Gold-plated memories, foreign film, and tricky zippers
Bob LeVitus and Christopher Breen
HANDSon
WRITE TO HELP FOLDER/TIPS
c/o MacUser
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Don't want to wait for an answer? Post your question on the MacUser Forum on CompuServe or send e-mail to helpfolder@macuser.com or tips@macuser.com. We pay $25 to $100 for any undocumented tips we publish.
Memories Are Made of This
Q. I've been told by computer-store salespeople that I need gold-plated, 72-pin, 70-ns SIMMs to upgrade my Power Mac 7100/66. Can I use plain-old PC SIMMs instead? They're cheaper, you know, and have a parity chip onboard.
Mike Muyal
Montreal, PQ, Canada
CHRIS: I'm afraid you've been given a load of bad information. A cynic might even venture the opinion that some of that information was imparted in order to relieve you of more of your hard-earned dollars than necessary.
Because I believe that humans are inherently good but tend to chomp down on the first shiny idea that floats by -- much like trout that swallow rubber-and-glue representations of insect larvae cast by hip-booted fisherfolk -- I doubt that these salesbots were actively trying to rip you off. They were probably just misinformed.
BOB: Let's start with the part they got right. Yes, the 7100 requires 72-pin SIMMs, but your Mac needs them only to run at 80 ns. If you get faster RAM, fine. It won't speed things up, because your Mac can't take advantage of it, but it won't hurt.
CHRIS: Want some clarity on parity? Forget it. The explanation would bore you into a comalike slumber. Suffice it to say that your Mac doesn't care one jot, tittle, or whit about parity.
BOB: Regarding gold plating: Gold doesn't corrode and is therefore a great conductor. It also happens to be worth its weight in itself.
CHRIS: And is therefore pretty darn expensive stuff. Fortunately, you don't need it.
Here's a little game you can play with the next salesperson who hands you the gold-plated line. Ask this emporium authority whether the connectors in the Mac's RAM slots are likewise gold-plated. After all, if the SIMMs must be gold-plated, shouldn't the internal connectors be as well? If you're feeling particularly cruel, ask said authority to open up the Mac to check.
Practice your look of incredulous surprise for the moment when you both discover shiny silver connectors in the RAM slots.
Maybe AVI, You'll Be True
Q. Is there any way to view a Windows AVI video file on a Mac?
Neal Pasciak
via the Internet
CHRIS: You'd think by now the Powers That Be would understand that computer users have to swap files among various flavors of computers -- particularly when the Internet is such a whizzily dominant, if amorphous, entity used by computers of all stripes. This swapping process would be a heck of a lot easier if we had one format and a cross-platform application or two to open files in that format. Ya know, just as you can read ASCII text files on any computer? Wouldn't it be ducky if movies could likewise come in one variety?
BOB: Hang on a minute. They do. QuickTime works for both Windows and Mac.
CHRIS: You're right as rain. But you know as well as I that Microsoft doesn't dig any technology sporting the Apple moniker and that QuickTime movies don't always work as well on PCs as does Microsoft's proprietary video format, AVI.
BOB: And lemme guess: QuickTime doesn't open AVI files.
CHRIS: Score 2 for you. Hope isn't completely lost, however. Although QuickTime's MoviePlayer doesn't open AVI files, there are a couple of ways for you to view them -- provided, of course, that you have the proper tools.
We begin our journey by taking an Internet stroll to Microsoft's Web site, http://ww .microsoft.com/, where we'll download a copy of Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser. Now hold your horses; like many of you, I still prefer Netscape Navigator over the IE as my browser of choice. But IE maintains at least one advantage over Netscape: If you drag and drop AVI files onto its icon, those Microsoft movies play back flawlessly. Explorer even offers a Save As function that converts AVI movies to QuickTime. Nifty-good idea.
If you prefer not to use Microsoft's browser, you can download a copy of Microsoft's VfW 1.1 Utilities from the usual places (see end of article). The AVI to QT Utility component lets you translate -- in a less than perfect way -- AVI files to QuickTime movies.
BOB: Less than perfect is right. I had no problem converting movies containing video only, but files with soundtracks lost sync. The sound always seemed to be delayed by a second or so.
CHRIS: I had the same problem. I was able to fix it by opening the movie in Macromedia's SoundEdit 16 and shifting the soundtrack, but it's not the kind of operation I'd care to perform on hundreds of files.
BOB: So our advice is?
CHRIS: We recommend that you use Internet Explorer to reliably view AVI files; go with AVI to QT Utility to make flawed conversions; and pray that by the time you read this, there will be a better solution.
Modem Muddle
Q. I have a Performa 6200CD with an internal 14.4-kbps modem, and I'd like to move up to 28.8 kbps. How do I go about it?
Raul E. Rodriguez
via the Internet
CHRIS: I can tell you one way not to go about it. Don't try shoving a serial cable through the little plastic cover over the external-modem port on your Performa in what you will soon find is a futile attempt to connect an external modem to the Mac. Although I thoroughly believe that brute force is an absolute requirement for bowling, boxing, and billiards, it doesn't help much in matters technological.
BOB: What Chris might be getting at is that the plastic cover over your external-modem port is there for a reason. When an internal-modem card is installed in the Communications slot, it disables the external-modem port. Apple kindly puts a cover over the port so you won't be tempted to use it.
CHRIS: What Apple fails to do is place a pink neon sticker over this port containing an explanation of why it's covered. Of course, if all things were apparent in the Mac universe, we'd be out of a job, so we heartily endorse this lack of signage.
BOB: To free the port, open the Mac, pull the internal-modem card from its roost, and pop out the plastic plug covering the external-modem port. With no card in the slot, the modem port will once again work as intended (see figure 1).
CHRIS: You can now either pray that Global Village decides to sell its internal 28.8-kbps modem card to regular schmoes like us -- it's currently bundled in the Performa 6300s but not available separately -- or use an external modem. If I were making the decision, I'd go with the external modem. Yes, it will take up a liiitttle more space on your desk, but you'll have access to both serial ports -- a wonderful thing if you later decide to use other serial devices.
Old and Here to Stay
Q. We have a Mac IIcx we'd like to upgrade but find that most accelerators specify support for the IIci, omitting the IIcx. Aren't the two machines the same as far as upgrades go?
Patricia Kerner
via the Internet
CHRIS: Ah, the venerable IIcx: an oldie and not so goodie, as far as upgrades are concerned.
Pat, although the IIci and the IIcx look exactly the same from the outside -- aside from the one-letter difference on the front of the case -- the two diverge on the inside in unfortunate ways.
BOB: At the top of the laundry list is this: The cx has "dirty ROMs." This means that it won't recognize more than 8 MB of RAM unless you have MODE32 software installed. When 32-bit-clean addressing first came on the scene (at about the time the IIci came out), there was a huge stink over these dirty ROMs: a stink so big, in fact, that Apple had to give away MODE32 -- at the time, a commercial product from Connectix -- in order to avoid a nasty class-action lawsuit.
If you intend to use more than 8 MB of memory, be sure to download a copy of MODE32, available online in any of the usual places, and then switch on 32-Bit Addressing in the Memory control panel.
CHRIS: Now to acceleration: the IIci is dead-easy to accelerate, because it has a cache slot -- the IIci was the first Mac model to carry one of these suckers. Just plug the accelerator card into the cache slot, and you're done. The IIcx, on the other hand, is dead-hard to deal with, because, besides lacking a cache slot, it has its processor soldered in place.
To soup up the IIcx, you have to jam the accelerator into the hole reserved for the main processor, where, as I hinted earlier, said processor has taken up semipermanent residence (check out figure 2 for an inside look at the accelerated IIcx). To allow the addition of an accelerator, the processor must be ripped from its comfy home -- a job that should be performed only by a certified Processor Ripping Technician (PRT).
If you buy a DayStar Turbo 040, for example, this means extracting the motherboard from the cx; bagging and boxing it; and shipping it off to DayStar, where a PRT installs a socketed processor.
BOB: What a pain! Who'd bother?
CHRIS: I guess I should fess up. I've done these things. Even though I own a Power Mac and use it for such necessary applications as Photoshop, FileMaker Pro, and Marathon 2, I still use the accelerated IIcx for word processing and telecommunications -- heck, Bob, I'm writing and e-mailing these words to you with ol' Mabel right now! With its DayStar 040 accelerator and 20 MB of RAM, Mabel's been running like a top for years.
Sure, if I were considering a speed increase today, I'd probably opt for buying a used Power Mac rather than going the accelerator route, but for those on a tight budget . . .
BOB: And we mean seriously tight.
CHRIS: . . . experience tells me that adding an accelerator is a reliable way to go.
Special Delivery
Q. We can't figure out how to reliably send graphics files via the Internet or from one online service to another. We've purchased StuffIt Deluxe, but file transfers still don't work: We can't open the files once they've been transferred. Can you help?
Dan Wagner
via the Internet
BOB: Piece of cake. You're doing fine so far -- StuffIt Deluxe is most likely the best tool for tackling this job.
CHRIS: Here we go -- this procedure will work no matter what kind of file you're sending: First "stuff" your document, which will create a compressed (and therefore smaller) ".sit" file. Name the file Doc.sit. Next choose BinHex4:Encode from StuffIt Deluxe's Translate menu and select Doc.sit in the Open dialog box. StuffIt Deluxe will cogitate for a moment and then offer you a Save dialog box and suggest you name the file Doc.sit.hqx. (The .hqx suffix means the file is a BinHex file.) Do so.
BOB: Doc.sit.hqx is a plain-old text file (see figure 3) containing a BinHex-encoded representation of your document. Since it's plain-old text, you can copy and paste it into a standard e-mail message. The result looks like unintelligible garbage, but when the message is received by someone on another online service, the BinHex portion can be saved as text and then decoded with StuffIt Deluxe, the freeware StuffIt Expander (which can only decode), or the shareware BinHex 5.0 (which can both encode and decode).
CHRIS: Although you can make your compressed .sit file as large as you like, you'll have to experiment to discover the optimum e-mail-message size for successful transmission from one service to another. Some services have a limit of 28K or 32K, which means you'll have to split up large files into multiple text messages, a pain in the you-know-what but nevertheless doable.
BOB: Another option is to invest in Claris Emailer, which retrieves mail from most online services and the Internet and handles the conversion to BinHex on both ends transparently and automatically.
Expanding Across Platforms
Q. Is there a program that expands and compresses files on Macs as well as PCs? Also, if I use a Mac to download a PC file or application, do I have to do any kind of conversion to get it to work on the PC?
Robert Nasirx
via the Internet
BOB: ZipIt is a full-featured Mac zip archival program that's compatible with PKZip and other zip implementations. Zip, for the Mac-centric among you, is the standard compression format in the PC world.
Version 1.3.5 supports AppleScript and Macintosh Drag and Drop and can zip Mac files without losing any Mac-specific data. It also supports multisegment archives and runs native on PowerPC-based systems. It's $15 shareware by Thomas A. Brown, available online from all the usual places. It's worth every penny.
CHRIS: We'd be remiss not to tell you that both the aforementioned commercial StuffIt and the freeware StuffIt Expander can unzip files, but neither one can zip them.
BOB: In answer to your other question: If you download a PC software file using a Mac, all you have to do is copy the file to a floppy disk you've formatted for use with a PC (choose Erase Disk on the Finder's Special menu, and then choose DOS 1.4 MB from the pop-up menu).
CHRIS: Of course, you must have the PC Exchange control panel present and accounted for in order to read and format floppies of the PC persuasion.
Zip-Boot-Dee-Doo-Da
Q. Are Iomega Zip cartridges bootable? I would like to create a super emergency disk containing a full working System Folder and my repair programs to use when my system goes down hard.
Richard Cooper
via the Internet
CHRIS: Piece of cake.
BOB: We're always saying that. How 'bout slice of pie.
By the way, did you notice that this makes two questions this month about stuff called Zip that have nothing whatsoever to do with one another? What do you suppose that means?
CHRIS: I'd say it doesn't mean zip. Because we're feeling particularly generous, we'll provide you with not one, not two, but three ways to boot with that Zip cartridge:
(1) If your Mac isn't in an unhappy state and boots successfully from the regular ol' hard disk, you can simply shove the cartridge containing a valid System Folder into the Zip drive, designate it as the boot volume in the Startup Disk control panel, and restart -- and you're in Zip heaven.
BOB: (2) In emergencies wherein the hard-disk drive is hosed, hold down the Delete-Option-Command-Shift (think: DOCS) keys at startup to boot from the Zip. Keep in mind that other external SCSI devices will also be accessed during startup. If one of these has a valid System Folder on it, that's the device from which you're likely to boot first.
CHRIS: (3) Just in case the DOCS trick doesn't work (or, more likely, when invoking DOCS you've pressed the right-delete key that sits under the Help key on your extended keyboard instead of the chunky Delete key up there next to the + key, as a sometimes-overtired MacUser columnist has done on more than one occasion), make a copy of your Disk Tools floppy, trash Disk First Aid and HD SC Setup (on the copy), and copy the Startup Disk control panel and Iomega driver to the System Folder on the floppy.
When things go blooey, you can start up from the floppy, insert the Zip cartridge, select it in the Startup Disk control panel, and restart.
BOB: These techniques also apply to other varieties of removable media -- SyQuest, magneto-optical, and CD-ROM. As long as the cartridge, disk, or disc has a viable System Folder, you will be able to use it for starting up your Macintosh.
Department of Corrections, Amplifications, and Clarifications
BOB: In our June column, we explained how to tell which of your programs are PowerPC-native.
CHRIS: We raved about Casady & Greene's commercial program Conflict Catcher but neglected to mention two excellent (and free) utilities that can help you discern which of your programs, control panels, and extensions run in native mode on PowerPC-based systems.
BOB: Tom Hopper was the first reader to e-mail us about our oversights. The embarrassing part is that one of these utilities, PowerPeek, is a MacUser exclusive. PowerPeek is an extension/application combination that lists the PowerPC-native files on your system and tells you which extensions and control panels patch traps, which traps they patch, and more. The report is an easy-to-read, graphical TeachText document. Best of all, the extension puts a red or green light in the upper right corner of your screen that tells you when you're running in emulated (red) or native (green) mode.
CHRIS: TrapsPeek, a freeware utility by Chris Thomas, also creates a text file that lists system traps by name and by what patches have been applied.
BOB: Although none of these programs -- Conflict Catcher, PowerPeek, or TrapsPeek -- really explain what all this mumbo-jumbo about system traps and patches means, they go a long way toward helping you identify non-native culprits that are slowing your PowerPC system down.
CHRIS: On a different note, several readers wrote to tell us that older, antiquated Macintosh software can often be found at Sun Remarketing, the famous used-Macintosh dealer in Utah. Not only does it have copies of early MacWrite and MacPaint software but it also has old Macintosh parts and antique system software. It's at 800-755-3360 or 801-755-3360; sales@sunrem.com; http://ww .sunrem.com/.
Bob LeVitus is the author of 20 computer books and is a columnist for the Houston Chronicle. Christopher Breen recently coauthored The Macintosh Bible Guide to Games, published by Peachpit Press.
You can find the shareware and freeware programs that are referenced in this article at MacUser's Software Central (http://ww .zdnet.com/macuser/software/). You can also find them in the MacUser Forum on CompuServe. See How to Reach Us for instructions on accessing our online services.
figure 1 / To use an external modem with the Performa 6200CD, remove the internal-modem card (at right) and then pop out the plastic plug on the back of the machine. .
figure 2 / This two-tiered accelerator board replaces the IIcx's original 68030 processor with a relatively speedy 68040.
figure 3 / After compressing a file with StuffIt Deluxe, encode it with BinHex4. Your BinHex-encoded text looks like this.
Tips / CD-ROM Games
Play Without the CD-ROM
Today's big-budget computer games eat up hundreds of megabytes of storage space. Because of their gargantuan size, these games are distributed on CD-ROM and traditionally require that you copy a small portion of the game over to your hard disk, leaving most of the game data on the CD-ROM, where it can be accessed as needed. Many users would like to copy the entire game to their hard disk for faster play and -- for PowerBook users without the necessary CD-ROM drive -- portability. Unfortunately, whether you access the darned thing or not, most of these games require that the CD-ROM actually be in the drive. Here's how to get around the problem:
Download a copy of Chad Magendanz's ShrinkWrap 2.0 from any of the usual places. New to version 2.0 is the ability to create a disk image of removable media -- the process we'll undertake.
Boot ShrinkWrap, and in the Preferences dialog box, choose where you want to save the disk image of the CD-ROM. In all likelihood, you'll need a lot of space -- perform a Get Info on the CD-ROM to see just how much. Now select Create Image from Disk, from the Image menu. Select the CD-ROM, and then click on Save.
The contents of your CD-ROM are now a disk image. To mount the image, drag its icon to ShrinkWrap 2.0 or, from within ShrinkWrap, type Command-M. Once the image is mounted, you should be able to play the game as if the CD-ROM were still in the drive.
Note: Certain games, such as Descent, that use Redbook audio files for background music won't be able to access those files from the disk image and will therefore play without music.
Christopher Breen
MacUser contributing editor
Tips / Menu Magic
Windows Envy
Apparently Microsoft's Windows 95 ad campaign has been successful enough to penetrate the crania of Mac users who ought to know better. I've received a couple of letters from readers looking for Mac equivalents to Windows' sticky menus (you know, click once on a menu, and it sticks in place). This is something to get excited over?! Ho hum . . . OK, here's how:
Download either Andreas Atkins' postcardware ClickLock or Michael J. Conrad's $15 shareware program AutoMenus Pro. ClickLock can be configured to always lock menus or to do so only when a modifier key is held down. AutoMenus Pro is a bit more comprehensive than ClickLock. This control panel allows you to drop menus automatically (no clicking necessary -- just place your cursor over the menu name), exclude applications from AutoMenus' magic, and create custom cursors. The program even makes a swooping noise when menus descend.
Show these utilities to your Windows-ridden friends, yawn discreetly, and ask what else is new.
Christopher Breen
MacUser contributing editor
Tips / Online
Shortcut
Tired of typing those endless http://www.blah-blah-blah.com URLs? Our friends at Netscape have hidden a shortcut in version 2.0 of the Navigator browser. If the URL you're looking for fits the http://www.something.com/ convention, just typing the something in the location field may get you there.
I now get to Yahoo by typing Yahoo and to MacUserWeb by typing MacUser (actually, I'm directed to ZD Net -- Web Central for all Ziff-Davis magazines -- but that's still pretty close).
Bryan Anderson
via the Internet
Tips / System 7.5.3
Hidden Features
Some of the best new surprises in System 7.5.3 are accessible only with a little help from a clandestine extension that activates cool stuff Apple "turned off" before releasing System 7.5.3. What are these hidden gems? First is Reveal Original (Command-R), which takes you directly to the original file when you select an alias (meaning that you don't need to access the Find Original button in the Get Info windows). You can also create an alias by holding down the Control key while you drag a file's icon. And when you want to delete a selected file, Command-Delete automatically moves it to the Trash.
To get at these great features, all you need is a freeware extension, either Secret Finder Features or Finder Alias Extensions Enabler. Download them from fine freeware libraries everywhere.
Ted Landau
MacUser contributing editor
Tips / A Little Light Hacking
Return of the Crisper Apple Menu
I love the Crisper Apple Menu tip (Help Folder, August '95, page 120), which explains how to create -- on the Apple menu -- a single folder that contains all your recently used items: applications, documents, and servers. Unfortunately, System 7.5.3's Apple Menu Options Prefs file lacks the all-important TMPL resource you need in order to create a combined folder. Thankfully, using ResEdit, you can copy the TMPL resource from a pre-7.5.3 Apple Menu Options Prefs file, paste it into the new prefs file, and hack to your heart's content.
If you'd prefer not to attempt the ResEdit hack yourself or don't have an old prefs file, you can download one that's been prehacked, from ftp://members.aol.com/wwwstuff/AppleMenuOptionsPrefs.sea.
