A Mysterious Morning-only Backup Problem, an Unusual Ergonomic Device, and the Pros and Cons of Clock-chip Accelerators.
Christopher Breen and Bob Levitus
Backup Blues
Q. My backup system (an APS DAT drive and Retrospect software) seems to work only first thing in the morning. After I've done a full day's work, the backup software freezes when I try to run it.
I've tried everything to fix it -- restarting my Mac before backing up; leaving the tape drive on; leaving the tape drive off; moving the tape drive to a different location, in case it's getting too hot. Nothing seems to work except the morning backup.
Wendy Kuhn
Fort Worth, TX
BOB: Because the problem occurs only late in the day -- which, not coincidentally, is when your Mac and its peripherals and connectors are literally "warmed up" -- I think you have a hardware problem.
CHRIS: Nailed it, Bob. The fact that Wendy has restarted prior to the failed afternoon backup attempt clinches it.
BOB: The reason you see the problem only late in the day is because, when your components warm up, they expand ever so slightly. This can cause a failure in the SCSI chain, at any connector or in any cable.
All you probably need do is replace the SCSI cable that's causing the trouble. If you have multiple SCSI devices, temporarily disconnect all but the DAT drive, to make troubleshooting easier.
If installing a new cable doesn't help, you probably have a bad connector on the DAT drive. Contact APS' tech-support department for further instructions.
CHRIS: For others who are experiencing crashes and freeze-ups regularly after a full day's work, the cause may not be hardware-related. Rather, the problems can be caused by running a passel of programs that set your Mac up for an eventual fall. If you haven't already done it (as Wendy has), try restarting your Mac to fix the problem.
The Pain of Wrist Strain
Q. If I have to use a program that's mouse-intensive for more than a few minutes, I get a serious pain in my hand and wrist that lasts for days.
System 7's Easy Access control panel helps, but it's really tedious pressing the arrow keys over and over to move the cursor just a little. Besides, it disables my number pad and must be reenabled each time I start my Mac. Do you have any other suggestions for RSI (repetitive-stress injury) sufferers?
L. Brockmann
via America Online
CHRIS: Well, L., it all depends on the severity of your injury. If you want to stay completely away from clicking and tapping devices, look in the January '95 issue for an article entitled "The Easy-Access Mac" (page 119). The article offers plenty of solutions for those with physical limitations.
If your condition is less severe -- and considering you're able to use Easy Access, I assume that it is -- I can recommend something that may not only help your pain but also cheer you up in the meantime. I'm speaking, of course, of Kernel Productions' ChoiceStick (about $70).
BOB: Wait a minute, I could swear that's a gaming device I was considering reviewing for The Game Room.
CHRIS: Right you are, Bob. The ChoiceStick is an adapter for Sega and Atari game controllers and joysticks. Although these game devices are normally used for blasting electronic enemies, they can also help cut back on the kind of repetitive mousing that inflames injured appendages.
You can, of course, hook up a Mac game controller, but the ChoiceStick adapter gives you access to game controllers that typically have more buttons than the Nintendo-style game pads used by most dedicated Mac game controllers. For RSI sufferers, the more programmable buttons, the better, because they don't have to use their injured hands as much.
Not only do you get more buttons out of the deal (see figure 1) but the ChoiceStick's control panel also triples the number of functions of a game controller by letting you assign three separate functions to each button -- for instance, one press can bring up an Open dialog box, two presses can click on Open, and three presses can click on Cancel.
Oh, and it's fun to use with games too.
BOB: I had some wrist pain last year, so I bought a pair of articulated arm holders that clamp onto my desk and support my forearms as I type. They helped, but they weren't cheap -- they ran about $200.
Another thing I've had success with is a pair of Handeze Energizing and Therapeutic Support Gloves. (I get mine from APS Technologies, for about $20.) They work better than I ever expected.
Last but not least, instead of a mouse, I use a trackball, because it seems to relieve strain.
A Chip off the Old Clock
Q. Ads say "clock chippers" accelerate your Mac, but I'm wary. Do you think installing one is a good idea?
Tracy Lupher
via the Internet
CHRIS: Let's start with the basics: These chippers are doodads that clip onto the clock chip of your Mac, pumping up the clock rate. For instance, a 66-MHz Power Mac 6100 could conceivably operate at 90 MHz. For the speed boost you get, they're cheap, starting at around $75 from vendors such as Newer Technology.
BOB: Sure they're cheap and they do speed things up, but your wariness is warranted, Tracy. Boosting the clock speed puts additional strain on your computer's main processor, which translates into excess heat.
CHRIS: This heat can prove deleterious to your Mac's finer feelings, and Apple would just as soon not replace processors that have been reduced to a pile of molten goo. I've never heard of that happening, though. In fact, to prevent processor damage, most chipper vendors include small fans that draw heat away from the main processor.
Besides, if the processor gets sizzled, you can always feign ignorance with the "How'd that happen?" look. Raise your eyebrows, bug your eyes out a bit, and let your mouth flop open like that of a spotted grouper. This look is handy not only for computer-related problems but also for automobile mishaps and misunderstandings in relationships.
Unfortunately, there's no predicting whether a chipper will work at all in your Mac. As much as we would like to assure you that all Macs are created equal, it's just not so. You can take two identical Power Macs off the shelf and crank both up to the same blazing speed with identical chippers, and one will work flawlessly while the other crashes before the first extension loads.
Last, a warning for Power Mac 6100/66 users: Your Mac has a Level 2 cache card not found on the 6100/60. This cache card can be mighty finicky about having the clock rate excessively messed with -- it was designed to work at 66 MHz, and once you go beyond that, the results are unpredictable. In a real-world test, I had the best success when I replaced the original cache card with a third-party Level 2 cache card designed to work beyond the 66-MHz limit.
BOB: I wouldn't dream of putting a chipper in my Mac. Sure they're cheap, but a logic-board replacement isn't.
CHRIS: I know of more than a couple of savvy Mac users who swear by them. On the other hand, chippers are so new that we have no idea what long-term damage your processor may or may not suffer.
Drubbing Pub-and-Sub
Q. I use System 7's publish-and-subscribe feature to create a spreadsheet of summary data from data in several other spreadsheets. It works fine on my PowerBook, but when I transfer the files to my IIci, the main spreadsheet can no longer find the published data from the other spreadsheets. How can I make it work on both machines?
Gregory Welch
via the Internet
CHRIS: I have two ideas: one obvious and tiresome and the other sneaky and complicated. Before I reveal them, a little background is in order.
Publish-and-subscribe, for the 98 percent of you out there who have never used this System 7 innovation, lets you link two or more documents. Every time you make a change to the document designated as the publisher, linked documents, or subscribers, automatically update to include those changes.
The tricky part is that pub-and-sub locates files based on the original pathname -- it knows that publisher document Gorgo and subscriber document Son of Gorgo are in the Rubber Monster folder on the Worthless Data disk, for example. Once you move Gorgo and Son of Gorgo to another volume, the pathname is no longer the same and the documents are essentially lost.
Solutions? We got 'em! The really obvious and tiresome way around this is to link the documents again by republishing and resubscribing. Just follow the usual pub-and-sub procedures on your desktop Mac, and you're done. Ho hum.
The sneaky and complicated solution -- and the one that will save you time only after you've performed the task hundreds of times -- is to make the pathname on your desktop Mac the same as that on your PowerBook. Assuming that you have a common file and folder hierarchy on the two machines, rename the disk on your desktop Mac to match that of your PowerBook disk.
BOB: So it's sneaky -- but complicated?
CHRIS: No, wait -- here's where the beautiful part comes in. You can create a macro that renames your desktop disk as well as opens your pubbed-and-subbed documents. When you've finished your work, fire off another macro that closes the program and then switches the disk's name back again. Tweaking the macro to make it work properly can take hours!
Virtual-Memory Debate
Q. I have a Power Mac with 8 MB of RAM. Is there any advantage to installing Connectix's RAM Doubler as opposed to turning on the Mac's virtual memory?
Marty Klatzko
St. Paul, MN
BOB: I recommend RAM Doubler for two reasons. First, based solely on personal experience, I'd be willing to bet RAM Doubler is faster than the Mac's virtual memory.
Second, RAM Doubler doesn't claim any space on your hard disk until it needs it. When it does need space, it grabs only as much as it needs and grabs it only temporarily. The Mac's virtual memory, on the other hand, creates a swap file on your hard disk equal to the size of your installed RAM plus your virtual-memory allocation. That space is unavailable for anything else whenever virtual memory is turned on.
Best of all, RAM Doubler doesn't seem to affect the performance of any of my programs, even the notoriously virtual-memory-averse Photoshop.
CHRIS: Power Mac owners win no matter which of the two virtual-memory options they choose -- the one that comes with Macintosh system software or RAM Doubler. That's because native applications require less memory when you're using either of these types of memory than when you're not.
If I had to make a choice, I'd go with RAM Doubler for the last reason Bob mentioned: There are certain applications that, while sneering viciously in the presence of Apple's virtual memory, purr like fuzzy pussycats with RAM Doubler installed.
Best View on the Desktop
Q. When I set folders to View by Name mode -- who can stand anything else? -- in the Finder, all my icons turn generic. I've tried reinstalling system software, rebuilding the desktop, and zapping the PRAM about a gazillion times. And I've tried to fix it with TechTool, Save A BNDL, and BNDL Basher -- all to no avail. Is there any kind of cure?
Anne Hill
Sebastopol, CA
BOB: The cure is simple . . .
CHRIS: . . . if, perhaps, elusive.
BOB: Even the power users I quizzed couldn't figure it out right off the bat.
You've probably chosen the smallest icon size in the Views control panel. To make your icons show their true colors once more, choose the middle or large icon size.
CHRIS: There is a good use for that smallest-size icon setting -- I often run my color PowerBook in black-and-white mode, and two-toned icons are just this side of useless. Also, the smaller icons eat up less of the PowerBook's precious desktop space.
The Fury of Sound
Q. I was told by Apple that I could not hook up an ordinary microphone to my Power Mac, since the microphone jack is powered. What good is 16-bit stereo input if I can't get at it?
Aaron Greenberg
via the Internet
CHRIS: It's true; you cannot use a standard microphone with the sound-input jack on the Power Mac, as well as on several other Macs, such as the PowerBook 500 series and the Quadra 660av and 840av. They have a PlainTalk input, and it works only with a line-level signal (the kind found on cassette decks and VCRs) or with a PlainTalk microphone. Plugging a regular mic into that jack won't hurt anything; it just won't work. The PlainTalk mic has a plug that's a quarter of an inch longer than a standard miniplug. When you insert the PlainTalk mic's plug into that jack, it makes contact with a powered connector. Contact with the powered connector gives the PlainTalk mic the juice it needs to operate correctly. Standard-length miniplugs can't reach the connector, and for good reason. If they used the extra boost of juice, it would be too much.
The only way to use a regular mic with the PlainTalk input jack is to run the mic through a preamp (a device that adjusts the mic's signal). You can do this by plugging the mic into a sound-mixing board, since it comes with a preamp, and then plugging the mixing board into the Mac's sound-input port. You can get mixing boards at electronics stores, such as Radio Shack. The cheapest one costs around $35, but to get a good one, expect to spend around $300.
BOB: The cheapest way to go is to use a PlainTalk mic for voice input. If you don't already have one, you can pick one up from Apple for under $40.
Bob LeVitus is the director of evangelism for Power Computing. Christopher Breen is a San Francisco Bay Area musician who suffers from LWAS (Lloyd Webber Aversion Syndrome).
You can find the shareware and freeware programs referenced in this article in the Mac- User and ZD Net/Mac areas on CompuServe and eWorld. See How to Reach Us for instructions o accessing ZD Net/Mac.
Figure 1 - Designed for game playing, the ChoiceStick can also give relief to RSI sufferers. Its control panel lets you program game devices to move the cursor and perform a variety of functions, such as emptying the Trash, with just the click of a button.
Tips / Power Mac - Cramped Upgrade Card
I've discovered that the case of an LC is intended to support a maximum of 35 pounds. Anything heavier causes the top of the case to bow slightly inward. Normally this isn't a problem, but when I installed a DayStar Power Mac upgrade card -- the PowerCard 601 -- in my LC 475, put my monitor on top, and let my cat Shadow jump up on the case, my machine froze. When I tried to restart, my Mac played the chimes of doom.
A bowing case puts pressure on the upgrade card, which nearly touches the top of the LC case, and can cause the Mac to lock up.
All I had to do to fix it was open the case and jiggle the card. My tip? Avoid the trouble I had by making a monitor stand out of a couple of two-by-fours and a hunk of plywood, and place it over your Mac.
Bart Farkas
Alberta, Canada
Tips / Microsoft Word - Power Indexing
Here's a way to include every occurrence of a particular word in an index in just a few steps in Microsoft Word 5.1 (you can do it automatically in Word 6, with the Mark All feature):
Select Replace, on the Edit menu, and enter the word you'd like to index -- LAN, for example -- in the Find What field. Now enter that word twice with the characters .i. in the middle and a semicolon at the end (LAN.i.LAN;) in the Replace With field. Click on the Replace All button.
Use the Find and Replace command again, this time finding .i.LAN; and replacing it with the same characters (.i.LAN;) in hidden-text format (from within the Replace dialog box, select Character from the Format pop-up menu; then check the Hidden check box). Again select Replace All.
Your key index words are now properly formatted and ready for Word to start building the index.
Kirk Maule
London, England
Tips / Power Mac - Identify Native Apps, I
Here's a way to tell whether or not an application is PowerPC-native:
Highlight the application's icon, and choose Get Info (Command-I). If you see a note at the bottom of the Get Info window regarding virtual memory (or RAM Doubler, if it's installed), the application is native. If it's non-native, you'll see just the standard Get Info box.
Alex Rampell
via America Online
Identify Native Apps, II
To find out if an application is native, highlight the application's icon and press Command-Option-Shift-I. If the dialog box that pops up lists programmers who helped with the 680x0-to-PowerPC transition, then you have a native app. Non-native apps display only the standard Get Info box.
Junius Gunaratne
Moorhead, MN
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