MacFormat 1995 March

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Date: Tue, 8 Nov 94 09:53 PST From: xxltony@crash.cts.com (Tony Lindsey) Subject: Mac*Chat#56/31-Oct-94 Mac*Chat#56/31-Oct-94 ===================== Welcome to Mac*Chat, the free, monthly electronic newsletter biased toward Mac users who are production-oriented professionals. Other Mac users may find many, many items of interest as well. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback and suggestions. Tony Lindsey, <xxltony@crash.cts.com>. Copyright 1989-1994 Tony Lindsey. Nonprofit groups (such as Mac User Groups) or other non-commercial publications) are welcome to use any part of the Mac*Chat newsletters if full credit is given. All others will need to contact me. This newsletter is intended purely as entertainment and free information. No profit has been made from any of these opinions, which are solely my own. Time passes, so accuracy may diminish. Publication, product, and company names may be registered trademarks of their companies. This file is formatted as setext, which can be read on any text reader. Topics: Welcome To The New Folks! Mac*Chat Is Spreading Over The Planet What To Do With Obsolete Computers My Advice To A Iifx Owner Iicx Floppy Drives Donating Equipment To Schools Screen Roms And Upgrades Internal Batteries Are Dying Hard Drives Are Dying Cartridge Drives Bernoulli Drives Syquest Drives Readable-Writeable Optical Drives Bottom Line On Cartridge Drives Active Termination Don't Dump Those Catalogs Yet! Free Subscriptions To This Newsletter Welcome To The New Folks! ------------------------- Since last month's issue, there have been many, many new subscribers, so I'd like to take a moment to welcome everybody, and explain a few things. I'm Tony Lindsey, a San Diego-based computer consultant. This newsletter is something I give away free to my local clients, and I also give it away free to anyone on the worldwide Internet that wants to receive it on a regular basis. I don't try to compete with the many, many technical magazines and newsletters out there. I only give the advice that I'd give to my favorite clients, based on 13-1/2 years of experience. Judging from the amount of folks who subscribe every day, I'm guessing that there's a need for some honest, simple advice that doesn't include a sales pitch. In nearly five years of giving away this newsletter (and my entire career as a consultant), I have never attempted to sell a product to get a financial kickback from the vendor. I love to work for myself, largely because I can follow my ideals. You may not always agree with what I have to say, but you can always trust me to be forthright. Mac*Chat Is Spreading Over The Planet ------------------------------------- The folks at Temple University in Philadelphia are helping me to distribute Mac*Chat so I don't have to deal with the monstrously-large (and growing daily) mailing list. I also post it to the Stanford Info-Mac main ftp site and the University of Michigan ftp sites. If anybody would be willing to help me spread it even further and knows how to do so, I'm very open to advice and assistance. Ideally, I think that posting it to major services like CompuServe, Prodigy, eWorld and AOL would be wonderful, but I don't know who to contact, or who would post the newsletter every month for me. What To Do With Obsolete Computers ---------------------------------- I've been getting a LOT of questions about older Macs that are going bad, dying, or just plain frustrating folks with their slowness. Most of this issue will deal with this topic. My Advice To A Iifx Owner ------------------------- A client of mine called me recently to ask me how he could "beef up" his 5-year-old Mac IIfx to make it more useful. He's a graphic designer, using his Mac for lots of photo-retouching with PhotoShop. He wanted to know how he could make it faster and he wanted to add a larger hard disk. I told him to completely re-think the whole idea. I said that adding more of ANYTHING to his IIfx was like pouring perfume on a pig. The IIfx is a total dead-end when it comes to upgrades. The RAM chips are utterly unique and expensive, and the hard drives have to be replaced VERY carefully (as I've mentioned in a previous issue). It's just not a great platform for future production-work. He had a staff downstairs with 2 SE's and a IIcx. I felt very strongly that it was time to give the IIfx to the IIcx user, and the IIcx would go to one of the SE users. I told him to get the fastest Mac possible, since he was the main money-maker for the business. He has a RasterOps large-screen display, so I told him to get the ROM-chip upgrade for the display board and install it in the new Mac. This would allow him to maintain compatibility with the newer operating systems and Mac hardware. I told him to look seriously at leasing for his own new Mac, but not to own. His time is money, and he needs to have the fastest equipment available to him at all times. The technology is changing VERY quickly, and there are some awesomely advanced Macs coming within the next 12 months. I can't even imagine how different things will be in the year after that. He's competing against many, many other folks who are using Macs here in his area, so he needs to keep an edge. When he has a very fast Mac, he will have the luxury of trying more and more variations on his ideas in a shorter period of time. He can let his creativity go wild. He told me he loved the idea, but he had concerns about money. I definitely can sympathize, but there are two costs when you get computer equipment: The initial expense and the aggravation expense that you pay every day. This includes the hidden costs of sitting around waiting for filters to do their work, and programs take forever to load when you have a zillion fonts installed. When he looks at cost-effectiveness, he needs to factor in his own time. Times are tough financially for a lot of folks. However, the people who will be doing the best in the years to come will be the folks who move into the new market niches, and it will take more than the minimum hardware to take advantage of the best new software. I told him to set goals, and the money will show up once he's made up his mind. That's how I've always gotten my own computers. An attitude of defeat and scarcity won't get us more goodies. The economy is getting better. Iicx Floppy Drives ------------------ As I've said before in a previous issue, IIcx and IIci diskette drives are usually packed with dust due to the shabby design of the case. The fan sucks air through the front of the computer, including the floppy drive. There were later, improved models of the IIcx and IIci which have a plastic sheath around the disk drive to cut down the circulation, but now THEY are going bad. If you are storing your data files on a bunch of diskettes, BEWARE of doing it on either of these two computers. If the drive starts destroying your data files, replace the whole diskette drive. It won't be cheap, but it'll be trustworthy. Donating Equipment To Schools ----------------------------- If you have an older Mac that works fine but needs replacing, consider a few ideas for disposing of it. Take a good close look at donating the computer to a school in your area. You can get a nice, fat tax write-off, and you'll help many, many kids. Here in San Diego, the Detweiler Foundation (619-456-9045) takes donations of old equipment and makes sure it gets to the neediest schools in the area. They fix whatever can be repaired and then deliver it in useful condition. Talk to the schools in your area and see if they could use some of your (still-functioning) equipment. Screen Roms And Upgrades ------------------------ If your Mac has a separate display card plugged into a Newbus slot and is hooked to a large color screen, contact the manufacturer to see how much it would cost to get the newest ROM upgrade. Most manufacturers upgrade the ROM design every few months to maintain compatibility with the newest programs and System updates, and the new chips aren't expensive. You can also get newer software on diskettes to go with it, but I find its value debatable. One of my clients bought a PowerMac 8100 and put his old SuperMac display card inside. His big monitor started to show odd artifacts of noise and incorrect screen-clearing. The new ROM fixed things right up. Other, older circuit boards can't be fixed so easily, and may need total replacement. For example: I'm still using System 7.1 on my own computer, because 7.5 is NOT recommended for older Rasterops 364 boards like mine. Rasterops will never upgrade the ROMs, and I'm holding off on upgrading until I find out what would be the best replacement. Internal Batteries Are Dying ---------------------------- A young client of mine called me to find out why his Mac's color kept reverting to black-and-white. I asked him to check his time using the Alarm Clock desk accessory. It told him that it was 12:18 AM, even though it was really 4 PM. I told him his internal battery had died of old age and needed to be replaced. This battery is used to keep track of things like the date & time and the number of colors on the screen. The battery generally needs replacing after three or four years at the earliest. All Macs have them. Hard Drives Are Dying --------------------- If you're determined to hang onto your Mac no matter what, please be aware that the first thing to go will most likely be your hard disk. If your Mac is over four years old and you haven't backed-up your work, WATCH OUT! As soon as you read this, go back up your documents at the very *least*. If you're tired of having a constantly-full hard disk, don't bother with auto-compression utilities and drivers. They slow you down and are awkward. With new internal hard drives so cheap, you'll be a lot happier with a new drive. If you buy the new drive through mail-order, it'll probably be cheaper, but then you'll have the problem of transferring the contents of your old drive onto the new one. Maybe you'd rather just get an external hard drive and use IT for the startup disk. Then, you could hook the drive to a new Mac when you get one. If you buy an internal drive from a local computer store, they will usually transfer the old contents at a minimal price. Then, enjoy having all of that room! Cartridge Drives ---------------- There's a big shakeout going on in the world of removable storage devices. You can buy dozens of devices that will store lots of data and programs on removable cartridges. These cartridges come in all sorts of shapes and capacities. These are great for backing-up your hard disk, archiving away old projects, and transferring print jobs to your local service bureaus. You walk in, hand your cartridge to the folks at the counter, and tell them that you want it printed on color film or some other such expensive output. Most jobs involving color images will never fit on standard high-density diskettes, so cartridge drives are very useful, but ONLY if they match the drives at the service bureau that you use the most. There are a whole lot of new drives coming out with a capacity of at least 230 megabytes per disk. Bernoulli Drives ---------------- In order to settle on a standard, there has to be a price war. The folks at Iomega know this, so they are offering a Bernoulli drive with three cartridges (holding 230 megs each) through service bureaus for only $549 in the USA! Contact your service bureau to get the ordering form. This should force the rest of the manufacturers to drop their own prices, so start watching the ads in the back of the Mac magazines, or all of those darned catalogs many of us get from the mail-order companies. Bernoulli drives are very resistant to head crashes from dust contamination (it's basically a large-capacity floppy disk). They use magnetic media, so they have a finite lifetime. Syquest Drives -------------- Syquest-compatible cartridge drives have been around for a long time, and the 44-megabyte drives have been a standard way to transport large amounts of data for years. I've owned two of these drives myself, and many of my clients have them. However, the 44-meg drives have fallen out of favor. The drives are inexpensive ($219 from ClubMac, 800-258-2622/714-768-8130, including a cartridge and active termination, which I like) but the cartridges are expensive ($57 each from ClubMac unless you buy in quantity) and honestly not all that dependable or long-lived. I've had many of my 44-meg cartridges become useless despite the best of care. I get REALLY nervous if I see a client storing large amounts of valuable archived data on old Syquest disks! From what I've read, the design of the new, 270-megabyte drives is greatly improved, but they are still using the same basic concept of spinning, rigid platters covered with rust particles inside a plastic case. That's the same design of your Mac's internal hard drive, and I see those going down in flames nearly every day, since so many Macs are over five years old. You can get an inexpensive 270-meg Syquest drive ($489 from ClubMac, and the disks are $65 each if you buy them one at a time) and it'll work very quickly and nicely. However, don't expect your data to last more than about five years. Readable-Writeable Optical Drives --------------------------------- The new 230-megabyte Magneto-Optical (MO) disks are very durable and long-lived. You can stick them to the refrigerator with a magnet and cause no harm, since you can only change them with a laser beam. I don't have the figures in front of me, but I've heard that the disks last a minimum of 10 years, and theoretically as much as 100 years! I've seen prices for the disks as low as $49 each from The LLB Company (800-848-1418 or 206-454-7258). If I was shopping for one of these drives right now, I'd seriously consider them. However, my needs might be different than yours. I don't output to service bureaus very often, and if I do, I use my elderly Syquest 44-meg cartridges to do so. I'm also attracted to the physical size of these drives and disks. I can have a tiny drive AND several gigabytes of storage inside a standard briefcase. Each disk is the size of two diskettes glued together, so they fit in your pocket. If I personally was going to buy a new cartridge drive right now, I'd buy a Fujitsu DynaMO 230-meg optical drive from ClubMac for $929, since it's fast and VERY small. There are equivalent drives from other manufacturers that are $30 less, but I want the diminutive size. I'm tired of lugging my big, heavy cartridge drive and cartridges from client to client. I'm saving up my excess cash to buy a house right now, and I'm getting great biceps from lifting and toting, so I'm going to be patient for a while longer. Bottom Line On Cartridge Drives ------------------------------- I advise you to look carefully at your own reasons for buying a cartridge drive. If you want to maintain rigid compatibility with your favorite service bureau, then buy what they recommend and be happy. If you are a "content provider," creating work that will stay valuable for a long, long time, look seriously at Magneto-Optical drives. I still have every important document I've created on computers since 1981. The years DO fly by, so it's important to look at the lifetime of your storage media. If you're REALLY concerned about longevity of your data, look at WORM drives, which are another topic entirely. Active Termination ------------------ While doing research on current prices for cartridges and drives, I noticed that nearly all of the major mail-order companies offer drives with Active Termination built-in. APS Technologies (800-677-3294/816-920-4109) started this trend, and it's a great idea. If you buy a drive with Active Termination, and hook it up as the last device at the end of the SCSI chain of scanners, CD-ROM drives and hard drives, then you are almost completely assured of having safe, trouble-free use of all of your devices. For instance, let's say your scanner works fine, and your cartridge drive works fine, but you can't have both of them hooked up at the same time without crashing your computer. You've removed any internal terminators inside your cartridge drive (I always do if they are just those little resistor packs) and used one of those gray terminators at the end of the SCSI chain. The problem may be caused by improper voltage and cable impedance that standard terminators can't handle. If you have a lot of devices hooked to your Mac, I really DON'T advise using the gray or black terminators. While you're at it, I'd also advise against using cheapo SCSI cables. Use the best cables you can buy (short ones, too - you're limited to a total of maybe 15 feet for all devices, so NO six-foot cables allowed!). Either use a drive with Active Termination as your final device in the chain, or throw away your old terminator and buy a separate SCSI Sentry Active Terminator from APS for $79.95. It REALLY works well! A buddy of mine uses one of these devices to keep all six of his external devices humming along smoothly, which is unheard-of in normal Mac usage. Don't Dump Those Catalogs Yet! ------------------------------ If you're getting bundles of computer-related mail-order catalogs in your mailbox, take a good look at the front cover page. Most of the biggest vendors are "dumping" wonderful equipment at extraordinary prices. If you see something on the front cover, it's probably a darned good deal, at least from the examples I've seen. Can anybody tell me just how easy-to-recycle those catalogs are? I like to recycle newspapers, and I'd like to do something with the bales of catalogs I tend to collect. Free Subscriptions To This Newsletter ------------------------------------- You may subscribe to Mac*Chat by sending e-mail to: listserv@vm.temple.edu The Subject line is ignored, so it can say anything. In the body of the message include the following only: SUBSCRIBE MACCHAT Your full name As an example: SUBSCRIBE MACCHAT Juliana Tarlton You will receive a nice long message explaining acceptance of your subscription, how to end it (if desired) and general listserv info. You will then automatically receive Mac*Chat in your e-mail box, for free, every month. =================== ____ ======================================== Tony in San Diego \ _/__ Hey! It's a BEAR thing for me, too! xxltony@crash.cts.com \X / B1 f+ t++ w dc- g++ k++ s- m+ e+ h- q- ====================== \/ ========================================