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From: erh0362@tesla.njit.edu (Elliotte Rusty Harold) Subject: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Date: 15 Aug 92 02:37:56 GMT comp.sys.mac.faq Copyright (C) 1992, Elliotte Harold, erh0362@tesla.njit.edu Version 1.12 Last modified: August 14, 1992 Changes: Question 3.5 Since bugs in the Compact Pro translator have been exterminated in the recent 3.01 release, Stuffit is now listed as being able to open Compact Pro files. Question 5.7 Added a little more information about MacPalette. Question 11.7 Stuffit SpaceSaver has been moved from the vaporware category to the "It's been released but the promised free upgrade wasn't really free so I don't have a copy yet so I can't say anything about it" category. I hope to rectify this omission in the next release of the FAQ. Meanwhile I've removed Compress Express from this category in favor of products that are actually shipping. Once AutoDoubler 2.0 and More Disk Space 2.0 are released I may finally get around to making a definite recommendation for one of these products versus the others. Table of Contents I. Introduction 1. What other information is available? 2. Posting Etiquette II. The Question of the Year: Why is my system using so much memory? III. FTP 1. Where can I FTP Macintosh software? 2. Can I get shareware by E-mail? 3. Where can I find Application X? 4. Can someone mail me Application X? 5. What is .bin? .hqx? .cpt? .image? .etc? IV. Viruses 1. Help! I have a virus! 2. Reporting new viruses V. Printing 1. How do I make a PostScript file? 2. How do I print a PostScript file? 3. Why won't my PostScript file print on my mainframe's printer? 4. Why are my PostScript files so big? 5. How can I print PostScript on a non-PostScript printer? 6. How do I make my ImageWriter II print in color? 7. Why doesn't PrintMonitor work with the ImageWriter? 8. Why did my document change when I printed it? VI. System Software 1. What is System 7 Tuneup? Do I need it? 2. Do I need System 7.01? 3. How can I get System 7.01 on 800K disks? 4. Why do my DA's disappear when I turn on MultiFinder? VII. DOS and the Mac 1. How can I move files between a Mac and a PC? 2. How can I translate files to a DOS format? 3. Should I buy SoftPC or a real PC? VIII. Security 1. How can I prevent users from changing the contents of a folder? 2. How can I password protect my Mac? IX. Hard Disks 1. Help! My folder disappeared! 2. Why can't I throw this folder away? X. Floppy Disks 1. Why can't my new Mac read my old Mac's floppy disks? 2. Can I turn a double-density disk into a high density disk by punching an extra hole in it? XI. Miscellaneous 1. How can I preview a PostScript file? 2. How do I edit a PostScript file? 3. What does System Error xxx mean? 4. How do I use a picture for my desktop? 5. How do I make a startup screen? 6. Can I Replace the "Welcome to Macintosh" box with a picture? 7. What is AutoDoubler? Is it safe? 8. How does AutoDoubler compare to other compression products? 9. What's a good text editor for the Mac? 10. Where did my icons go? To jump to a particular question, search for section-number.question-number enclosed in parentheses. For example to find "How do I edit a PostScript file?" search for the string (11.2). To jump to a section instead of a question use a zero for the question number. comp.sys.mac.faq is copyright (c) 1992 by Elliotte M. Harold Permission is hereby granted to distribute this unmodified document provided that no fee in excess of normal online charges is required for such distribution. Portions of this document may be extracted and quoted free of charge and without necessity of citation in normal online communication provided only that said quotes are not represented as the correspondent's original work. Permission for quotation of this document in printed material and edited online communication (such as the Info-Mac Digest and Tidbits) is given subject to normal citation procedures (i.e. you have to say where you got it). Disclaimer: I do my best to ensure that information contained in this document is current and accurate, but I can accept no responsibility for actions resulting from information contained herein. This document is provided as is and with no warranty of any kind. Corrections and suggestions should be addressed to erh0362@tesla.njit.edu. Apple, Macintosh, LaserWriter, ImageWriter, Finder, HyperCard and MultiFinder are registered trademarks and PowerBook is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Linotronic is a registered trademark of Linotype-Hell AG, Inc. Quark XPress is a registered trademark of Quark. PostScript is a registered trademark and Illustrator and Photoshop are trademarks of Adobe Systems, Inc. PageMaker is a registered trademark of Aldus Corp. All other tradenames are trademarks of their respective manufacturers. ===================== I HAVE A QUESTION... (1.0) ===================== Congratulations! You've come to the right place. The Usenet community is a wonderful resource for information ranging from basic questions (How do I lock a floppy disk?) to queries that would make Steve Jobs himself run screaming from the room in terror. (I used ResEdit to remove resources Init #11, WDEF 34, and nVIR 17 from my system file and used the Hex Editor to add code string #A67B45 as a patch to the SFGetFile routine so the Standard File Dialog Box would be a nice shade of mauve. Everything worked fine until I installed SuperCDevBlaster, and now when I use the Aldus driver to print from PageMaker 5.0d4 to a Linotronic 6000 my system hangs. P.S. I'm running System 6.02 on a PowerBook 170.) However, since the comp.sys.mac.* newsgroups are medium to high volume, we ask that you first peruse this FAQ file, check any other relevant online resources (listed below), and RTFM (Read the Friendly Manual) before posting your question. We realize that you are personally incensed that the System is taking up fourteen of your newly-installed twenty megs of RAM, but this question has already made its way around the world three hundred times before, and it's developing tired feet. WHAT OTHER INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE? (1.1) This FAQ list provides short answers to a number of frequently asked questions from the newsgroups comp.sys.mac.system, comp.sys.mac.misc, and comp.sys.mac.apps. Various Mac gurus have written other files of excellent quality that go into more detail about individual topics including not a few that aren't covered here. Please check out any that seem relevant to your problem before posting a question. All of the following are available for anonymous FTP from sumex-aim.stanford.edu and its mirrors in the /info-mac/report directory. 800-phone-numbers.txt What's company X's phone number? at-connector-substitute.txt How can I make an Appletalk Connector? backup-to-unix.txt How do I back up my Mac disk onto my UNIX box? color-monitor-survey.txt What's a good multisync monitor? compression-util-table.txt What can uncompress this file? e-mail-gateways.txt How can I send E-mail to someone on CompuServe? on MCI? on Fidonet? on America Online? etc. ftp-primer.txt What's ftp? How do I use it? ftp-sites.txt What are good ftp sites for Mac software? iici-cache-cards.txt What cache-card should I buy for my IIci? iisi-upgrade-options.txt How can I speed up my IIsi? large-color-monitors.txt What are some good 16 inch and larger color monitors? mac-discussion-groups.txt Where can I subscribe to Mac mailing lists? mac-laser-jet-up-rev-11.txt How can I use a HP LaserJet with a Mac? mac-memory-guide.hqx Everything you ever wanted to know about Macintosh memory in a HyperCard stack. mac-plus-accelerators.txt How can I accelerate my Plus? mac-se-accelerators.txt How can I accelerate my SE? mac-secret-names.txt What's the codename of product X? mac-secret-trick-list.txt Where's the Easter Egg in product X? mac-tcp-info.txt What's Mac TCP? Where can I get it? How do I use it? mac-to-workstation.txt How do I connect my Mac and my Unix box? modem-guide-10.txt LOTS of useful information about modems, especially high speed modems and the alphabet soup of modem protocols. power-glove-to-mac.txt How can I connect a PowerGlove to a Mac? powerbook-170-tips.txt How can I improve the performance of my PowerBook? (Not just for 170 owners) powerbook-faq.txt Frequently asked PowerBook questions. powerbook-solutions-guide.hqx A catalog of various payware products to enhance your PowerBook radius-rocket-upgrade.txt What do people think of the Radius Rocket and similar accelerators? se30-external-video.txt What external monitors and cards do se30-monitor-options.txt people like for the SE/30? se30-full-page-monitors.txt style-writer-refills.txt How do I refill a StyleWriter cartridge? sys7-compat-info Is application X System 7 compatible? sys7-emergency-disk.txt How can I force System 7 to fit on a bootable floppy? sys7-finder-command-keys.txt How do I add Command-key equivalents to the Finder menu in System 7? vendor-emails.txt What's company X's E-mail address? Two other files of particular note: Mike Kelly maintains a FAQ list covering Macintosh programming for the newsgroup comp.sys.mac.programmer. It's posted to that group on the first of the month and available for anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.uoregon (128.223.8.8) in /pub/mac. Jim Jagielski maintains a FAQ for comp.unix.aux covering covering Apple's UNIX environment, A/UX. It's posted every 2 to 3 weeks in comp.unix.aux and news.answers. It's available for anonymous ftp at jagubox.gsfc.nasa.gov. WHICH NEWSGROUP SHOULD I POST TO? (1.2) Posting questions to the proper newsgroup will fill your mailbox with pearls of wisdom (and maybe a few rotten oysters too :-) ). Posting to the wrong newsgroup often engenders a thundering silence. For instance the most common and glaring mispost, one that seems as incongruous to dwellers in the Macintosh regions of Usenet as would a purple elephant in Antarctica, asking a question about networking anywhere except comp.sys.mac.comm, normally produces no useful responses. Posting the same question to comp.sys.mac.comm ensures that your post is read and considered by dozens of experienced network administrators and not a few network software designers. Please post to exactly ONE newsgroup. Do not cross-post. If a question isn't important enough for you to spend the extra time to figure out where it properly belongs, it's not important enough for several thousand people to spend their time reading. Similarly comp.sys.mac.misc should not be used as a catch- all newsgroup. Questions about applications should go to comp.sys.mac.apps except for queries about communications programs, games, HyperCard, and databases all of which have their own comp.sys.mac.* newsgroups. Post questions about non- communications hardware including questions about what software is necessary to make particular hardware work to comp.sys.mac.hardware. Questions about Mac OS System Software and extensions belong in comp.sys.mac.system. Questions about A/UX go to comp.unix.aux. Detailed questions about Appletalk belong in comp.protocols.appletalk. Direct questions about HyperCard including programming HyperCard to comp.sys.mac.hypercard. Non-HyperCard programming questions and questions about development environments should go to comp.sys.mac.programmer. ResEdit questions may be posted either to comp.sys.mac.misc, comp.sys.mac.system, or comp.sys.mac.programmer; but generally the netters who inhabit the darker recesses of comp.sys.mac.programmer are considerably more practiced at the art of resource hacking. A general exception to the above rules is that any VERY technical question about an application that actually begins to delve into the hows of a program as well as the whats (Recent example: How does WriteNow which is written entirely in assembly compare to other word processors written in high level languages?) might be better addressed to the programmer newsgroup. For Sale and Want to Buy posts should go to comp.sys.mac.wanted ONLY. We understand that you're desperate to sell your upgraded 128K Mac to get the $$ for a PowerBook 170; but trust me, anyone who wants to buy it will be reading comp.sys.mac.wanted. Anything not specifically mentioned above, especially political and religious questions, (The Mac is better than Windows! Is not! Is too! Is not! Is too! Hey! How 'bout the Amiga! What about it? Is Not! Is too!) belongs in comp.sys.mac.misc. Finally don't be so provincial as to consider only the comp.sys.mac newsgroups the appropriate forums for your questions. A lot of modem questions in comp.sys.mac.comm are much more thoroughly discussed in comp.dcom.modems. Questions about Mac MIDI often would be better handled in comp.music even though this is not a Mac specific newsgroup. Shop around. Usenet's a big place and not everything relevant to the Macintosh happens in comp.sys.mac.*. ================================================================ QUESTION OF THE YEAR: WHY IS MY SYSTEM TAKING UP SO MUCH MEMORY? (2.0) ================================================================ If today Apple changed About this Macintosh (About the Finder in System 6) to report unusable memory in its own bar rather than lumped together with the system, this would probably still be the most frequently asked question of the year. Under system versions earlier than 7.0 or under System 7.x without 32-bit addressing turned on the Mac cannot handle more than eight megabytes of real memory. If you have more physical RAM installed, the Mac knows it's there but can't do anything with it. When you select About the Finder from the Apple menu, the system takes all the extra memory it can't access and reports it as part of the memory allocated to the system. To use the memory you need to get System 7 and turn on 32-bit addressing. If you have a Mac with dirty ROMs (a II, IIx, SE/30, or IIcx) you also need MODE32, free from ftp.apple.com or your local dealer. If you have an original Mac II you'll also need to add a PMMU chip. If you're staying with System 6, Maxima from Connectix ($45 street) will let you use the extra memory as a RAM disk. If you have an LC or an LC II with four megabytes of RAM soldered to the motherboard, you still need to add two four-megabyte SIMM's to reach the ten megabyte maximum imposed by the LC ROM. This means you'll always have two unused megabytes which About this Macintosh and About the Finder report as part of the system memory allocation. Unfortunately there is no current means of accessing this extra memory. === FTP (3.0) === WHERE CAN I FTP MAC SOFTWARE? (3.1) The three major American Internet archives of shareware, freeware, and demo software are sumex-aim.stanford.edu (36.44.0.6), mac.archive.umich.edu (141.211.164.153), and wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) which mirrors the other two sites and is often easier to connect to. Wuarchive often holds on to files after other sites remove them for space concerns, and still has files that were recently deleted from the formerly important site, rascal.ics.utexas.edu. Rascal was notable for storing its files in MacBinary format rather than the less efficient BinHex format common at the other archives. Unless otherwise noted shareware and freeware mentioned in this document should be available at the above sites. To keep traffic on the Internet manageable, European users should try connecting to ftp.funet.fi (128.214.6.100), src.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.2.1), or ftp.irisa.fr (131.254.254.2) instead. Australian users should try to find what they want at archie.au (139.130.4.6) which mirrors the info-mac archives at Stanford. Japanese users can find sumex mirrored at utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp (133.11.11.11). A fourth very important site is ftp.apple.com. This is Apple's semi- official repository for system software, developer tools, source code, technical notes, and other things that come more or less straight from Apple's mouth. Some material at this site may not be distributed outside the U.S. or by other sites that don't have an official license to distribute Apple system software. Please read the various README documents available at ftp.apple.com for the detailed info if you're connecting from outside the U.S. or if you wish to redistribute material you find here. Michael Gleason's mac.ftp.list, a more comprehensive list of FTP sites for Macintosh software, is available from sumex-aim in the info-mac/report directory as ftp-sites.txt. This list catalogs dozens of sites and mirrors, both well- known and obscure. CAN I GET SHAREWARE BY E-MAIL? (3.2) The info-mac archives at sumex-aim are available by E-mail from LISTSERV@RICEVM1.bitnet (alternately listserv@ricevm1.rice.edu). The listserver responds to the commands $MACARCH HELP, $MACARCH INDEX, and $MACARCH GET filename. You can retrieve files from other sites by using the server at ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com. For details send it a message with just the text "help" (no quotes). WHERE CAN I FIND APPLICATION X? (3.3) If you can't find what you're looking for at one of the above sites, try telnetting to your nearest archie server or sending it an E-mail message addressed to archie with the subject "help." Archie servers are located at archie.rutgers.edu (128.6.18.15, America), archie.mcgill.ca (132.206.2.3, the original archie server in Canada), archie.au (139.130.4.6, Australia), archie.funet.fi (128.214.6.100, the continent), and archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.3.7, the U.K.). These sites serve as indexes for the tens of thousands of files available for anonymous ftp. Login as "archie" (no password is needed) and type "prog filename" to find what you're looking for or type "help" for more detailed instructions. For instance after connecting type "prog Disinfectant" to search for a convenient ftp site for Disinfectant. If the initial search fails to turn up your file, try variations on the name. For instance if you didn't find Disinfectant, you might try prog dis instead. Please check the above archives and ARCHIE personally BEFORE asking where you can find a particular piece of shareware. If you follow the above advice, you should almost never have to ask the net where to find a particular piece of software. CAN SOMEONE MAIL ME APPLICATION X? (3.4) No. Nor will anyone mail you a part of a file from comp.binaries.mac that was corrupt or missed at your site. Please refer to the first questions in this section to find out about anonymous FTP, archie, and how to request files from automatic E-mail servers. WHAT IS .BIN? .HQX? .CPT? .ETC? (3.5) Most files available by FTP are modified twice to allow them to more easily pass through foreign computer systems. First they're compressed to make them faster to download, and then they're translated to either a binhex or MacBinary format that other computers can digest. (The Macintosh uses a special two-fork filing system that chokes most other computers.) BinHex files are 7-bit ASCII text files, while MacBinary files are pure 8-bit binary data that must always be transferred using a binary protocol. How a file has been translated and compressed for transmission is indicated by its suffix. Normally a file will have a name something like filename.xxx.yyy. .xxx indicates how it was compressed and .yyy indicates how it was translated. To use a file you've FTP'd and downloaded to your Mac you'll need to reverse the process. Most files you get from the net require a two-step decoding process. First change the binhex or MacBinary file to a double-clickable Macintosh file; then uncompress it. The details of decoding are covered in the table below. *************************************************************************** Suffix: .sit .cpt .hqx .bin .pit .Z .image .dd .zip .uu .tar Extractors -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stuffit 3.0| X X X X X X Compact Pro| X X Packit | X UUTool | X MacCompress| X SunTar | X X X X BinHex 5.0 | X BinHex 4.0 | X DiskDoubler| X UnZip | X DiskCopy | X *************************************************************************** A few notes on the uncompressors: Stuffit is a family of products that use several different compression schemes. The recently released shareware Stuffit Lite 3.01 should unstuff all of these. Stuffit 3.01 also makes smaller archives than any other compression utility for the Mac. To allow maximum space for files on the various ftp sites and to keep net-bandwidth down, please compress all files you send to anonymous ftp sites with Stuffit 3.01. UUTool, MacCompress, and SunTar handle the popular UNIX formats of uuencode, compress, and tar respectively. The UNIX versions are often more robust than the Mac products, so use them instead when that's an option. Translators that allow Stuffit Lite to expand uuencoded and tar files are also available by anonymous ftp. A few notes on the compression formats: .bin: These are MacBinary files. Always use a binary file transfer protocol when transferring them, never ASCII or text. Most files on the net are stored as .hqx instead. Only rascal stores most of its files in .bin format. Most communications programs such as ZTerm and MacKermit are capable of translating MacBinary files on the fly as they download if they know in advance they'll be downloading MacBinary files. .image: Typically this format is used only for system software, so that online users can download files that can easily be converted into exact copies of the installer floppies. Instead of using DiskCopy to restore the images to floppies, you can use Steve Christensen's freeware utility MountImage to treat the images on your hard disk as actual floppies inserted in a floppy drive. MountImage has a reputation for being buggy, so you should have some blank floppies and a copy of DiskCopy handy just in case. .sea (.x, .X): .sea doesn't merit a position in the above table because these are self-extracting archives. They may have been created with Compact Pro, Stuffit, or even Disk Doubler; but all should be capable of uncompressing themselves when double-clicked. For some unknown reason Alysis has chosen not to use this industry standard designation for self-extracting archives created with their payware products SuperDisk! and More Disk Space. Instead these two append either .x or .X to their self-extracting archives. ======== VIRUSES (4.0) ======== HELP! I HAVE A VIRUS. (4.1) 90% of all problems reportedly caused by viruses are actually due to mundane bugs in software (and 90% of all statistics are made up :-) ). Before reporting a virus infection make sure you check your system with the latest version of Disinfectant, 2.8 as of this writing, by the excellent John Norstad and friends from Northwestern University. Disinfectant is absolutely free and available from sumex-aim and all the other usual suspects. It's easy to use and can completely protect your system from currently known Macintosh viruses. Releases to protect from new viruses are normally made within a day or two of the first confirmed sighting and capture of a new virus, and make their merry way around the electronic highways faster than any Macintosh virus ever has. I THINK I'VE FOUND A NEW VIRUS. WHAT DO I DO? (4.2) DON'T post a report to any comp.sys.mac.* newsgroup. 99% of all suspected new viruses are merely mundane bugs in the system or applications being used; and even if you really have found a new virus, there's nothing we can do about it anyway. You'll only succeed in generating a lot of follow-up panic reports from other people who'll blame every crash of Quark XPress on the new virus. If your system is protected against known viruses by Disinfectant or one of the other anti-virus packages and you suspect a new virus is causing you trouble, first consult with the most knowledgeable local guru about your problem. Nine times out of ten, he or she will identify it as a boring, ordinary, known bug in the software. If you are the local guru and still think you may have found a new virus, and have thoroughly checked out all other possibilities, then, and only then, send a detailed description of your problem to j_norstad@nwu.edu. Check the appropriate sections of the Disinfectant manual for procedures to follow before reporting a new virus. ================= PRINTING PROBLEMS (5.0) ================= HOW DO I MAKE A POSTSCRIPT FILE? (5.1) First make sure a LaserWriter driver is in your System folder. It doesn't really matter which one although the one from the System 7 Tuneup disk is the best. You don't need System 7 to use the System 7 LaserWriter driver. If you're using the System 6 driver, you'll also need a Laser Prep file in your System Folder and background printing turned off. Once you've verified that there is indeed a LaserWriter driver in your system folder, select LaserWriter in the Chooser. A dialog box will likely pop up informing you that the LaserWriter requires Appletalk and asking you if you want to turn Appletalk on. Whether or not you have AppleTalk click OK. Then select Page Setup from the File menu to format your document for the LaserWriter. Next select Print from the File menu. If you're using the System 7 LaserWriter driver, the Print dialog box that appears will have a radio button for Destination near the bottom. Click on PostScript file. The Print button at the top should change to a Save button. Click it and you'll get a standard file dialog asking you what to name and where to save the PostScript file. If you're using the LaserWriter driver 6.0x or 5.2, the procedure is more complicated. When the Print dialog box comes up, put one finger over the K key. If you'll eventually print the file on a non-Apple PostScript printer, especially one not designed with the Macintosh in mind, also put a finger over the Command key. Using Command-K instead of plain K includes some Mac specific information non-Apple-oriented PostScript printers need to know about. Next hit return or click OK with the mouse and then IMMEDIATELY hit K or Command-K with your other hand. You've got about one second to do this. If you see a message box that says "Creating PostScript file," you did it right. If you don't see that message, you weren't quick enough. Try again. Once you've gotten the message "Creating PostScript file" you should find a file called PostScript0 in the same folder as the application you were printing from. This is the file you just printed. Rename it before you forget what it is. If you print to disk (what this whole process is officially called) more than once, the second file will be called PostScript1, the third PostScript2, and so on. It really is much easier to use the System 7 LaserWriter driver. HOW DO I PRINT A POSTSCRIPT FILE? (5.2) On a Macintosh you'll need the LaserWriter Utility available on the high density TidBits disk from System 7 or the More Tidbits disk from the 800K distribution. It's also available for anonymous ftp from ftp.apple.com in /dts/mac/sys.soft/imaging. LaserWriter Utility allows you to send files to the LaserWriter in such a way that PostScript commands get interpreted as PostScript rather than as text to be printed. If you're printing to a PostScript printer connected to something other than a Macintosh, you'll need to consult your local system gurus. A simple "lpr filename.ps" works on my Sparc, but your mileage may vary. WHY WON'T MY POSTSCRIPT FILE PRINT ON MY MAINFRAME'S PRINTER? (5.3) Moving PostScript files between the Macintosh and other platforms is as dark an art as exists in the Macintosh universe. You'll have to experiment with your specific setup and see what works best for you. If you're using the System 6 LaserWriter driver, try using K instead of F to create the PostScript file so that the Laser Prep header is included. System 7 includes this automatically though you can use Hugo Ayala's shareware Control Panel device Trimmer to leave it out if you need to. More importantly Trimmer lets you select which fonts to include in your PostScript file. The upload to the mainframe from which the PostScript file will be printed may also make a difference. Normally you need to upload in pure Binary format, neither MacBinary nor ASCII. Try using only genuine PostScript fonts, no TrueType or bitmapped fonts. WHY ARE MY POSTSCRIPT FILES SO BIG? (5.4) The System 7 LaserWriter driver automatically includes all the fonts you use in your document plus the LaserPrep information plus the TrueType engine (if you're using any TrueType fonts) in the PostScript file. Thus a 3K document formatted in 90K worth of fonts can easily produce a 300K PostScript file. If these fonts are present on the system you'll be printing from, they don't need to be included in the document; and you can remove them with the shareware control panel Trimmer or the free utility StripFonts. HOW CAN I PRINT POSTSCRIPT ON A NON-POSTSCRIPT PRINTER? (5.6) You need one of the payware applications Freedom of the Press or TScript. For most users who only want to print to common printers like DeskWriters, StyleWriters, or Personal LaserWriter LS's, the Light version of Freedom of the Press or the Basic version of TScript will suffice. ($55 street for either). More expensive versions of both products are available that work with more esoteric printers, particularly color printers and very-high-end imagesetters. HOW DO I MAKE MY IMAGEWRITER II PRINT IN COLOR? (5.7) Applications such as SuperPaint 2.0 and MacWrite II that support the original eight-color model for QuickDraw graphics, can print in color with just a color ribbon and no additional software. The shareware GifConverter can open and print a variety of graphics file types in excellent dithered color. Jeff Skaitsis's $1 shareware CheapColor can also dither PixelPaint and PICT2 files to an ImageWriter II. If you have a Macintosh with a 68020 or better CPU, the payware MacPalette II provides general purpose color printing from any application that prints on a QuickDraw printer (e.g. NOT Illustrator). MacPalette is about $45 street. If you need more information the publisher, Microspot, can be contacted at 1(800)622-7568. WHY DOESN'T PRINTMONITOR WORK WITH THE IMAGEWRITER? (5.8) Ask the Apple Customer Assistance Center (20525 Mariani Avenue, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA, 1-800-776-2333) this one. Meanwhile the only current way to print spool to an ImageWriter under System 7 is with SuperLaserSpool 3.0 from Fifth Generation Systems. This is a fully commercial product. There are NO freeware, shareware, or other FTPable solutions that work under System 7 so get out your credit cards. At $98 street price for SuperLaserSpool and only $300 for the vastly superior DeskWriter or StyleWriter you may want to forgo SuperLaserSpool and buy a better printer instead. If you're still using System 6 and have no plans to move to System 7, there is a shareware product called MultiSpool from Italy; but it is not System 7 compatible and prints only under MultiFinder. WHY DID MY PERFECTLY FORMATTED DOCUMENT LOOK LIKE GARBAGE WHEN I TOOK IT TO SOMEONE ELSE'S COMPUTER TO PRINT? (5.9) There are about a dozen different reasons this can happen. You normally need to take account of all of these when formatting files for someone else's printer. Far and away the most common problem is using the wrong printer driver. BEFORE you start formatting your document, make sure you have a printer driver for the printer you'll use for your final draft in your system folder and have selected that printer in the Chooser. Then do a Page Setup. This lets the application know what sort of output it should try to match the display to. The second most common problem is font confusion. Make sure you know exactly which fonts are in your document; and, if you're printing to a PostScript printer, make sure PostScript versions of these fonts are available to that printer. On newer printers you might also be able to use TrueType fonts; but PostScript is still the standard, especially if you're eventually going to Lino for camera ready output. The third most common source of trouble is poor formatting, especially in Microsoft Word. The Mac is not a typewriter, and you shouldn't use it as one. Don't use tabs as a substitute for indentation, don't force a page break with carriage returns, and NEVER use spaces to position anything. If you're writing a resume (far and away the most common source of formatting problems for Word users), give serious thought to using the well-formatted resume template that comes with Word to help you avoid problems with your final printout. =============== SYSTEM SOFTWARE (6.0) =============== WHAT IS SYSTEM 7 TUNEUP? DO I NEED IT? (6.1) If you use System 7 or the System 7 printer drivers, you need System 7 Tuneup. The tuneup includes a number of fixes and enhancements to System 7, including substantially faster printer drivers, a StyleWriter driver that can be spooled, a fix that saves several hundred kilobytes of memory on non-networked Macs, and, most importantly, a vaccine for the disappearing folders bug. DO I NEED SYSTEM 7.0.1? (6.2) Officially if you don't have a Quadra or PowerBook, you don't need System 7.0.1. Unofficially some changes were made that speed up SANE (numerics) operations on 32-bit clean Macintoshes with a floating-point coprocessor. These include all IIci's and IIfx's plus LC's and IIsi's that have had a coprocessor specially installed. (Neither of the latter machines ships with a coprocessor.) HOW CAN I GET SYSTEM 7.0.1 ON 800K DISKS? (6.3) You can't because all machines that gain any benefits from 7.0.1 come equipped with high density floppy drives. You can however use the utility MountImage to mount the images of the 1400K System 7.0.1 disks (available from ftp.apple.com) on your hard drive and install from the image rather than a floppy. Be warned, however, that MountImage is notoriously unreliable when doing installs. Be sure you make a complete backup of your hard disk and have a set of System disks on genuine floppies before attempting to install from mounted images. WHY DO MY DA'S DISAPPEAR WHEN I TURN ON MULTIFINDER? (6.4) You need to put the file "DA Handler" in your System Folder. It should be on one of your System 6.0x disks. Under Finder the Desk Accessories load into the memory provided by your application. Under MultiFinder they load into their own memory space provided by DA Handler. =============== DOS AND THE MAC (7.0) =============== HOW CAN I MOVE FILES BETWEEN A MAC AND A PC? (7.1) The simplest way to move files between a PC and a Mac is with a null-modem cable and a good communications program. You can get a null-modem cable from any good electronics store. Make sure the cable you buy has the appropriate connectors for the Mac and PC you'll be connecting. Hook one end of the cable to the printer or modem port on your Mac and the other to the serial port on the PC. This should work just like a very high speed (57,600 bps) modem connection except that you'll probably need to turn on local echo in your communications program. If the computers aren't within cabling distance, you can either upload the files to an intermediary mainframe or put them on a floppy disk. The Superdrive (see the section on floppy disks) sold since the introduction of the IIx is capable of formatting and writing to 3.5 inch PC floppies. Apple includes Apple File Exchange, a minimal program capable of doing this as part of the System Software. Apple File Exchange is difficult to use and violates at least half of Apple's user interface guidelines. (Can anyone explain why no other software company violates as many of Apple's user interface guidelines as Apple itself does?) For details on its use please Read the Friendly Manual. If you have a frequent need for using DOS floppies and you have a SuperDrive, you may want to invest in a more transparent solution. The three currently available are AccessPC from Insignia Solutions, DOS Mounter from Dayna, and Macintosh PC Exchange from Apple, all of which automatically mount and format 3.5 inch DOS floppies in a SuperDrive without requiring you to run a separate program before you insert the disk. MacPC File Exchange requires System 7. If you use DOS Mounter be sure to increase your RAM cache to at least 256K. This will substantially improve its performance. HOW CAN I TRANSLATE FILES TO A DIFFERENT PLATFORM? (7.2) With the increasing popularity of cross-platform development, many Macintosh programs like Adobe Illustrator 3.0, Adobe Photoshop, and Microsoft Word 5.0 are able to save directly to a format readable by DOS or Windows programs. You'll still need to mount the DOS floppies in the Mac drive using one of the products discussed above or do a default translation from within Apple File Exchange. Although translators for Apple File Exchange could theoretically be designed to translate files made by applications without these capabilities, AFE has never really caught on. The best solution is a payware product by DataViz called MacLink Plus. MacLink Plus, about $100 street price, can translate over 400 DOS, Windows, Macintosh, and NeXT formats back and forth. As an added bonus it comes bundled with a copy of DOS Mounter. SHOULD I BUY SOFTPC OR A REAL PC? (7.3) The various versions of SoftPC will run most PC software on a Macintosh as advertised; but even on the fastest Macs, SoftAT will be slower than an original AT. On any Mac slower than a IIci or with any version of SoftPC other than SoftAT, you'll likely get performance at best of twice the speed of an original XT. More likely you'll only have the speed of an original XT. For today's software like WordPerfect 5.1 that's S...L...O...W. Of course slow is relative. I've seen an AMIGA running a Mac emulator running SoftPC running a CP/M emulator. That's slow! As part of testing the 486 chip design, Intel ran DOS on a simulation of the 486 chip running on an IBM 3090 mainframe. It took them TWO WEEKS to get to the C> prompt! That's slow. SoftPC on a Classic is actually about as fast as the original IBM PC from ten years ago. Furthermore SoftPC is known to have problems with certain peripherals, both for the PC and the Mac. If you need to use any external peripherals besides a floppy drive, you should get a real PC. Moreover SoftPC's graphics are currently limited to at best EGA. If you need VGA you need a real PC. Considering that SoftAT has a street price only slightly less than a new AT clone complete with its own small hard disk, floppy drive, and monitor, you're almost certainly better off buying a real PC if you need to run any but the most trivial DOS software. ======== SECURITY (8.0) ======== HOW DO I PREVENT PEOPLE FROM CHANGING THE CONTENTS OF FOLDERS IN A PUBLIC MAC LAB? (8.1) A first line of defense would be to use ResEdit, DiskTop, or a similar tool to set the invisible, locked, and nocopy (bozo) bits on the folders, applications, and documents you want to protect. This won't stop a knowledgeable or determined hacker, and protecting the system folder in this fashion may cause problems under System 7; but it will cure 90% of your random-user-moving-things- around problems. If you want to lock out more sophisticated users, a number of payware utilities are available that allow you to password protect individual folders. They include FolderBolt from Kent Marsh ($75 street), and Empower II from Magna ($155 street). The registered version of Art Schumer's MacPassword ($35 shareware) is also capable of this, although the FTPable demo version is not. You might also consider Brian Bechtel's freeware LockDisk 1.0, a cdev that makes the boot disk read only. However this can cause problems with some applications that can't run from a read-only disk. HOW CAN I PASSWORD-PROTECT A MAC? (8.2) Dr. Ralph Martin's shareware Password 1.3 provides a minimal level of protection for your hard disk, but can be bypassed by the simple expedient of booting from an unprotected floppy. Art Schumer's shareware MacPassword cannot be bypassed that easily, but the demo version available by FTP expires after sixty days. Some hard disk formatters also offer optional password protection. Notable in this category is FWB's Hard Disk Toolkit, about $125 mail-order. A number of more powerful payware utilities are capable of this and a lot more though with great security comes great danger. The more secure a product is the more chance you have of accidentally locking your hard disk so tight that you yourself can't recover your data. Notable commercial products in this category are DiskLock from Fifth Generation ($127 street) and Empower I from Magna ($90 street). ================= HARD DISK PROBLEMS (9.0) ================= HELP! THE FOLDER CONTAINING ALL SOURCE CODE FOR MY COMPANY'S BIG PROJECT JUST DISAPPEARED FROM OUR SERVER; WE HAVEN'T BACKED UP IN A WEEK; AND IF I CAN'T GET IT BACK I'LL BE FIRED AND MY COMPANY WILL GO BANKRUPT! (9.1) Try a Find on the missing filenames; and, if they turn up, move those files to the desktop. In the meantime have a friend call a good bankruptcy lawyer. There are no surefire solutions to this problem although at least one utilities vendor is rumored to be working on a fix. You can, however, prevent this from happening again. Run Disk First Aid, back up your disk (what's left of it), reformat it, reinstall System 7, and then install System 7 Tuneup 1.1.1 which fixes the disappearing folders bug. Apparently the larval form of this bug was gestating in several earlier versions of the Mac OS but didn't actually hatch and bite anyone until 7.0. WHY CAN'T I THROW AWAY THIS FOLDER? (9.2) Possibly the folder contains items that are locked or in use and can't be thrown away. Turn off file-sharing (if it's on) and quit all applications. Then try to throw the folder away. If that doesn't work and you're using System 6, hold down the option-key and drag the folder into the trash; or if you're using System 7, hold down the option key while selecting "Empty Trash" from the special menu. Holding the option key down lets you throw away locked items. If that doesn't work restart the computer, hold down the option key, and try again. If you still can't throw away the folder, try throwing away the items in the folder (if any) one by one until you find the ones giving you trouble. Remove them from the folder, and then throw the folder away. If you still can't throw the folder away, you've discovered a "Folder from Hell." It can be fixed with John Jeppson's HellFolderFix utility, available from the usual FTP sites. ============ FLOPPY DISKS (10.0) ============ There have been three kinds of floppy disks in the history of the Macintosh. The original 128K Thin Mac (which used to be called a classic Mac before the advent of the much superior Mac Classic) and the subsequent 512K "Fat Mac" used 400K, single-sided double-density diskettes. These disks are outdated, and it's highly unlikely you'll actually see any. If you need to exchange data with an older Macintosh, you'll need to use disks formatted as one-sided. Since very few, if any, stores still sell one-sided 3.5 inch disks anymore, it's fortunate that all Macs deal quite happily with double-sided disks formatted as single-sided. Just click the button labeled "One-sided" after you select "Erase Disk" from the Special menu. ***Neat Trick alert*** Sometimes disks that fail formatting as double- sided can be formatted as single-sided. Even neater trick: Under System 6.0x the shareware init BAD can map out bad sectors on a floppy disk which lets about 70% of bad disks be formatted. (System 7 does this automatically.) Neatest trick of all: All name-brand diskettes (SONY, Maxell, etc.) come with lifetime warranties. A lot of offices keep a bad disk box for everyone to dump their bad disks in and send the disks in for replacement when they collect ten or so; but it's been my experience that if you return just a single bad disk these companies will send a whole ten pack as a replacement. With the introduction of the Mac Plus in 1986, Apple also introduced a larger disk drive capable of reading and writing 800K, "Double-Sided Double- Density" disks, DSDD for short. The only way to tell these disks from the earlier, one-sided diskettes, is by the label on the metal cover. Unformatted these are identical to the 720K disks common in the IBM world. With the Mac IIx Apple introduced what's alternately known as the Superdrive or "FDHD," short for "Floppy Drive, High Density." The FDHD (pronounced Fud-Hud) can read and write all of the previous kinds of diskettes plus double-sided high-density disks which are distinguished by two holes in the disk case rather than the normal one. The FDHD uses the extra hole to recognize a high-density disk. WHY DOESN'T MY MAC CLASSIC (SE/30, QUADRA, IIci, etc.) READ THE DISKS FROM MY OLD PLUS? (10.1) The Macintosh Plus and earlier machines along with most original Mac II's and some SE's do not have the high density FDHD drive necessary to properly read and format a high-density disk. If you insert a blank high-density disk in a low density drive, the Mac, not knowing the difference between a double-density and a high-density floppy, will happily format your expensive 1.4 meg disk as a cheap 800K diskette. When you move this disk to a more advanced machine with a FDHD drive, the newer drive will recognize the disk as a high-density floppy by its extra hole. Since the disk has been formatted as 800K instead of as 1400K, the FDHD drive will misread it and ask you if you want to initialize it. As a temporary workaround place a small piece of scotch tape over both sides of the extra hole on the high-density disk to trick the Mac into treating the disk as a double-density disk. This is a temporary fix only, and the tape should be removed and the disk reformatted to the proper size as soon as possible. CAN I MAKE A HIGH-DENSITY DISK BY PUNCHING AN EXTRA HOLE IN A DOUBLE-DENSITY DISK? (10.2) Yes you can, but I certainly wouldn't trust any data I intended to keep for more than the next minute or two to such a diskette. The extra hole is not the only difference between a double-density and a high-density disk. The magnetic media on a high-density disk is a different type that is much more susceptible to formatting. Double-density diskettes should only be formatted as 800K. With the plummeting prices of real high-density disks, this really shouldn't be an issue anymore. ============= MISCELLANEOUS (11.0) ============= IS THERE A UTILITY TO VIEW POSTSCRIPT FILES ON THE MAC? (11.1) Net godhood awaits the first person to write a shareware or freeware solution to this problem. The payware products Canvas 3.0 and TScript allow viewing PostScript files on the Mac, but both are large packages with other purposes and cost over $50 each. IS THERE A UTILITY TO EDIT POSTSCRIPT FILES ON THE MAC? (11.2) In the most basic sense PostScript files are just ASCII text, so if you're familiar with the PostScript programming language you can edit PostScript in any good text editor. If you want to edit the PostScript files graphically, the only utility currently capable of that on some level is Canvas 3.0. WHAT DOES SYSTEM ERROR XXX MEAN? (11.3) Typically it means nothing at all of any use to you. Your time is much more usefully spent trying to figure out what actions in which application caused the crash so that you can avoid them in the future rather than deciphering system error numbers. After all, knowing that Error 16 means a math coprocessor is not installed doesn't help you much in fixing the problem. Knowing that this happens in Quark XPress 3.0 every time you try to link two text boxes on a master page when copies of those text boxes already contain text does. (And in this case the error message isn't even accurate.) If you really want to know what that number means, get Dr. Pete Corless's System Error 7.0.1 utility available in the usual places. HOW DO I USE A PICTURE FOR MY DESKTOP? (11.4) You need to get the init DeskPict, available from the usual FTP sites. DeskPict works only on Macs with Color QuickDraw in ROM (Mac II and later machines). A slightly improved and less buggy version called DeskPicture is part of the payware Now Utilities. CAN I REPLACE THE "WELCOME TO MACINTOSH" BOX WITH A PICTURE? (11.5) First you need an application capable of saving documents in Startup Screen format such as the freeware XLateGraf or the shareware GIFConverter. Open the graphics file you want to turn into a startup screen and select Save As... from the File menu. Then select Startup Screen as the format to save into. Name the new document "StartupScreen" (no space between Startup and Screen) and put it in your System Folder. The next time you boot you should see the happy Mac, followed by your picture. WHAT IS AUTODOUBLER? (11.6) Salient Software's AutoDoubler is a transparent file compression utility that compresses most files on your hard disk and uncompresses them automatically when you open them so that your hard disk appears to be much larger than it really is. Ideally you won't know it's there once you've installed it. The net consensus seems to be that AutoDoubler is fast and safe. The only common, known conflicts are with GateKeeper Aid and with the Find File function in Microsoft Word 5.0. Neither is crippling, but neither seems likely to be fixed in the near future. Gatekeeper Aid occasionally disallows Autodoubler's automatic expansion of files into RAM, forcing a substantially slower decompression onto disk. Word 5.0 is unable to search Autodoubled files. HOW DOES AUTODOUBLER COMPARE TO DISK DOUBLER? TO MORE DISK SPACE? TO STUFFIT SPACESAVER? (11.7) Disk Doubler, also from Salient Software, is a cross between AutoDoubler and Compact Pro. It can uncompress all AutoDoubler archives; (but so can AutoDoubler) and unlike AutoDoubler Disk Doubler compressed files aren't automatically uncompressed when copied to floppy or sent via modem. Like AutoDoubler DiskDoubler can automatically uncompress files when needed, but the decompression isn't nearly as transparent or fast as AutoDoubler's. More Disk Space is a competing product similar in functionality to AutoDoubler. In addition to transparent file compression More Disk Space can also make self-extracting and segmented archives for transmission via modem or floppy disk, and can compress applications in such a fashion that other Macs without More Disk Space can use them. Furthermore a freeware init is available to allow all Macs to to use files previously compressed by More Disk Space as transparently as if More Disk Space itself were installed. However some netters claim More Disk Space violates a certain programming edict from Apple which makes it likely to break under future versions of the System. Alysis denies this. Attempts to contact the appropriate people at Apple for the "official" word have so far been unsuccessful. Stuffit Spacesaver from Aladdin Systems is a competing automatic compression utility that only recently shipped. I hope to have had a chance to evaluate it by the next release of the FAQ. IS THERE A JPEG VIEWER FOR THE MAC? (11.8) Storm Technology's Picture Decompress shows JPEG's on all Macs with 32-bit QuickDraw. Aaron Giles' JPEGView previews JPEG files on System 7 Macs with QuickTime installed. PictPixie, a QuickTime development tool from Apple, also allows Macs with 32-bit QuickDraw and QuickTime to display JPEG's but requires enormous amounts of memory. All are free; the first two are available from the regular archive sites, the last from ftp.apple.com in /dts/mac/quicktime. JPEGView and PictPixie not only display JPEG's but can also convert them to Quicktime format. One more free product worthy of mention is Jeff Lewis's Imagery/JPEG which converts JPEG format files to GIF's albeit with some loss of resolution. They can then be viewed with any Gif viewer like QuickGif or GifConverter. WHAT'S A GOOD TEXT EDITOR FOR THE MAC? (11.9) Available shareware and freeware text editors include McSink, BBEdit, Edit II (with grep style searching), Alpha (particularly nice for use with TeX files), Stevie (for fans of vi), and microEmacs. The feature sets of these editors overlap somewhat but are not identical. Since all are available via anonymous FTP, there's no reason not to try them all and find the one you like best. WHERE DID MY ICONS GO? (11.10) Your icons have passed on to a better place, but with a little magic it's normally possible to resurrect them. Several utilities including Norton Utilities for the Mac and the freeware drag-and-drop utility Save-A-BNDL should retrieve your icons. Rebuilding the desktop (Hold down the Command and option keys while starting up.) should also restore your icons.