For questions and answers about problems with Macs, weird or not.

85 responses total.

A problem has developed when I am using the Netscape (ver 4.61) Composer
and go to the desktop File menu to save, the system freezes, and a short
while later I get a dialogue saying Netscape quite because of a type 1
error, etc. It just requires depressing the mouse button with the
File name in the desktop menu to make this happen. It works OK to
use the various key commands to save, open, close, etc, but not to use
the menu.

I have reinstalled the System and Netscape 4.61, run Disk First Aid and
Norton Utilities, and rebuilt the desktop, all to no avail. The only new
software I have installed before this problem began was MacInTax, though
it did not begin right away after that, but has slowly been getting
more persistent. [I composed a number of pages before this problem
shut down my ability to use the File menu to do so.]

Any suggestions?

No idea Rane, but I'll happily add a question of my own.
What size limits apply to Mac SCSI drives? I have an LC with
System 7.0.1 and I'm wondering how large a SCSI drive
capacity I could put in there.  A friend has a Mac SE, same
question applies there.

I once formated a 4 gig HD on a Mac Plus.  The formatting application
split it into two 2 gig logical drives.  My 486 barfed when I tried
to format a 1 gig AT drive on it.  Needed to get a EIDE card to make
it work (Or use some goofy software that fooled the IDE card.)

PowerPoint question:

I was sent a Windows CD with a 85 MB .PDF file and four PP files, ranging
from 6 to 23 MB, probably created with a current version of Windows PP. I
can read the .PDF and the 6 MB PP file as a slide show, but the other PP
files quit (and sometimes bomb, or show meaningless patterns) after
viewing a few slides. When there is a message it is that memory is nearly
full, or memory is all full (and it quits). 

I have 300 MB of unused RAM when running PP.

My computer is a 533 MH PowerMac G4, running PP 98. It has a built in SCSI
CD drive and an external USB CD-R drive. The problems happen in either
drive.

Does anyone have any ideas concerning the cause of the problem and,
especially, a solution?

It sounds like something in the slideshow is triggering a memory leak in
your copy of PowerPoint.  You might check Microsoft's website to see if
they've released a service pack for your version.  I know there are two
service packs out for Microsoft Office 2000 that fix multiple bugs, but
I don't know anything about 98.

Oh, another thought.  If you cant get PowerPoint to work, you could try
downloading and installing StarOffice or OpenOffice.org.  They have
PowerPoint clones that can open most MS PowerPoint files.

I downloaded and installed all available updates for MS Office (including PP)
from Mactopia (MS does not support the Mac on their website). No improvement.
I'll try gull's suggestions next.

StarOffice doesn't have a Mac version, and OpenOffice has one only for Mac
OSX. I suppose I could figure out how to startup OSX on this computer....
but then it seems to get complicated with additional software needed. 
"It is also not a traditional Mac OS X user-friendly application. Consider
yourself warned." 

Since we are being forced by CAEN and ITD to adopt SSH for connection to
their servers, I've been trying out MacSSH. I encounter the problem of the
default Color to be white on black. I can turn that around for each
session with the Color option in the Session menu, but I would like to
make the change permanent. Can I do this in MacSSH? I have been using
BetterTelnet ( and NCSA before that), in which the default option is black
on white, so I wonder why white on black is the MacSSH default.

More generally, is there a way to have all choices in Session to be
attached to their respective Favorites, since you have to make Session
choices independently for each Favorite you choose? There are some
overlapping options in the Favorite options, but not all are present in
the latter. 

If I remember correctly you can change the colors in the
preferences. I prefer the default white on black, and my
PowerBook is at home so I can't recall for sure.
Check out the MacSSH home site for more info:
http://pro.wanadoo.fr/chombier/MacSSH/SSH_info.html
There is a FAQ on the page tha answeres some questions.
If you google for MacSSH you will also find a few pages
with more info. If you have any questions email me at
lorance@worldpbx.com and I'll be happy to help.

I tried to change color in preferences - only an "Ansi Color" button
is available and I played with the color selections there a bit, but
they had no effect on the screen white-on-black default. The FAQ at
the website has one question re colors, but it doesn't make sense. 
(I'll take you up on a private exchange when I've exhausted experimenting
with this thing....8^})

Found the answer on another website. One does Edit>Terminals>Edit>Color and
choose the colors you want for <Default>. Thanks for your suggestions.

I hate black-on-white for terminals, personally.  It's like staring at a
light bulb.

What do you prefer? 

I used to use black on cyan exclusively.  Right now, I have five terminal
windows open, with five different background colours:

        local machine:  black on white
        login.itd:      black on cyan
        cyberspace:     black on cyan (with a little less yello)
        grex:           blaock on peach
        new grex:       white on blue

I like the black on shades of light-blue best.

This response has been erased.

I usually use white on black.  I think the nicest displays to look at
were the old amberchrome ones, but when I try to duplicate that
yellowish-orange color on an RGB monitor it comes out with a bit too
little contrast for my taste.

I just tried greying the background (to 5%). This does seem to have less
glare. While these may all just be personal preferences, I wonder if there
are any real physiological information processing advantages to
differential stimulation of subsets of the three types of color sensitive
cones. It seems it might be "inefficient" to stimulate all three types
when one will do. (Someone has probably studied this........)

I seem to recall reading that yellow on black provides the greatest contrast.
in any case, it's what i usually use, although sometimes I go with other light
colours, such as bright green or bright cyan, on black.

The trouble with a light color on black for me is that this connection
screen takes up only about 1.4 of the full screen. I usually have two
connections (to difterent servers) at once plus web pages on screen. 
Having a strong contrast between any of them I find to be more
distracting. 

Ideally I would still be running a monochrome monitor, P39
green is not bad. The amber phosphor that Wyse used on their
text terminals was very restful. I also really liked the red
gas plasma display I used on a Compaq i386 luggable.

For terminal windows on Macintosh I tend to go for white on
a very dark (almost black) background, with an even brighter
white for 'bold' text.  On X I use white on black.

We still have a 286 luggable with plasma TTL display.  It has a detachable
keyboard which made it easier to use in bed.  I use a mono amber 95% of the
time.

This response has been erased.

I've tried an "amberchrome" text color for terminal windows on color
monitors, but an RGB monitor can't really provide enough brightness to
that color to make it work well.

You can make freebsd display green. and netbsd too, though as yet i haven't
figured out how on netbsd.

Yeah, but again, on an RGB monitor if you go with a green display you're
giving up 2/3 of your contrast.

I have been trying to fileshare between a iMac running OS 9.2.2 and a G4
Powerbook running OS 10.3.3, using an ethernet crossover cable. I  have
set up the G4 to fileshare with Ethernet over Appletalk. In the iMac
Chooser choosing Appleshare brings up the G4's name, but when I click
OK on that a) the iMac tries to open a modem connection, which I kill,
and then b) the Sharing dialogue appears where I choose between a Guest
or a Registered User. If I choose Guest, I get an error dialog saying
the connection has failed. If I just enter Public and no pw as a
Registered user, I get the same error.

What else should I try? Should I set up a User and PW in the G4 and
aim for that? Please advise. Or should I being trying to connect
in the other direction? I want to transfer files from the iMac to the
G4.

(I am already doing this successfully in transferring files via ethernet
from a G4 powermac to that same iMac.) 

Success, finally. I am able to share between the Powerbook with OS 10.3.3
and the iMac with OS 9.2.2 with the iMac as the server - but not vica versa
(that was true also in sharing between a PowerMac G4 and the iMac). The
"secret" was not to follow the MacHelp instructions exactly, but to wing
it at just the right moment - found by trial and error. 

I'm not complaining - thinking about these things enough to describe them
here is itself helpful - but how many other Mac users are there here? 
I'm wondering why there have been no responses to my question.

I use a Macintosh (PowerBook G4) as my main machine.  The other (working)
machines in the house are also Macintoshes (iBooks).  However, we are
all running 10.2.  So I had no way to test possible solutions.

It apparently isn't system dependent. Can you share via ethernet between
all of your machines, in both directions?

The sort of thing I ran into was the Manual for the Powerbook said that a
crossover cable was not needed to share between machines, but when I tried
a straight ethernet cable the Powerbook would not show in the iMac
Chooser, although it did with a crossover cable. (Although I could not
connect to the Powerbook as the server). Also the MacHelp in the Powerbook
had a page for file transfer, giving four ways of doing it - but giving
instructions for only *one* of them (not one useful in my case). 

Ah.  We use wireless, so the cross-over cable isn't an issue.  If we want
something faster, we use Firewire and put one of the machines into "hard
drive" mode, making it an additional disk of the target machine.

We have no wireless yet, so its cable or nothing....

I've been working on getting file sharing working between a PowerMac G3
(beige, running Mac OS X.2) and a PowerBook 3400 (running Mac OS 9).  It
specifically needs to be the desktop as the server and the laptop as the
client.  It works with one glitch: the client has to use the IP Address
button in AppleShare and type the name of the server; I can't get the
server to broadcast its computer name over AppleTalk.

(Well, at least I'm not alone.....). When I tried to use the Powerbook
running 10.3 as the server and the iMac running 9.2.2 as the client,
Appletalk would show the server's name, but an error occurred when trying
to complete the connection. I'm sure that doesn't help you..... The best I
can do to help anyone on this now is to list the steps in connecting with
the Powerbook with 10.3 as the client....but that's not your setup.

Now, another problem. My Mac LAN (wirelessless....i.e. wired, for now) 
consists of a Mac G4, now running OS 10.3.2, and an iMac running OS 9.2.2. 
Before I upgraded to "Panther" on the G4 I was running 9.2.2 on it also,
and could fileshare with the iMac as server from the G4 (but not vica
versa - I don't know why). Since I upgraded the G4 to "Panther"  (from
10.0.1 to 10.3.2) I cannot file share at all. The iMac server never comes
up in the Browse window. (The connection for this wired LAN has a IEEE
802.3 ethernet hub in it, wired with STP Cat 5 cable, in case that is
relevant). As mentioned above, I could fileshare with the iMac and a G4
PowerBook running Panther if I used a direct, crossover cable, ethernet
connection.

Why can't I now fileshare to the iMac from the G4 PowerMac (and how can I
fix this)? Could it be because installing "Panther" in the G4 upgraded the
ethernet drivers (?), and it no longer likes the IEEE 802.3 hub (which
dates from 1998)?

Come to think of it, I think I'm using unshielded Cat 5 twisted pair cable
(ca. 50 feet of) connecting the hub near the G4 to the iMac. Is this a
problem?

More likely you need to enable AppleTalk, which is disabled by default
in OS X.

Just out of curiosity, why not run OS X on the iMac.  Since I've managed
to switch from SimpleText to TextEdit, pretty much the only time I use
9.2.2 it to access my backup drive.  The folks at BUSlink haven't gotten
around to providing OS X support for it, even though they said they were
working on it years ago when I asked.

The iMac is not currently used much and is loaded with OS 9 apps. It is
just not worth the hassle to run OS X on it. I upgraded this G4 with
10.3.2 because that is needed for controlling an AirPort base (and am
suffering the consequences because of all the OS 9 stuff I have here).
However, in regard to the suggestion: I had enabled Appletalk on both
computers.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss