PowerMac Experience

I'm recording some of my discoveries and dissapointments that I've experienced with my PowerMac boxes. Fortunately, if I get angry enough at Apple and MacOS, I can always run NetBSD and be as happy as a clam.

I have a 1.5GB of memory for my DP 800MHz PowerMac G4, just waiting to be installed. However, I've been running it with the stock 256MB to see how well it works with more limited resources. Performance is quite acceptable. I've compiled small software packages, run iTunes, ripped and played CDs and MP3s, and used the DVD player and a web browser without problem. Admittedly casual use is not a stress test, but it is a starting point.

As far as I can tell, the slowest point seems to be the Western Digital IDE disk which came with the box. I may upgrade to some IBM Deskstar 7200 RPM IDE drives and try striping them together to see how that changes performance. however, in the long run, I plan on getting an ATTO SCSI card, the same as Apple ships with SCSI-equiped PowerMacs. Combined with some Ultra 160 LVD scsi drives, it can have up to two times the performance of the slow ATA drives.

The SuperDrive CD/CD-RW/DVD/DVD-R works reasonably well, although it has problems reading CDs that other drives have no problem reading. Most of the time, though, it easily reads CDs for ripping at 4x.

Rants

One of the biggest beefs I have is that there is no way for technical people to contact Apple and tell them that something is wrong. They have these lame user groups on the Support web site where people can commiserate -- but no actual product support by Apple at all.

The other beef I have is that Apple could run their MacOS-X aka NextStep environment on top of a modern OS, instead of their antiquated version of Mach. Up to date unix kernels, such as NetBSD have support for many devices, excellent reliability, and world-class library support. Instead of using this as a stepping-stone to provide support for Apple's own excellent software, they waste their time trying to keep their obsolete stuff working. They don't have the time to make a good unix environment and libraries that the rest of the world has had for a decade. If Apple wants to be really competitive and stay that way, they need to have standard unix facilities underneath -- not the unsupported, halfway hacked stuff they have now.

Notes about Problems and Oddities

DVD Playing

The DVD player on MacOS-9.2.x has hiccups every once in a while, especially if you use the DVD control gizmo. Under MacOS-X, the DVD player never skips or anything, even with an active control panel.

CD / MP3 Playing

After the above note about the DVD playing, it came as a bit of a surprise that MacOS-X has worse audio performance than MacOS-9.2 has! When playing CDs and MP3s on MacOS-X there are noticeable skips and pauses which just don't appear in MacOS-9.2.x.

MacOS-X Sleep Hangs

MacOS-X will often remain catatonic after going to sleep. The only way to recover so far has been to hit the reset button. The display remains turned off and inactive. It just never wakes up. I also learned that pushing the power button for 5-6 seconds will power off the machine to fix this problem

MacOS-X Network Problems

ESC doesn't work in OS X

ESCape is the default activation key for the speech recogniction subsystem. This of course breaks vi. The solution is to use a different key to recognize speech in the speech system preference or control panel. I used option+ESC, but whatever works for you.

Notes about Macintosh

• Drag a mounted device to the garbage can to unmount it.
• Command+Option when launching control panel gives extra entries, such as controlling on-start memory tests
• 'C' when booting goes into a GUI boot monitor.
• 'T' when booting goes into Fireware Target disk mode.
• Command-Option-O-F when booting goes into OpenFirmware mode.
• To boot from OpenFirmware use mac-boot.
• To shutdown from OpenFirwmare use shut-down.
• Command-Option-P-R when booting resets the PRAM (non-volatile parameter memory) and NVRAM.
• To reset the Power Manager on PowerBook G4 (gigbit ethernet), press the reset button between the external video and modem ports. Note this will reset system time completely. Only do this if the power manager is screwed up!
• Command-I is Info (detailed info on selected item, may be changeable)
• Command-Q is Quit
• XXXXX what is force quit????
• When running MacOS9 memory for applications is fixed. Bring up the finder's info window when the application isn't running to change the default/max memory allocations for an allocation. This is somewhat lame considering that even M$ has been doing VM for years, but I'll not rant too badly on it given that OS X is out and it does work ... not just as nicely as VM.
• Finder .. About this Computer shows you how much memory is being used by applications (of their alloted amount) and the system.

Apple Knowledge Base Notes

• Mac OS X: How to prevent login items from opening automatically
• Recent Software Downloads
• Featured Software
• Mac OS X Downloads
• Mac OS 9 Support
• Mac OS X Support
• Mac OS X 10.1: Viewing and Typing Text in Different Languages

Software Updates

I keep track of these here so I can find old updates in case I need to re-install.

• Featured Software
• Recent Software Updates
• Mac OS X Updates (somewhat archival)
• Mac OS X 10.1: Chart of Available Software Updates
• 2002-06-05 MacOS X Update 10.1.5 -- MacOS 10.1.{1,3}
• 2002-05-08 iPhoto 1.1.1 -- MacOS 10.1.2
• 2002-04-17 MacOS X Update 10.1.4 -- MacOS 10.1.3
• 2002-04-17 Security Update April 2002 -- MacOS 10.1.3
• 2002-03-08 DVD Player 3.1.1 for Mac OS X -- MacOS 10.1.2
• 2002-02-26 DVD Player Update for PowerBook G4 -- MacOS 9.2.1
• 2002-02-25 Java 1.3.1 Update 1-- MacOS 10.1.3
• 2002-01-09 Power Mac G4 CD-RW Firmware Update -- MacOS 9.x

Random Hardware Suppliers

• VST Tech

Random Notes

• defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
• Fix TurboTax 2005 crashing on MacOSX 10.4.9

Software and Such

• AFS for MacOS X 10.1
• AFS for MacOS X 10.2
• Kerberos Setup