Eeeek A Bug! 
by "Cajun" David Richard

 
ColorSwitch Pro

Yes folks, you've heard it before. The initial release of any new product will have a few 
bugs and conflicts. The same holds true with ColorSwitch Pro. Over the last week or so, 
we have been able to narrow down several of the problems we have encountered. Each one is listed here with what we currently know about it and what you can do to work around it. 

              • After installing the 7.6.1 System upgrade, folks have found that the ability to switch 
                resolutions on their monitors is no longer available. This should only happen on 
                NuBus based Macs using an AV video board. Quite possibly the AppleVision 
                software (version 1.5.2) is also part of the problem. Apple has released more 
                information about this at: http://support.info.apple.com/ftp/7.6.1/
                7.6.1flash.html.

              • ColorSwitch Pro seems to conflict with FWB's CD-ROM Toolkit 2.1, Jukebox 
                version. With both INIT's installed, the ColorSwitch Pro will freeze the machine 
                when you try to access the CSP menu. The work around currently is to remove the 
                AudioCD Module from the ColorSwitch Pro Modules folder, or to remove the Audio 
                CD Access extension from your system. We are currently awaiting the software so 
                we can do some testing here. The next version should have a fix.

              • ColorSwitch Pro only displays one choice in the Display Pane of the CSP menu. 
                This choice is usually "millions" and seems to show up on earlier II series machines 
                (so far, we have observed the problem on a IIvi, a IIsi, and a IIvx). We believe this 
                may have something to do with the earlier built-in video cards that came with these 
                machines, and are currently working on upgrading the product to fix this bug.

              • We have also seen a conflict with the CD ROM drivers from NEC. ColorSwitch Pro 
                seems to work well with the drivers from Apple, but NEC's drivers are designed a 
                little differently, and only certain features are working, such as volume and eject. The 
                other controls are ignored. We are obtaining the software and are currently working on 
                the fix. If you do not need the NEC Driver, reinstalling the Apple CD-ROM driver will 
                solve this problem.

              • There is also a situation with PC Cards. It seems that switching to a PC Card installed 
                in a Mac will cause the machine to crash if ColorSwitch Pro is loaded on the machine. 
                Now, this one will be interesting to fix, since we don't want anything to do with those 
                PC things. However, Matt will be putting on the DOS Protective gloves to fix this one.

              • NetFinder and ColorSwitch Pro also don't like each other. It seems that while 
                NetFinder is in the foreground, and the color depth is changed with ColorSwitch Pro, 
                NetFinder will crash. We are looking into this to see if there is anything that we can do 
                about it, but this crash will not happen if NetFinder is in the background.

              • We have also had a few isolated reports about CSP and various extensions: CSP seems 
                to be incompatible with RAM Charger. One person also reported that his menu was all 
                Chicago and all 12 pt. text. And lastly, one user had a problem with the menu bar being 
                drawn too small, but this was solved by upgrading to 7.6.1. These are new reports, so 
                we don't have much information at this point.

Anything that can be fixed, will. We should have an update to ColorSwitch Pro relatively soon. Matt has been on top of many of these bugs, and they should all be fixed in the next version. 

Snapz Pro and After Dark 2.0

We have also discovered that Snapz Pro conflicts with After Dark v.2.0. This is easily solved by upgrading After Dark, but you may be interested in the "special feature" in Snapz Pro that After Dark. 

During beta testing, we found that if you tried to take a screen capture of AD while it was dimmed, the capture palette was not visible because the screen was dimmed (it was there, but you couldn't see it). So, we built in to Snapz Pro a feature that will detect if AD is dimmed, and if it was, Snapz Pro would capture the entire screen automatically. 

The problem arises with AD 2.0. It seems that AD sends the message to Snapz Pro saying that it is always dimmed. When you press the hot key, Snapz Pro captures the entire screen by default, even though the screen is not dimmed. If you are having this problem, just upgrade to a later version of After Dark by contacting Berkeley Systems. 

If you run into any problems that are not mentioned here or have any questions about any of our products, please drop a note to help@AmbrosiaSW.com.