yes, let me add that formatting a 160 or larger to the 128GB it ends up is a bad idea. The drives don't last long set up that way. I am not sure why.

Drive Formatting Safety

We recently added a gizmo to our small arsenal of tools that allows us to automatically format drives to Department of Defense level security. If you format lots of drives like we do then you might want to look into one. It is called the Drive eRazer and is available from Wiebtech.com. It really doesn't do anything you can't do on your computer using the Mac disk utilities, except that it doesn't tie up a computer to do it.

Psst, Hey Buddy, want to buy a watch?

I still have an unfiltered E-mailbox I set up many years ago. It lets me see how much spam is being produced and see what viruses and other crap PC users are getting sent. The account averages around 430 messages a day and none are to me. I haven't advertised this email address in over 10 years which is long in Net Years. What astounds me is that these guys keep doing this because idiots evidently are still clicking on the links so they are still getting paid. I am not sure about you but I wouldn't buy a Rolex from a guy in an alley, or ED medication from Russia or China, or refinance from someone who can't spell it from Zaire. If you must try the Hoodia diet aids, go to Walgreens. If you get crap like this in your email box, don't open it. It probably has an image linked that lets the sender know you are looking at the mail. Delete it without opening, and have a talk with your idiot friends who are probably still clicking. I am not sure who would buy from someone who starts out their message your Farmacy order is in, but evidently they are still out there. I guess they take the PE pills and then go gambling at the online casino's with the money they saved from lowering the Morttggage, wearing their new Raolex, and sporting their new enlargement.

Can I use Leopard's Time Machine with my non-Apple network drive?

One of our customers gave us this tip.

James Buttle writes: Time Machine
Here is the full how to and why it can work on this link  http://www.macinstruct.com/node/234

To make a long story short you simply open terminal and type or copy and paste in the following:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

As you can see it simply shows the "unsupported" Network Volumes. You can even use a FAT32 volume for Time Machine using this command. Thanks James!

Pioneer SuperDrive - 20X DVD Burn Speeds! (A08, A09, A10, A12, Now the A15)

What is the difference between the A12 and the A15? A03 of course! They say the A15 is faster with up to 20X DVD write speeds and reliable 40X CD burns. I just finished testing the new Pioneer A15 and it is available for order in the store. UPDATE: Toast 6 and later for OSX does support these features now! But for the few dollars more one of these units cost I think you might want to spend it now. It works fine in both 9 and X and I have already written an OS9 iTunes patch for it. You can use all your existing software just like it is a regular Apple SuperDrive including iDVD. Eventually when everyone catches up softwarewise you will be ready for the new Double Layer Media capacity (Roxio Toast 7). In the meanwhile though you will have up to 20X DVD burn speeds! Patchburn is required for OSX. We of course include all needed patches and demo versions of DVD writing software. Of course Apple's iDVD software is available in the popular iLife upgrades.

I had someone else call and said they bought an a SuperDrive (not from us) and installed it with the patches on a G4 and could not get the DVD to play movies back in OSX. My guess is that they installed the mechanism and didn't have the DVD Player installed since the OSX install doesn't put the player on the system if a DVD player is not present during the install. If you just copy the DVD Player from someone elses system and add it to your system it will not work. You need to use a program called Pacifist (on the X Kitchen Sink/Diagnostics folder), This will allow you to install parts of the OSX software (much like Tome Viewer does in OS9). Use it to locate the DVD player on the original CD and let it install it with all the parts and pieces. Run the disk utility and repair permissions always before and after installing software. Out of the dozens of A09's (now A15's) I have installed in both 9, Jaguar and Panther and Tiger, I have never had a problem. Of course we sell brand new drives with our 30 day warranty and the full 1 year factory warranty from Pioneer, beside including the 9 and X patches so that all Apple software see's the device as a fully recognized drive. I wrote the new OS9 drivers and they are included on the install CD we include with the drive.

The Pioneer SuperDrive will read DVD-RAM disks that are out of the cartridge but will not write to them.

We also have a patched DVD player that allows you to playback DVD Movies on Beige or Blue and White G3's. You just need an ATI Rage Pro Video Card 16MB or better installed. No special DVD decoder required.

Got the TurboTax Blues?

The latest version of TurboTax for Mac requires a G3 or better processor, 256MB of ram, and Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger. Let me first say that 256MB or ram is not enough really to run the operating system by itself. 384 would get you by but 512MB or more is what you really need. We carry the ram and the OSX Tiger software (see our Memory or Software section of our store) and can help you upgrade your machine or if needed sell you an affordable qualifying system. We are here to help!

We just got a better buy on both 256 and 512MB Mac compatible SDRAM. Check out our lower prices.

Do you need the CD version of Tiger?

Give us a call when you are ready to order and we will supply the CD version at your request.

I can make any Sawtooth or later G4 Leopard Compatible

I sometimes hear of a computer sales person telling a customer to forget that old machine it can't run the latest operating system. Granted these days the little $599 Mini looks real attractive. Of course you have to add a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, to the price plus tax and shipping. But it is still a good buy for many folks. For some though that need to run the odd older Mac app or already have investment in their old G4 tower like lots of ram and larger hard drive or processor upgrade. I still like to boot into OS9 to run an application or two, and that is something none of the new Macs can do at any price.

What Leopard needs that most don't have is an 867mhz or faster G4 processor. The Sonnet 1 ghz G4 Processor upgrade meets that need and at less than $175 shipped it makes short work of not having fast enough processor and of course for a bit more you can go even faster. The second thing is a Quartz Extreme support Graphics Card. Most all early G4's have the 16MB ATI AGP Graphics Card. Our NVIDIA 5200 128MB Graphics Card not only supports Quartz Extreme, its 5200 GPU also supports core video and is only $99.77 shipped. Of course you may need to add a bit more ram, perhaps a DVD burner, USB2 Card, Wireless Card etc. You can easily extend the life of your old trusty G4 for less money than buying new and run the latest operating system if you choose. You can do this yourself but if you would rather you can ship your unit here and have us install the upgrades for only a few dollars more, plus get your machine thoroughly cleaned and tested.

Do you have less than an 867 mhz G4 and want to run Leopard?

I recently added a program to our OSX Kitchen Sink 2008 1st Qtr Edition called Leopard Assist. It allows you to install Leopard on some earlier G4 systems. I know that Leopard would run okay on a iMac G4 700 or 800 for example with enough ram. Click on the link to go to the web site and download it yourself.

OSX - To Journal or not to Journal

I had someone ask about Journaling. If you run a server you already probably know about this and have it on your server since it gives you a bit of extra protection and reliability. If you hadn't noticed it became an option for your Mac Extended Hard Drive starting in Panther. Next time you repair permissions using the disk utility in Tiger look at the screen and you may noticing the Journaling option button. I have a rule of thumb about Journaling. I turn it on my boot drive and off on my data drives. What it does is keep additional information as you use your hard drive. In the event of a power dip or crash when you power back up it uses this info to restore the drive. Some folks think that everything should have it turned on but it costs speed. If you use your data drive for video project work for example it slows down the drive access enough it may cause you problems. Burning large amounts of data to an optical may be slowed down enough you may have a failure is another reason you may want to turn it off. Since the drive utility makes it easy to turn on an off you may want to use this to your advantage. Turn it off when you need max performance and on the rest of the time for safety.

 

We are in the process of testing all of our upgrades and equipment with OSX 10.5 Leopard. See my tech tips. Check the item descriptions for more details. Not sure if an item will work with the latest OS X 10.5, give us a call before ordering. It will be a few days before we are selling the Leopard software. Thanks.

Leopard OSX Update 10.5.1

Probably not a record in terms of time but this certainly is close on the heels of the release. As usual I recommend you review the MacFixit.com Website about the trouble folks are having with the update before installing. The link to Apple's download page is here. I have downloaded it but probably won't have time to test it until later this weekend. As always I will run the disk utility and repair permissions before installing.

Leopard OSX - Testing in Progress! Apple's Leopard requirements

I got my copy of Leopard OS10.5 Saturday morning and installed and began testing it on our equipment. My first surprise was that it wouldn't install on a QuickSilver 800 I had on the bench (yeah I read the requirements but I thought it still would let me install). The installer refused. I installed a FastMac 1.5Ghz and tried again. It installed perfectly from our Pioneer A12 SuperDrive unit we sell which recognizes it straight up with no patches. I installed it on the Seagate 120GB drives we sell. I tested our NVIDIA 5200 AGP card and it reports Hardware Accelerated and Quartz Extreme. Our USB 2 5 port card also reports as a USB 2 High Speed Bus and gives good transfer rates. I have since ran Leopard on a 533 mhz Digital Audio w/768mb of ram. It ran okay but was sluggish.

Leopard actually runs okay on processors slower than 867 mhz as long as you have sufficient ram. Apple put a gotcha in the installer. Get someone with a qualifying system to connect your system in Firewire Target mode and install that way, or use Carbon Copy Cloner from a Firewire drive with an installation on it.

I put back the 800 mhz Processor after some initial testing and once installed Leopard runs just fine on it. Apple put a gotcha in it that really is un-necessary in my opinion. Someone will come out with a hack soon enough to let you install it on older slower machines. Performance wasn't bad with 1 gb of memory. I guess they want to force us to buy new hardware. The Sonnet 1 Ghz and above or the FastMac processor is a great upgrade and it works okay with the installer. They set the minimum processor install at 867mhz and I guess it looks for that speed of processor. Do note the problem with DVD playback noted below on systems with 16mb video cards.

Password and Keychain Grief?

Download the Login and Keychain Update from the Apple web site. This has been superceded by the 10.5.1 update.

What No Classic Mode in Leopard?

One other major gotcha for many folks is that Leopard does NOT HAVE A CLASSIC MODE. If you must run an older program you can boot back into 9.2 on dual bootable machines and use your program. If your computer is not 9 bootable then you had best keep Tiger around a while longer. I think some folks will probably keep a second drive with Tiger and classic installed if they must run a classic application and they have a system that only boots in X.

No DVD PlayBack?

Unless you have a 32MB Quartz Extreme qualified Video Card, the DVD Player refuses to work. I tested a 16MB stock ADC ATI Radeon Card and the DVD player failed. It works fine with our NVIDIA 5200 Upgrade Cards or a stock 32MB NVIDIA or RADEON Card as long as they qualify for Quartz Extreme. It is kinda cool with visual image chapter markers.

I will not list the G4 Sawtooth, Gigabit Ethernet, or Digital Audio systems on our web site as Leopard compatible though many of them will run it just fine if they have faster than 867 mhz processors. The DVD playback will not work on these models without a graphics card upgrade. Any of the models with the faster processors will run Leopard and with the addition of the NVIDIA 128MB Upgrade Card will run great and allow DVD playback with the newer player.

No Modem?

I have been told by one of our customers that Leopard disabled his ability to use his modem on several of his systems he has installed on.

Leopard's Time Machine requires a high capacity second drive or an External

I tested our Silver Bullet Hard Drives during the install and successfully cloned the install using the more advanced version 3.0 of the Carbon Copy Cloner program. The Time Machine recognizes the drive straight up. We do recommend you reformat the drive using Leopard's disk utility. A large internal hard drive would also work but the early G4's have the 120GB limit. You are better off with a large capacity external Firewire Drive like our FAN COOLED Silver Bullets, or consider adding a SATA Card and one or two drive up to 1 Terabyte in capacity.

Leopard Precautions

Make sure you read MacFixit.com notes before installing. They recommend strongly new install or archive and install rather than upgrade. Also remember to backup any crucial data (or better yet keep a cloned copy of your old install). Run drive repair and repair permissions before starting the install.

Leopard INCOMPATIBLE PROGRAMS - You best check first if you work on your Mac

Before you jump out there and install Leopard, if you use your system for work, you might want to note that more than a couple of programs will not run under Leopard until the software manufacturer releases an upgrade. Adobe CS3 problems may put a cramp in a lot of peoples ability to work, as may QuickBooks Pro 2007, or Adobe Acrobat 7 users not being able to print. MacRumors.com has thoughfully put up a list of incompatible programs as well as listed some programs that just have certain issues. They also include links for many of the software manufacturers statements page. You probably will find this page helpful and you may want to hold off updating to Leopard if you are a heavy user of these incompatible programs until the companies release an update.

Make your G4 Wireless!  $34.77 Shipped! Airport Extreme Speeds!

"Mac compatible Wireless G PCI Card Low Cost $34.77 includes shipping!! Add low cost high speed Wireless G speed to your G3/G4 System! Leopard Tested! Pigtail style antenna makes this unit a bit less expensive but still works great. Leave it to Headgap to bring a low cost Mac OSX compatible Wireless G PCI card to the market! OSX Panther and Tiger Drivers recently updated drivers supplied on CD by us. This 802.11g Wireless-G PCI Adapter (AirPort Extreme speeds and connectivity) is based on the Realtek chipset and is compatible with 802.11b and 802.11g standards that deliver fast 54 Mbps data transfers! Your wireless communications are protected with up to 128-bit WEP encryption. It fits easily in your desktop's PCI card slot so you can start networking and get online fast. Connect today with this Wireless-G PCI Adapter! Simply plug into an open PCI slot, connect the antenna, and install the drivers from the Headgap supplied CD. FEATURES: Standards: IEEE-802.11g/IEE-802.11b, Frequency Band: 2.4000~2.4835GHz, Bus Type: 32-bit PCI V2.2/2.1. Works in Blue and White, G4 Towers all, early G5's with standard PCI slots. REQUIRES: Open PCI Slot and OSX 10.3 & 10.4, and the ability to install a PCI card. Compare at $99.99 Our LOW $34.77 Price includes domestic shipping. See the Wireless section of the store.

Add Gigabit Ethernet Speed to OS8.6 - OSX!  $24.77 Shipped!

Gigabit Ethernet PCI Card for the Mac! Leopard Tested! I tested this card on a G3 Desktop in OS8.6 on our own network. This card reduces latency even on slower 100 base networks. Now with OS 8.6, OS9 and X drivers! Leave it to Headgap to bring you a bargain priced high quality 10/100/1000 base-T Ethernet Card! If you are transferring lots of files across your network you may want to add this card. This card NOW WORKS IN OS8.6, 9 and X and classic mode. Folks moving large multimedia files, video etc. on a 1000 base-T network will benefit from this high performance card. This A-8110S PCI ethernet card adheres to IEEE 802.3, 802.3u, and 802.3ab standards. This Realtek Chipset PCI 10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet adapter is a high-bandwidth network adapter that auto-senses 10/100/1000Mbps connection speed, half/full-duplex modes, and supports Wake-On-LAN and remote Wake-UP support. LEDs: Four (4) Green LEDs support for display 1000Link, 100Link, 10Link Activity Status. REQUIRES G3 or G4 RUNNING OS8.6, OS9, OSX 10.2 or later with available PCI Slot Mac drivers included on CD by us. Compare at $79.99 Our $24.77 price includes shipping. NETWORKING section of the store.

Sonnet's new Encore/MDX G4 Duet 1.8 ghz Dual Processors in a Mirror Door G4

I finally got around to installing one of Sonnet's new Encore/MDX G4 Duet 1.8 ghz Dual Processors in a Mirror Door. The unit in question had a dual 1 ghz processor originally and it would work about 10 minutes before the fans would start roaring and about 5 minutes later would shut down. The guy was working by leaving the door open and laying a small 6 or 8" desk fan on the processor. The new processor went in easily with the detailed pictured instructions that Sonnet is famous for. I like to not got the firmware updated since the stock processor kept shutting down until I used his fan trick. That is definitely one gotcha in this unit. Since they use a cooler faster 7447 series processor the firmware must be updated before the Sonnet processor can be installed. Once installed the cooler and faster running Sonnet is a joy. No more roaring fans!! The fellow has been back working several weeks now and is very happy. Worth every penny he says. This may be a fix for your noisy Mirror Door and will substantially improve performance for you as well. You can order them online from the accelerator/G4 AGP section of our online store.

WORTH REPEATING - HAVING TROUBLE GETTING A USB ITEM TO SHOW UP? Large size thumbdrives, cameras etc. not working?

Some cameras, scanners and newer printers (and even some of the larger thumb drives) seem to draw more power than can be supplies via the PCI USB Card or even the built in port on some models. Some even say they will not work with a card and require "native USB". Most times it is because the device tries to draw more power than the bus can supply. The card keeps itself from damage by shutting down. Unplugging the device and restarting the machine usually fixes it but sometimes zapping the pram is required to restore a shut down port. The solution is a GOOD POWERED HUB. The hub we carry is good for both USB 1.1 and 2.0 devices and supplies 2.+ AMPs of additional power. This makes many problems go away. Don't be suckered into buying a lower powered hub at a bargain price. 450 milliamps is not enough for many high demand items.

If a device doesn't work with one of our USB2 cards and you have tried a high powered hub, most likely the problem is software related or device related. If your iPod isn't mounting make sure you have the latest iPod software installed before looking for other problems. It is amazing how well things work when the proper software is installed. See the Firewire/USB area for more tips.

APPLEJACK INSTALLED? IF YOU DON"T HAVE APPLEJACK INSTALLED FOR OSX YOU SHOULD! (not available for Leopard yet)

We recently started preinstalling AppleJack on all OSX systems. This little utility (Kitchen Sink OSX Diagnostics Folder or downloadable from http://applejack.sourceforge.net/) allows you to repair your disk, repair permissions, validate the system's preference files, and get rid of possibly corrupted cache files. In most cases, these operations can help get your machine back on track. The important thing is that you don't need another startup disk with you. All you need to do is restart in Single User Mode (SUM), by holding down the command and s keys at startup, and then typing applejack, or applejack auto (which will run through all the tasks automatically), or applejack auto restart (which will also restart the computer automatically at the end of the process).

The only gotcha I have found so far is on Beige G3 systems. If you had to borrow someones monitor to install X, then your other adapted monitor probably will show you a black screen at startup. Since you simply need to type applejack auto restart, I do just that blindly and then leave the system alone. It runs through the cycles and then restarts usually getting you back up and running. There are some other warnings in the documentation so read through them thoroughly before using on your system. This is an emergency repair program and I really would not run it all the time, but it has saved me more than a few times from the hours of reinstallation.

WHY DON'T YOU CARRY WIRELESS KEYBOARDS AND MICE?

They don't work. Okay well they don't work well enough to suit me anyway. I don't like things that skip and delay. They are probably okay for the net browsing etc. but if you use your system for work, I don't think you will like them either. If you find one that doesn't hiccup let me know. I would like it if they worked as well as wired.

StanStodden writes: I have been using the Microsoft Wireless 4000 set/system for about 2 months. The keyboard shortcuts and all work with a mac and flawless I might add. The set sells at Sams Wholesale for about $70. You should have someone test it out. It really works great!!

Bob: Unfortunately we don't have a deal with Microsoft so I don't carry their products, but most folks can probably buy them at the local discounter. I take it Stan is using them in OSX. I wonder if they work at all in 9 or if you can hold the shift key down and use Safeboot mode etc. Thanks for the tip, Stan we appreciate it.

NEW ADOBE CS3 REQUIREMENTS

Adobe has raised the requirements to run CS3 applications. The biggest change that effects most people is the 64MB VRAM. We now stock 3 different Video Cards for your G4 system so that you can meet or exceed the requirements. Our new best selling 128MB card features the NVIDIA 5200 Graphics Engine and supports CORE imaging and both DVI and VGA out. At a delivered price of less than $100 it makes it quite the buy. Of course your system will probably exceed the processor and memory requirements but from practical experience I can tell you that you will also want as much ram and you can afford and as fast a processor as you can get. These are all easy upgrades for you to perform. We generally send pictured instructions but you can always call our tech support line and we will walk you through any problems that may arise.

OSX RESTORE TIP

I assume all of you are running with a second drive or external bootable and have a cloned copy of your install. Lets say you just updated to 10.4.10 and stuff stopped working or the system is munged up period. A fast fix that won't interfere with your current files in the User or Applications folders is simply to boot from your backup and use Carbon Copy Cloner to ONLY REPLACE the Library and System Folders. You will be back up with the older working version of the OS in short order and you won't lose any changes. Make sure you run repair permissions after you complete the clone.

OSX Tiger 10.4.11 Update (or any version update for that matter) WAIT!

I just downloaded the COMBO UPDATE and will be installing it in a few systems. Remember about my rule of running the disk utility and repairing permissions before and after a major install! Also download the COMBO UPDATE rather than let the system update itself, when you decide to attempt this install or any major update. This looks like a fairly major install after reviewing the changes. I will be watching MacFixit as usual to review what problems are having before I jump in. One of our techs installed it on his personal Sawtooth G4 machine and have had no problems. I did read through the problems folks were having on MacFixit.com. I will be waiting a while before installing it on machines that we are selling. perhaps 10.4.11 will be coming soon. Too many bugs in this one.

TIP: If you aren't keeping a bootable backup of your system, you are asking for trouble. Add a second hard drive either internally or externally and make a bootable backup of your system with Carbon Copy Cloner.

SATA DRIVES & CARDS FOR MY MAC - TWICE AS FAST!

Almost TWICE AS FAST as your stock IDE bus and drive! Serial ATA or SATA hard drives are getting cheaper and cheaper these days and they offer better performance. We now are offering our G4's (or any compatible system for that matter) with a Firmtek SATA Card and Hitachi or Seagate SATA Hard Drives as an install option. I quickly tested copying a 60MB folder on both our regular Hitachi 80GB 7200 rpm IDE drives and the new 250GB Hitachi SATA Drive and found that the SATA was almost TWICE AS FAST. You folks that deal with large files all the time, like musicians, artists, photographers and videographers will want to seriously consider this option. Works equally well in 9 and X and no drivers are required. I have installed drive sizes up to the new Seagate 750GB and they work perfectly. OS9 users will have to remember the 190GB partition limit for bootable partitions though. See the new IntDrivesSATA section of the online store. We now stock Seagate SATA Drives from 160GB to 750GB.

New Feature - Add a 2 Port SATA Card and 250GB Seagate SATA Drive to any G4 for $199.77! Access your data twice as fast with drive sizes up to 750GB's all internally in your G4! See the IntDrivesSATA section of the store.

HEADGAP SYSTEM NOW ON DIGITAL PHONES!

When we installed our T1 for our network one of my goals was to also install a digital phone system. I can't say I did much as Cheryn picked out the phone system, figured out how many lines to add to meet our increased needs and contacted the folks at WorldSpice (Best Memphis Service Provider). We ran CAT5 cable from our rack (they split them into multiple lines) and in less than 30 minutes they had us connected. We have added a dedicated tech line with its own phonemail at 901-591-1548, but otherwise our phone numbers stayed the same. You will now get our phone mail if you call after hours. We still only answer 9 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday Central Time. I did like the answering service but they are expensive. I always though it was better to talk to a human whenver possible but the price these days is such that we really can't afford to. These new phones have a bunch of new buttons so forgive us if we accidently hang up on your while transfering calls etc for a few days. We will soon get use to them. 5.8 ghz Wireless remotes with a wired base phone on UPS backup and now with more lines to take your calls.

One note of caution: Qwest our existing provider received notice of our changeover weeks in advance. They delayed our Toll Free line rollover for 24 to 36 hours and as I understand it they are about the only ones who practice this policy. I hope you were not inconvenienced by this and thank you if you dialed our regular long distance number and paid for the call during this time.

BBS DIAL UP LINE NO MORE!

In March of 1986 Operator Headgap BBS went online here in Memphis TN for the first time. We have been online for 21 years continously. We have always had dial up lines to access our systems. After the Internet in about 1995 we gradually began cutting down our dialup lines as many more of you started visiting via the web. After reviewing our phone bills and system I have finally decided to take down our last dialup line. At about $25 a month only 2 or 3 folks a month are using the dialup line, and even then only once in a while. It saddens me a bit but the world does change and we have to also. I am sure most of you probably didn't know you could use dialup to access most of the system features and hope you will continue to visit via TCP/IP over the Internet.

Sonnet Encore/ST G4 Duet - DUAL (or single) G4 1.8 or 1.6 GHz Processor Upgrade for QuickSilver G4 OS9 ISSUES?

I recently installed a 1.8 Ghz DUAL Sonnet G4 Processor in a QuickSilver G4 system. I had problems with OS9.2.2. The system would load about 90% and then lock up. I replaced the system folder with a fresh install etc but to no avail. I finally got to thinking about where it was locking up (it worked great in X though). I know that they use the 7447 Freescale and I used to have trouble with the GigaDesigns chips in 9. They recommended you remove the MultiProcessor folder from the 9 Extensions and only run the unit as a single processor. That is one of the reasons I quit buying them. I did pull the MP folder out and sure enough the system booted normally. I finally gave Sonnet a call and the tech told me that the install CD doesn't always upgrade the MP folder on some models. He sent me the modified file and once I put it in the extension folder in place of the old one the system worked fine with both processors once again. If you need the file download it from me at: http://resale.headgap.com/AppleCPUPlugins.sitx. Since it only affects a few models they are not going to fix the installer and wait for you to have trouble and call in. Sorry about the SITX compression making you boot into X to uncompress to install it in 9 but that is the way I received it. I had previously sent back several processors rather than mess with them for credit costing both Sonnet and me. You would think a quick note in the box might be in order but I guess it may be fairly rare.

P.S. This also applies to any Sonnet processor that requires their firmware update including the Single 1.8 or 1.6 processors.

SHIPPING RATES INCREASING?

Cheryn just finished negotiating with our shippers again. Prices continue to creep up on us. I am also sure you have seen the postal rates as well and what hurts most of all is the rates skyrocketed on many small package items. We will continue to keep our prices as low as possible but as my dad always told me if you aren't having fun and not making money then what are you doing. If you see a dollar or two higher price on items just know that it isn't us but the shipping rates on the items and of course the shippers blame the rising gas prices. We continue to shop prices hard so that we can maintain or even lower our pricing and we appreciate your continued support. REMEMBER OUR PRICING INCLUDES DOMESTIC SHIPPING if you are price comparing.

PCI GRAPHIC CARDS

We just got a good buy on some ATI Radeon 7000 PCI 32MB Graphics Cards. These are great for adding a second monitor in any Mac with a PCI slot including PowerMac 7200's up to the early PCI based G5's. In the G4 and early G5's these cards are great for adding a second pallet monitor. In the Beige G3 and Blue and White G3 they are a great card for your primary monitor. They work straight up with the built in ATI drivers in the classic OSes and perfectly well in all versions of X. They can be set up to display DVD movies with the appropriate DVD drive and drivers even on the older Beige G3's. See our monitor/video section or call and ask.

CORE SUPPORT - QUARTZ EXTREME - GRAPHICS CARDS

With Tiger Apple introduced Core Support. Not many older graphics cards have Core Support even if they do have a lot of memory. It takes one of the newer Graphics Engines to handle it. We now stock a few replacement cards that offer this feature and they really make a big improvement in high end programs. OSX offloads its graphics handling to the GPU of these cards allowing the processor to do its job and letting the graphics card do what it does best. See our monitors/video section or give us a call.

Another lower level of graphics support is called Quartz Extreme. They say that OSX speeds up 10-15% with a Quartz Extreme enabled graphics card. The requirements are much less (32MB of VRAM) in a normal AGP Graphics Card will do the trick. Unfortunately there were lots of G4 machines sold with the 16MB card. These work fine but for less than a $100 you can pick up a bit of speed in OSX if your card is enabled.

Unfortunately for Mac users there are not too many choices out there when it comes to these cards. You might be able to find a good used pull from a later model G4 that meets the Quartz Extreme requiresments but they aren't usually cheap. Finding a Core Enabled Card means you shell out over $250 for an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition which are in short supply. Check with us we may have alternatives that are more affordable and will meet your needs.

G4 Upgrade! Tiger & Leopard Core Support Quartz Extreme! 8X MORE Video RAM!

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 AGP DVI-I/VGA Graphics Card 128 MB - Sale $99.77 shipped! Leopard Capable! Upgrade your G4 Tower Now! DVI-I and VGA connectors allow you to run the DVI-I Displays or choose the more standard VGA. This NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 AGP Video Card is for your PowerMac G4 and is CORE (Tiger/Leopard) and Quartz Extreme enabled in OSX giving you a substantial performance gain. No drivers are required as it uses the built in NVIDIA drivers. We include our installation instructions. This card works in OS9 but does not allow resolution changes on the fly or DVD playback and is primarily designed for OSX. It is a full featured card in OSX. Fits Sawtooth through QuickSilver and fits in place of the existing AGP card. NOTE: this card offers VGA out OR the modern DVI-I connections used by many older style Displays. This card will work with adapters DVI-VGA adapters but only supports one display at a time. It is for single monitor use only. Tested in Sawtooth, Digital Audio, and QuickSilver G4's. Requires OSX 10.2.8 or later. Special Introductory Offer $99.77 includes domestic shipping.. See the Monitors/Video Section in the store. DUAL CARDS IN STOCK!

BACKUP YOUR DVD MOVIES IN OSX WITH YOUR PIONEER SUPERDRIVE

If you don't have a Pioneer SuperDrive you can get one from us. The latest Pioneer A12 18X Dual Layer DVD Burner is now in stock. I have been doing this in OSX 10.4+ since the best tools these days are for OSX. I am not sure how far back you can go but suspect this would work well even in Jaguar. I use a program called Mac The Ripper 2.6.6. This version might even be on the OSX Kitchen Sink in the Utilities folder. Run this program to pull your movie to your hard drive in what they call a Video TS folder. Once you have that done load up Toast Titanium 7 or later and select Video (one gotcha on Toast 7 is that it requires a G4 processor). Make sure you select compress to fit. I recommend you use DVD-R media. The +R media doesn't work on many of the older DVD players. The -R is better supported.

You can also play the ripped Video TS folder on Apple's DVD Player via File - Open Video_TS Folder and then navigate to the ripped folder. This is great if you want to leave a video on your PowerBook so you don't have to risk carrying the DVD's around.

Handbrake is another DVD to MPEG-4 ripper/converter for OS X 10.3.9 and later. You can use this to rip MP4 files and use them in the movie section of your iTunes. Since you can compress the devil out of the files using this program it would enable you to store a library of Movies on your system. My tech Scott tells me that he doesn't like Handbrake since there are too many options and it is difficult unless you are an expert on how to set them up. Instant Handbrake is suppose to be setup for us less brainy types but he says he prefers iSquint. After using it I have to agree and particularly like the help file. Believe it or not you can get full length movie down to a gigabyte or less and still have decent viewing quality.

Since your Video TS folder has multiple VOB files you may want to join them all in one file (after compressing them with iSquint) so that you can place your movie in your iTunes Movie Libary. I use Ajoiner http://www.digicowsoftware.com/detail?_app=AJoiner

Just imagine having all of your kids favorite movies in your iTunes library so all they have to do is point and click to play there favorites.

Dual Layer SuperDrive! Burn DVD's & CD's!

New Pioneer SuperDrive A15 - 20X DVD/40X CD Burns! Leopard Tested! These make great replacements for G4 Towers Yikes through Mirror Doors, Beige G3 Desktops and Towers, Blue and Whites, G5 Towers, G4 iMacs, and even eMacs! At $69.77 you can't go wrong. We include pictured instructions, Toast 5.2 Lite CD burning software and patches to make it completely OS9 and X compatible. Close to twice the capacity (Dual Layer Capable)! Apple Bootable allows you to boot from emergency disks and any Apple install disks etc. Only Headgap offers OS9 iTunes and iDVD compatibility patches. DVD burning requires your own software but include demo's of Charismacs Discribe which allows DVD burning under 9. We recommend the full version of Roxio's Toast 8 for OSX systems available at most Mac Software dealers. LOWER $69.77 includes domestic shipping. See the DVD,CD,CDRW section.

EARLY DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME

If you are running OSX you likely downloaded the update to take care of the early daylight savings time issue. For OS8 and 9 you will need to turn off the set daylight savings time automatically and turn it on manually from the Date & Time Control Panel.

PROCESSOR UPGRADES & FINAL CUT PRO - Compatibility Issues?

My favorite new processor and I think the best value for the money is the 1.5 Ghz Fast Mac Processor. It is a 7455 series chip (same as Apple used in many later models only faster). It has 2 MB of Level 3 Cache making it almost as fast as Sonnet's 1.8 ghz which only has Level 2 cache. The gotcha though is some programs like Final Cut Pro actually call to the built in reporting software to check the processors speed to insure it qualifies to run the program. The Fast Mac and some other processors sometimes do not report their speeds properly even though they are running it. Apple System Profiler may show 0 or some odd number. This keeps Final Cut and other software from running. If you download GigaDesign's GigaMeter 1.01 for OSX and run it this problem will go away. http://www.gigadesigns.com/eproducts/Giga_Meter_1[1].0.1.zip

Another patch available that lets you circumvent this if the above solution doesn't work for you. http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Tips/fcp/fcp.html will give you the skinny on the patch and a download link for it. This may also be causing other high end software programs not to work properly and is worth trying before giving up on a processor upgrade.

IN OS9: To view the processor type, processor speed, bus speed, Level 1 cache size, L2 cache size/speed, and L3 cache size/speed (displayed only when L3 cache is present on processor upgrade card) I like and use a utility from Sonnet. It is called Metronome and I usually place it in the Apple Menu Item folder inside the system folder for easy menu access. http://sonnettech.com/downloads/software/metronome_v30.sit

If you install the G4 Firmware Update from the Encore install software it will even report the clock speed properly in Apple System Profiler. There is a bug however and you will have sound problems on Digital Audio Systems when you have more than 1 gb of ram in which case I wouldn't install the Firmware update. It doesn't bother any other G4 system and works just fine even on the digital audio units if you keep your ram under 1 GB.

WINTERTIME COLD - how not to damage a perfectly good piece of electronics

When pulling a system in from an unheated room (or UPS or FedX Truck) let the machine come up to room temperature before firing it up for the first time. You see moisture condenses on the little electronic components. When the unit has warmed up to room temperature that moisture evaporates. You can damage or destroy a hard drive by being impatient. I too have to wait sometimes as our storage facility isn't as warm and toasty as our office is. Unpack the unit (this lets it warm up faster when you get all of those insulating peanuts etc. off of it.) and let it sit for an hour or two before plugging it in.

DON'T BE A PHISH!

Most of you know what PHISHING is. If you don't you may be a victim. Mostly they work by email and it may look like bank or credit card company has sent you an important notice about your account. The link takes you to a web site that looks your bank or card company, but that is the deception. The site is hosted most likely on some out of the country server. They ask you to confirm your information. Your real card company or bank would never do this.

The latest phishing scam I have seen is a bit more diabolical. Say you are in a discussion group, or chat and are discussing a piece of software or hardware you have been eyeing. Someone in the chat sends you a link to where you can save 15 or 20 percent on the purchase (sounds reasonable doesn't it). Again the link goes to a place that has nothing to do with legit sales. They get your card data and you get nothing but a lot of illegitimate charges to your account. Don't be a phish. Always be suspicious if you don't know the person giving you the link. Even if a friend sends the link, it doesn't hurt to do a bit of additional checking before making a purchase.

GOT THE NEW IPOD BLUES?

If you just got one of the new iPods for Christmas you might notice they don't have Firewire connectivity. I got an iPod Shuffle and I can't use it with my older version of OSX. It requires Panther 10.3.9 or later and you really need a USB2.0 connection unless you have a lot of spare time to wait for your files to transfer. The good news is we sell a couple low priced USB2.0 cards that will work in any open PCI slot on B&W G3 and G4 Towers, and it works perfectly with your iPod. We also sell the OSX software should you need to upgrade your version. Let us know if you need to upgrade your system and we will be glad to help.

BURN DVD's IN OS9 (Oh Roxio why haste though forsaken us?):

You need the full version of Toast Titanium 5 if you can find a used copy. It is also required for making VCD's and other exotic formats. This runs in both 9 and X but obviously doesn't have some of the advanced features and support the 6 version does which is OSX only. They appear to have removed the link, and I cannot find any information at all about version 5 any longer. It seems Roxio has abandoned the OS9 market.

It looks like Charismac's Discribe is the only OS9 compatible DVD burning software available these days. http://www.charismac.com/discribe/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=79&Itemid=62 You can download a free demo and it costs $69.95

Hey We Got A T1!

Best Memphis Service Provider!

Operator Headgap Systems, Inc. is proud to announce that all of our new high speed servers are all directly linked to the Internet via a full T1 transfers with data at 1.544mbps symmetrically.

Running 4 servers with one co-located was serving our needs up until Bell South decided everyone needed to be using the PPPOE connections via DSL. It just didn't work properly. We ended up with 2 of our 4 boxes co-located and two internal. Well we got to looking at the money we were spending and figured a T1 would only cost us slightly more than what we were already spending. Having this much speed both directions now means not only do our pages load fast on your end, the pages we load are also fast. As I am writing this we still have two of our servers co-located but they will all be in house very soon. We hope you notice the improvement and that it makes it easier and faster for you to use our services.

If you are just cruising the net and want high speed Internet, generally your cable company can be the best deal if you have a choice and are already a cable subscriber. There is nothing wrong with DSL for generally cruising the web and in some areas it may be all that is available, or it may be cheaper and it still substantially beats dialup.

I guess my next venture after upgrading our cabling to CAT6 and replacing some of our older switches is to replace some of the older servers with faster equipment. Then perhaps a digital phone system.

TEST YOUR CONNECTION SPEED

I think Speakeasy.net has one of the best and simplest testers going and it allows you to check our upload and download times to different parts of the country. http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/.

OSX Tiger 10.4.x Update (or any version update for that matter)

Just downloaded the COMBO UPDATE and will be installing it in a few systems this week. Remember about my rule of running the disk utility and repairing permissions before and after a major install! Also download the COMBO UPDATE rather than let the system update itself, when you decide to attempt this install. This looks like a fairly major install after reviewing the changes. I will be watching MacFixit as usual to review what problems are having before I jump in. One of our techs installed it on his personal Sawtooth G4 machine and I have since installed it in a Digital Audio and we have had no problems. I did read through the problems folks were having on MacFixit.com. Apparently is can break some of the Wireless connectivity. Generally most problems can be fixed by deleting the associated plist file and resetting the preferences.

iTunes 7 Tip

I have heard that if you have aftermarket visualizers installed in your iTunes you need to remove them before upgrading to iTunes 7. If not you may have to reinstall your X.

WHEN BOOTED FROM 9 do not throw away or move the little files that OSX puts on the desktop! I thought most folks knew that you should not mess with those files, but we have had several neatniks decide that it would be a good idea to put all of that stuff in a folder named OSX. Imagine their suprise when OSX failed to boot and they had to reinstall X. We named the problem after the first person to do it that we had to fix. Chucking your OSX install is now part of our vocabulary.

TRADE-INS

Many times when you are ready to upgrade your old system may not be worth much, especially to a dealer who is used to buying in quantity at wholesale prices and has the units shipped in bulk truck freight. Boxing and shipping your old system costs a few dollars. Here lately we have been having more trouble locating older systems people are still buying. We will begin offering trade-ins for certain older systems. The following are on the list: PowerMac G4, iMac G4, QuickSilver G4, Blue & White (REV 2 Only), G3 Desktops, PowerMac 7300, Quadra or Centris 650, and Mac IICI's. The units need to be cosmetically in good condition and working (at least chiming). Trade in value will vary from the top price for extra clean, that exceed stock configurations and down for less that prime units. Email: cheryn@biz.headgap.com for quotes.

We are also purchasing good used Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II ADB Mice, working StyleWriters, and Zip Drives.

SUMMERTIME HEAT

One of my servers processors failed over the weekend. The symptoms were odd leaving me to think the hard drive was corrupted but after replacing the file with a backup I had the same problems. Changing out the processor fixed those problems even on the earlier system folder. The room this unit resides in was getting over 76 degrees. While I have many fans in place I can't help but think this may have contributed. WIth things running a bit warmer, make sure your computer has plenty of ventilation around it, and move any objects that may block airflow. A small desk fan nearby blowing over the system is a good idea especially if you are turning up the thermostat to save a buck or two.

HATE MICROSOFT OFFICE BUT NEED IT TO OPEN FILES?

We recommend and use a program called ThinkFree. It opens and saves .doc, .xls, and .ppt files (word, excel, and powerpoint), allowing you to open and work on Office files without having to shell out the big bucks to Bill. Here is a link to the software archive page so you can download the versions for the older OSes including 8.6 through 9.2. http://product.thinkfree.com/download/dl_download_arch.html

TIP: - you can open the .doc file using ThinkFree and then save it out to .rtf format if you want to use the information in other word processors like Appleworks.

LCD FLAT PANEL MONITORS FOR YOUR MAC

We have had so many folks ask why we didn't carry any of the new Flat Panel LCD type monitors for Macs. Frankly the Sunday Ads should tell you why. There are dozens on sale with rebates every week at most of the major discounters. What we didn't really think about though is that many of you don't have easy access to the discounters and also you don't have the knowledge on which one is a decent quality unit that will work with your Mac. When we needed to replace some of our aging CRT monitors we checked the wholesale market and found several with decent specs at reasonable prices. We presently have picked out two units that I consider deluxe models. We are pleased with our selections, and both units exceeded our expectations. We have priced them sharply and include shipping in our price. Some of the bargain units out there are dim and or fuzzy and have slow response times. These units are sharp, bright and fast and we think they are a good value for your dollar. They both have standard 15 pin HD15 VGA connectors so they work straight up with Blue and White G3's and later. With our adapter they will even work with the early PowerPC's although you may want to up your video ram.

Cheryn chose the 19" WIDE SCREEN model to use with her system. The extra real estate lets her have several applications open at once and she can easily display program pallets along with her work. If you have the scratch we think you can't go wrong with this unit. I chose the more conservative 17". It took me a while to get used to how bright it is but then I realized that as sharp as the images and text are an work in the maximum 1280 x 1024 and now I have a lot more space on my screen as well.

One of the other benefits of these units over CRT is that they draw MUCH LESS POWER and don't generate near the heat. Since we leave our systems on 24/7 it may not take so long to recover our investment in power savings not to mention how much cooler they run. You don't really think about that until you have 3 monitors on your server rack with a small fan blowing the hot air out during the summer. What also pleases me is that I will now have more battery backup time should our power drop.

Sonnet Encore/ST G4 Duet Dual Processor Card GOTCHA! - and fix?

We have built a few systems with the new and lightning fast Sonnet Encore/ST G4 Duet dual processor card. If you are installing one you realize quickly that the motherboard screw near the socket is too tall and interferes with the cooling fan connectors. Initially I just left out the screw since the motherboard is in there pretty solid, but after a problem or two I realized the extra weight of the processor causes a lot more pressure on the socket. I have since learned to replace the screw with a flat head variety. I think Sonnet should include this with the processor.

The real problem though is that the heat sink of the processor contacts the optical housing. I learned to remove the zip screw and cover the aluminum of that section with a small strip of packing tape. It insulates if the heat sink should make contact with the housing with the door closed. I spent a lot of time testing the systems with the doors open and would have no problem. After closing the door the system would refuse to chime. For whatever reason I expect it is not a good idea to ground the heat sink against the chassis. The tape solves the problem. Sonnet could have helped if they would have shaved a 1/16 off of the heat sink, but I expect having a little more mass for cooling is a good thing. Maybe they will send a little vinyl label or something to insulate the housing. I have only experiencedå this in the Sawtooth, and Gigabit Ethernet G4's. I have not installed one yet in the Digital Audio, or Quicksilver but now I know what to watch for and so do you. Perhaps this will help you if you are having trouble.

Pioneer SuperDrive - 18X DVD Burn Speeds! (A08, A09, A10, A12, Now the A15)

What is the difference between the A12 and the A15? A03 of course! They say the A15 is faster with up to 20X DVD write speeds and reliable 40X CD burns. I just finished testing the new Pioneer A15 and it is available for order in the store. UPDATE: Toast 7 for OSX does support these features now! But for the few dollars more one of these units cost I think you might want to spend it now. It works fine in both 9 and X and I have already written an OS9 iTunes patch for it. You can use all your existing software just like it is a regular Apple SuperDrive including iDVD. Eventually when everyone catches up softwarewise you will be ready for the new Double Layer Media capacity (Roxio Toast 7). In the meanwhile though you will have up to 20X DVD burn speeds and 10X Dual Layer DVD burns! Patchburn is required for OSX. We of course include all needed patches and demo versions of DVD writing software. Of course Apple's iDVD software is available in the popular iLife upgrades.

I had someone else call and said they bought an a SuperDrive (not from us) and installed it with the patches on a G4 and could not get the DVD to play movies back in OSX. My guess is that they installed the mechanism and didn't have the DVD Player installed since the OSX install doesn't put the player on the system if a DVD player is not present during the install. If you just copy the DVD Player from someone elses system and add it to your system it will not work. You need to use a program called Pacifist (on the X Kitchen Sink/Diagnostics folder), This will allow you to install parts of the OSX software (much like Tome Viewer does in OS9). Use it to locate the DVD player on the original CD and let it install it with all the parts and pieces. Run the disk utility and repair permissions always before and after installing software. Out of the dozens of A09's (now A12's) I have installed in both 9, Jaguar and Panther and Tiger, I have never had a problem. Of course we sell brand new drives with our 30 day warranty and the full 1 year factory warranty from Pioneer, beside including the 9 and X patches so that all Apple software see's the device as a fully recognized drive. I wrote the new OS9 drivers and they are included on the install CD we include with the drive.

We also have a patched DVD player that allows you to playback DVD Movies on Beige or Blue and White G3's. You just need an ATI Rage Pro Video Card 16MB or better installed. No special DVD decoder required.

The Pioneer SuperDrive will read DVD-RAM disks that are out of the cartridge but will not write to them.

TURBOTAX REQUIRES OS X

About the only tax program for the Mac requires OSX. It was bound to happen. Many of us have had to start running X to be able to access certain web sites, or use some program or other. If you own a G3 or better you are in luck. We can easily help you upgrade your system to X and still enable you to boot back into 9.2 (or older). We can sell you the software and you can install it yourself or we can preinstall it on a replacement hard drive so all you have to do is install the hard drive. This isn't as expensive as you might think. Give us a call.

UPDATING OSX

Way too many of you call after you have munged your OSX system up by running the automatic updater. You can get away with this if you have a second drive with a cloned backup that you can use to restore. Most of you don't, so heed my warning.

ALWAYS RUN THE BUILT IN DISK UTILITY OR SYSTEM OPTIMIZER AND REPAIR PERMISSIONS BEFORE & AFTER INSTALLING UPDATES. I never do a major OS update from the built in updater and always download the COMBINED UPDATE instead. Even at that I wait a few days and visit MacFixit to see what problems folks are having. If you do this you will have less trouble. The small Application updates, security updates etc. are fine to run from the updater, but again always always run repair permissions before and after installing software. If you do kill your X then be prepared to reinstall from the installer disks. Run the Disk Utility from the Apple Menu of the installer disk and run Disk Repair first though.

There are still no active viruses or spyware for OSX. There are only rumors of possible ones. If you must send $50 to someone send it to me instead of these lying, cheating virus software producers. Sure the programs find viruses in your email but they are PC viruses and none effect the Mac. I personally don't worry about PC users since they are already infected anyway. There is an average of 3 new PC viruses/spyware/trojans a day. No matter how up to date the PC virus software is, they are already infected.

As far as I can tell the only way to keep viruses and spyware off your Windows PC is to never plug it in. The less you use it the better off you are.

BAD NEWS FOR CLASSIC USERS • NEW INTEL MACS WON'T RUN CLASSIC!

Not only can you not boot into 9, you cannot even use classic mode with the new Intel Macs. If you are using old software you will want to pass these systems up. If you are new to Mac or never use old software then they may be the system for you. Keep in mind while Apple says they are 2 times faster that is only true if you are using Applications that are optimized for theIntel processor. Most Pro Apps like any Adobe Product will be slower, until they release an Intel optimized version. If you work for a living you may want to avoid buying one until the software catches up or locate one of the remaining real G5 processored systems.

ALUMINUM EXTERNAL DRIVE HOUSINGS DON'T RUN COOL WTHOUT A FAN!

I just discarded another Name Brand 3-1/2 Firewire External Hard Drive a customer sent up to recover. I had to call him with the bad news. The external "aluminum" case was discolored from the heat build up of the drive. The drive of course was toast. You could hear the the heads hitting the platter. No fan, and no room or ventilation for the drive.

Our regular hard drive and optical drive housing supplier has really let me down. We have been building our Silver Bullet Hard Drives and Burners for several years now. You bought yours because you realized we were the only ones in the business who install Hitachi Hard Drives or Pioneer or Sony Optical Drives in a quality FAN COOLED HOUSING that featured the good chip sets. The new housings they are trying to pawn off now are made from Aluminum instead of plastic. They tell us they run cool without the fan and no longer offer a fan based housing. While aluminum does transfer heat better than plastic without air circulation around the hard drive it matters not what the case is made of. Since the drives are actually not in good contact with the aluminum except for a miniscule amount, elementary physics should tell them that this is a crock. They should spend the extra buck or two and put a fan in them.

While aluminum does make a decent heat sink it doesn't if the hard drive or the optical don't come in contact with the aluminum. The 4 screw points that the drives actually contact the housing isn't enough to cool large high speed hard drives or even external optical burners. A fan is a must. We are in the process of changing our product lineup, leaving our old vendor to sell his wares to the chumps.

SilverBullet PRO Series sizes 80, 160, 250 & 500GB starting at $129.77 shipped!

I will not sell large capacity high speed external hard drives or opticals without a fan cooled case! You shouldn't buy one no matter what brand! Since I do a lot of data recovery from all types of external drives for folks (almost never our brand by the way) I find the ones that fail prematurely are the ones with large high speed hard drives that don't have fans, no matter what material the housing is made of. We do sell a small capacity USB only no fan unit primarily designed for backup. These work fine but are low speed drives designed for periodic use. If you use your drive all the time and transfer lots of data then always look for a fan cooled housing, not matter what the housing is made of. WE HAVE JUST ADDED our new external hard drive lineup! Fan cooled, pro quality mechanisms as we have always provided. Visit the external drive section of our online store to learn more about them. LEOPARD TESTED! We do recommend you reformat for use in Time Machine.

SEAGATE BUYS MAXTOR FOR 2 BILLION

Most of you that read my tips know that I am a Hitachi fan and until something changes they will be my hard drive of choice. Maxtor was always second on my list, with Seagate always 3rd. Western Digital sucks period. The reason I think my opinion should count is that out of the 1000's of systems we get per year we pull and test the drives out of each one. I see what goes out in the trash. I felt about the same way when Maxtor bought Quantum, which was my old number 2. I hope Seagate keeps the quality control that Maxtor had and continues to produce at least that quality of mechanism. I shudder to think about web access to jumper charts and other drive info during the changeover. Some folks look at the specs on how a drive is rated which are made up by the factories and are meaningless. Other site the warranty, and those with the longest being the best drives to have. Not with my data. What good is a warranty when my server is offline and I am losing business, or I have to spend half a day recovering my personal system.

Apple's new iLife and iWork 06 require a G4 Processor and a DVD Player

Before buying the new iLife 06 package for your trusty old iMac you may want to just stick with your 05 version. It seems the new iLife won't let you install it on a G3 system. The new software is also on DVD which leaves out a few folks as well. If you have a G4 Tower, iMac G4 or G4 PowerBook that is otherwise qualified but without a DVD drive and would rather have an external DVD drive call Cheryn and tell her you want the FireWire External DVD Drive for $69.77. We will build you one using a good new Firewire housing and a genuine "Apple" 8X DVD refurbished drive. You will be able to boot from your Tiger OSX Install DVD. This only works on FIreWire equipped systems. This will not work for the Blue & Whites or early Yikes G4's which have a known boot problem with Firewire. We also stock the Pioneer SuperDrive's and include pictured install instructions for all G3, G4 and G5 units capable of taking a full size drive. We include all compatibility upgrades for OS9 and all versions of X above 10.2 as well as Toast 5.2Lite for CD burning. Burn Dual Layer DVD's with your software.

SONNET ENCORE G4 ACCELERATORS & MACOS ROM ISSUES?

I recently install a 1 Ghz Sonnet G4 Processor in a Sawtooth G4 system. I had problems with it. After a short period of warmup time the machine would make a small hash noise and freeze at random. We do this all the time so I was stumped, trying different processors, ram, etc.

We finally tracked it down to the MACOS rom file. We were installing a version of 9.2.2 that had the MACOS ROM version 9.01. When I went back to my older 8.7 versions the problems went away. The later version of the file works fine with the stock processor. Somewhere in the later rom is a gotcha. If you are having trouble get with us for a fix.

ARE YOU WONDERING WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NOW THAT APPLE IS OFFERING INTEL CHIPS?

I am not a prophet and Apple doesn't check with me all that often for my opinion these days. That being said I think the conversion to Intel will be much like when Apple went from the 68K processor chips to the PowerPC chips. The operating system changes will be gradual. For a time there will be both types of code in the operating system (they used to call them fat binaries). Eventually though as the line completely changes to Intel the code will be leaned down at some point to only support the new style processors. When this happens classic mode will most likely be gone. If you haven't noticed Apple is already moving this direction not installing classic mode for you on the new machines these days leaving it as an optional install you have to make. Eventually they won't even include the software and the new machines will not even support classic mode.

Apple sure did make a big deal about the G5 being 64 bit and didn't mention the new Intel chips are only 32 bit.

Rumor has it that at some point the new Macs may be able to run both the OSX and Windows as well as Unix all on the same computer allowing you to use most any software package on one machine.

So should you buy a new machine or wait? I think of computers a lot like cars. If your old one is getting you there then why change. If your old car isn't getting you there, you look for a new one or at least a later model in good condition.

When you buy a new Mac these days you have to make choices on what technology you want to leave behind. I can't tell you how many folks have written or called me asking how to make there LaserWriter 300 or their Stylewriter work with their new $1300 to $3200 Mac. To me thats like pulling the old floormats from your 10 year old car and putting them in your new one. Doesn't make sense to me. You can do it if you spend $70 for a serial port adapter and can find a driver or find an old discontinued adapter that allows you to put your printer on the network but you still need a driver and the price for that gizmo many times is almost as much as a new printer. Brother makes new affordable USB printers in both Inkjet and Laser. Buy one when you get your new computer. Sell me your old one and I will refurb it for someone who needs a serial printer to use with their old system.

Not being able to run your old software is why we are still in business. From us you can get a fairly late model computer that has been nicely refurbished and many times updated with faster processors, faster hard drives and better optical drives so it runs close to what a new one will and yet it still allows you to run your old software as well as the new.

GOT THE NEW IPOD BLUES?

If you just got one of the new iPods for Christmas you might notice they don't have Firewire connectivity. I got an iPod Nano and I can't use it with my older version of OSX. It requires Panther 10.3.4 or later and you really need a USB2.0 connection unless you have a lot of spare time to wait for your files to transfer. The good news is we sell a low priced USB2.0 card that will work in any open PCI slot on B&W G3 and G4 Towers, and it works perfectly with your iPod. We also sell the OSX software should you need to upgrade your version. Let us know if you need to upgrade your system and we will be glad to help.

APPLE RELEASES X 10.4.X - Update TIPS

After reviewing Macfixit.com's list of problems that people are having I decided that most of the problems are minor. The list of improvements are many and this is a fairly major update. I still recommend you study up on the problems before starting however.

As always before installing a major update like this instead of using the built in updater I do a few things different. I first check with the suppliers of the aftermarket equipment I run and download any patches or updates. I then download the combo update. To prepare my system I boot from the install disk and run the disk utility from the menu and tell it to repair my drive. I also run repair permissions once that finished.

I then unplug any attached peripherals and take out all media from the optical or zip drive. I then restart and zap the pram twice by holding down the command option and the P and R keys until the system rechimes twice. I then run the combo installer and when it finishes I restart and run the disk utility and repair permissions once again. I then install any updates or patches for the equipment I run and repair permissions again.

Many folks will tell you they just let the Apple Update program install it and had no problems. These people have never had to recover a drive after a bad or aborted install. Take these few extra steps on major system changes or even large application installs and perhaps you will never have to recover a drive either.

TIP: If you aren't keeping a bootable backup of your system, you are asking for trouble. Add a second hard drive either internally or externally and make a bootable backup of your system with Carbon Copy Cloner.

THIS MAY BE THE COOLEST ADDITION YOU CAN MAKE TO YOUR G4!

Add a Sweet Multiport to any G4 System Purchase in place of the Zip Drive for $30 Limited time offer, when you call in your G4 System Order!

Sweet Multiport now available! Add the convenience of ports at your fingertips. The Sweet Multiport installs in the second bay of your G3 or G4 with your system order. Add these ports and have them available at your fingertips, 2 FireWire ports, 1 USB port, 5-in-1 memory card reader, PLUS 2 more ports Firewire and USB available in the rear! Works in 9 or X! Fits in the second front bay (in place of the zip drive if you have one). This kit includes: Sweet Multiport front panel card, Sweet Multiport PCI card, Sweet Multiport inter-connect cable, Mounting bracket and screws, Front faceplate, FireWire and USB cables. The Memory Card Reader supports: CompactFlash, IBM Microdrive, Memory Stick, Secure Digital, MultiMediaCard. No longer available for QuickSilver models.

DON'T BE A TURKEY

I recently noticed a "new" Mac dealer selling new Mac units well below market price. I don't know what their scam is but don't be sucker. We at Headgap don't sell new products so we don't directly compete with them, but scamming people hurts all of us. What we offer is upgraded refurbished machines at a fair price. There are plenty of legit dealers (if you are looking for new products) out there and most of you know their names. When you see a web site selling new Macs $100-$200 below what every real dealer does, then you should realize they won't be there for long. Just long enough probably to swindle a few folks and duck out or until they get caught. Perhaps having the server out of the country prevents them from being easily dealt with by the law.

AIRPORT CARDS OVER $100?

I get an Airport card or two in from time to time. Call and ask. These are selling at many dealers for over $100 plus shipping. Why you ask. Beats me. I would add a Sonnet Wireless G Card for less money and work 5 times faster (assuming you have an open PCI slot). We do have a few and are able to sell them for $109.77 including shipping if you must have one. They are no longer made and the used ones that are left are in high demand for some reason. See the Wireless Section of our online store for more information.

External Firewire & USB Drive Formatting

When you buy external hard drives from us we always format them for Mac OS Extended. This does keep you from connecting to a PC. If you want to use a drive both on a PC and a Mac you need the drive formatted for DOS. I don't recommend this unless you have to work back and forth. The reason is there are not good drive recovery utilities for DOS FireWire/USB Drives (some of you may argue that but our experts can't fix them easily). A photographer friend of mind recently picked up an External Maxtor FireWire Drive at one of the discounters. He put his entire photo shoot on the Maxtor. As things sometimes happen the drive refused to work after he got it back to his studio. He brought it by since I usually recover his drives if he has a problem. I couldn't help him. You see all the Mac drive utilities are for MacOS formatted drives. He took it to a PC shop and spent some money and if anything they probably made things worse. Our resident PC expert was out but when we reached him he was unable to recover it either. He ended up using one of our Silver Bullet Hard Drives and had to reshoot the entire job.

I am fairly certain that if he would have formatted the drive Mac OS Extended before using it I could have easily and quickly fully recovered the data. You see programs like Norton Disk Doctor and Disk Warrior or even Tech Tool Pro can work magic on these external units. If you don't need the PC compatibility make sure you format your external FireWire and USB drives with the Mac OS before you start using them.

FINAL CUT PRO

We have sold many of our upgraded G4 units that folks use with Final Cut Pro. Keep in mind though that the later versions of Final Cut require a Video Card that supports Quartz Extreme at least and core support is better. That means if you buy one of our units and plan to use it for this program you need to replace the Video Card. The ATI9000 will work perfectly in place of the stock ATI Rage Pro that comes in our basic unit but they are only available used these days. We can also special order the more expensive ATI9800 (core support) which is the ultimate graphics card update for your G4. When you order the card with your system we preinstall it (they require a driver upgrade both in classic and X). We also flash the cards to the latest ROM update if they require it. We then thoroughly test the card to insure it is performaning at top levels.

It is amazing how well software performs when your system meets and or exceeds its requirements.

BOB'S SOFTWARE RULE: If you plan to use a piece of sofware on any computer you should first check the system requirements of the software and make sure your system has the qualifications. If it doesn't upgrade it so that it does.

G4 MIRROR DOORS

I don't like to carry anything that won't boot into OS9 at least for now and some of these units won't. Some of these units of course will boot into 9. My experience with them so far has all been bad. They added a faster bus (ATA100) that doesn't have the drive size limit that earlier machines had. It also had a faster 150 mhz system bus and DDR ram. It does require a special version of 9 to see those drives however so if you buy one of these make sure you get the original install disks.

They call this one the Wind Tunnel (I personally think they should have named them Jet with bad bearings taking off). All the units we have seen so far are noisy to the point that I wouldn't use them. Apple had a deal where you could get the power supply swapped out for ones with quieter fans but that is only part of it. For now you won't find one of these units here. Who needs this kind of grief when the older QuickSilver, Digital Audio and Sawtooth designed G4's are a bit more solid and don't sound like a jet taking off. With aftermarket processors these can be made to operate at our above the performance levels and a Sonnet ATA card will give you the same hard drive performance levels and allow larger drives to be installed without special software, or better yet a SATA card and drive combination. That being said though I have worked on a few systems that were quiet and worked great. If you got a good one I guess you got a good one. Make sure you clean under the front foot of the case bottom. The system draws air up under that front foot and I have seen many of these clogged to the point the system overheats and shuts down.

If you happen to install a second optical in the other bay available you use the option key and the eject button to get the second device to open its tray.

One oddity. Apple recommends you use Cable Select on the drives. The dri