NVMUG eNews 4/20//2002
Last updated 4/24//2002
Stephen Farber Installed Mac OS X
Steve Farber installed Mac OS X on Warren Walker's Macintosh G4 including a rigging a solution to a conflict with a driver. The report of the meeting written for the Caledonian Record is included with pictures.
1. Stephen Farber installed Mac OS X
Stephen Farber starting to install Mac OS X as Warren Walker looks on
Stephen Farber installed the new Macintosh operating system the hard way during the Northern Vermont Macintosh User Group meeting at the Community Bank in St. Johnsbury on Saturday, April 20. The first thing Stephen asked was, Are you sure you really want to do this?
Stephen said the easiest way to install Mac OS X is to buy a new Macintosh computer which has it already installed. It is the way to do it if you need a new computer, or if you have to upgrade your equipment be able to use the new system. If you are a professional who uses a computer to make a living, buying a new Macintosh a gets you faster equipment and avoids wasting time installing the new system.
Anyone who is handy with a computer, who has a recent unmodified Macintosh, and who backs everything up first, can install the new Mac OS X. Do it Apple's way. Follow the instructions, and you can probably do it in forty minutes.
Warren Walker has one of the earlier G4 Macintosh computers with a couple of not quite standard parts. He said his game plan included keeping his older OS 8.6 operating system along with the new operating system. This made an excellent opportunity for Stephen Farber to demonstrate how to install the operating system the hard way. We would all learn more than by watching an easier installation. But, no one expected that Stephen would actually have to open up Warren's Macintosh.
Stephen inside Warren's Mac
We held our breath when Stephen discovered there was some hardware conflict. It looked as though he would not be able to complete the installation during the meeting. He really needed to get new software, called a driver, that would make the hardware compatible with the new operating system.
Generally, when you reinstall a Macintosh operating system, you can do it right over the old one. It is very easy and takes only a few minutes. You can also do what is called a clean install. First back up everything. Then erase everything from the computer, install the new operating system, and restore just what you want in the machine. This sweeps out all the cobwebs, and restores the furniture without the dirt.
Stephen explained, when you install Mac OS X for the first time, it has to be a clean install. You initialize your hard disk, that is you erase everything then reformat it. Then you install the classic OS 9.2 system so that you can still run most of the thousands of older programs. Only then can you install the beautiful new Mac OS X to run the fancy new software.
Before the end of the meeting, Stephen fixed the conflict enough to install Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X and still leave Warren with his original Mac OS 8.6 installed. It works, so Warren can take his time looking for that new driver.
Success!
Now for the stuff that was not in the newspaper.
Stephen put together his own thick book on Mac OS X over a year of exploring, experimenting, and studying. Saturday he was installing 9.1 then upgrading to 9.2, before installing Mac OS X 10.0, then upgrading to 10.1 and to 10.1.4 because those were the system installers he had to work with. Actually there were security upgrades, and installer update, and more upgrades of OS 9 and Mac OS X. Stephen found the driver conflicts when installing the 9.2 upgrade, if I remember correctly. After he found a way around those problems, installing Mac OS X went right on schedule.
The workaround that Stephen used was to disconnect the SCCI card with the 8.6 drive on it because it was not compatible with OS 9.2. Then he had to push a reset button on the mother board to reset the nonvolatile RAM. Once he had everything installed, Warren could reconnect the SCCI card but would have to use a convoluted process to switch between using OS 8.6 and Mac OS X. at least until he finds a compatible driver update.
Stephen says UNIX is different, and it is best not to have file names with dots in them, and never start a file name with a dot. Passwords are finicky. File sharing messes up installs, so be sure it is turned off. Don't forget Rule #1, Back up everything.
Stephen has installed Mac OS X by itself in 2 GB, 1.5 GB is the minimum.
When installing system X, it wants to register with Apple. This is a good thing. Have the Internet set up and let it run through the registration and clear itself. Otherwise it will land in a startup que. (Stephen looked at the verbose log.
Unless you are a real techie, you don't want to see it.)
As part of the installation, Mac OS X does Optimizing. What it is doing is a pre binding mechanism by which the system links applications to files so it knows which files go where. It is similar to rebuilding the desk top, but much more.
2. And news from the meeting
Warren brought in Mac OS Unleashed, a thick impressive book about Mac OS X, UNIX, and everything. He just got it, so we should probably give him a few weeks to read it before we quiz him on it.
Phyllis Joy Hammond and Warren discussed Warren's Vermont wildflower calendar. They are all of wildflowers found in Vermont, and he tells where he found them. Warren wants to get more pictures and include only wildflowers native to Vermont.
Tom Cuddihy, a new member reports that Toast works great for burning CDs in OS 9, but even with the latest version 5.1.3 he still gets error messages in Mac OS X.
Geof defragmented a 20 GB USB hard drive with very little memory to work with, and it took him 2 days.
Epson now has good Mac OS X printer and scanner software drivers. Brother has Mac OS X drivers for their multipurpose printer, scanner, fax machines.
Stephen said R-Browser is a browser with good ftp features. Jim said he is using a freeware program, FTPCaptain, for his file transferring. Geof said there is an MTNewsreader. Someone said that Office VX is the best Microsoft Office yet, and Explorer is now much better.
It is good to leave Mac OS X running overnight . There are scheduled tasks which are executed by a chron time utility called chronX. If you do not want to leave your Mac OS X running, there is a utility available called Mac Janitor for scheduling, clearing, etc.
Midge had door prizes to distribute including Apple T-shirts.
I, Jim, had not optimized my hard drive since I bought my iBook last August. I had the 10 GB much too full. When I did finally get Drive 10 so that I could test and repair any volume structure problems, I tried to use TechTool Pro 3.0.4 to optimize the drive. It said that there was not enough contiguous free space. (I probably should have been using Tech Tool Pro 3.0.6 but did not have it on a bootable CD.) Anyway, right or wrong, it still showed not enough contiguous free space after working for a couple of days I had cleared all but about 3 GB from my iBook.
I decided the only thing I could do was to clear my hard drive by reinitializing it. I thought I had everything copied to CDs, then found had missed some stuff I really did not want to use. I also learned that the program would not read the copies of my e-mail and e-mail addresses that I had saved.
Art, at Small Dog, talked me out of driving down there for an update CD, and sent me a copy. I had disconnected my iBook to take down to Small Dog. When I reconnected it, I overlooked the one important connection, the power. I was making progress slowly following Art's instructions and repeating as necessary to correct for things I overlooked, when my iBook went blank at the start of the fourth of four installer CDs. The CD was in the drive, and I did not know any way to get it out. The iBook was looking for a system file which was not there. I now had an expensive brick.
The only thing I could think of was to drive down to Small Dog to see if they had a system file on a FireWire hard disk so I could boot from that. I called Art. The man is a magician! He told me to hold down the control and open-Apple keys while pushing the power key for a second or two to cause my iBook to restart. Then he said to hold down the mouse button as it restarted, and that opened the CD drawer.
From then on, I was in heaven, and everything went as though I knew what I was doing.
I now have a FireWire hard drive that I bought through Small Dog. Tom Cuddihy and I had the same experience with recent FireWire hard drives, you plug them in and they work. The software driver for FireWire is included in Mac OS X.
3. Bill Amos Suggests
An idea for discussion some day: Those of us who use and depend upon older Macs and apps might like to discuss what we have and do. I still consider my old thoroughly upgraded beige, memory-stuffed, SCSI & USB & FireWire, G3 (formerly a slowpoke 7500 in its previous life) with all its carefully-chosen peripherals and specialties a miracle machine that (for my purposes, maybe not yours) runs rings around many of the newer products. Even its speed is more than sufficient for my purposes as an author---scrolling through text is almost too fast. And for photo storage and manipulation of images with PhotoShop Elements and PhotoShop LE, it does everything I could ask, rapidly and efficiently. I've tried every word processor that has come down the pike, and I still think (and depend upon) Word 5.1a as the best ever (it was discontinued in 1992!). So do my book and magazine publishers, and almost every editor in the U.S. and abroad can read 5.1a submissions--I've never had one fail to do so. Also the truly great third-party dictionaries and thesauri of previous years are no longer available, because current publishers believe the anemic reference tools incorporated in today's word processors are sufficient. They are not. And of course the old ones I depend upon would never run on OS X.
Sure, I drool over the lovely new Macs, as I do over the latest BMWs--but my Camry suits me just fine and cruises efficiently in comfort. I've used several different models of the most recent Macs and they are indisputably impressive, but not one of them will do more for me in my work than what I now have. So, as the saying goes, I'm as happy as a clam, and thankful for the marvels that surround me right this moment as I write. ("Surround" is entirely accurate, with two 17" monitors running as an enormous desktop, three scanners, four hard drives, a removable external drive, three printers, and memory card reader.) Of course it takes a can-opener to pry me out of this fortress-like nest, but as long as I'm in it, nothing could be better.
Maybe no one else in NVMUG feels this way, but should there be, perhaps a few of us could revel in the wonders of the immortal, imperishable Mac.
4. Small Dog
My wife and I drove down to the Northshore Mall Apple Store in Peabody, Massachusetts. We were going to White River Junction anyway. This way I could see the store, and see if they could repair a loose modem connection. It was a beautiful store just like the pictures I had seen. The people were nice and sent in my iBook. Apple repaired the modem connection and also made the power connection fit tighter. But, the traffic was awful.
I could have done everything that I did there by driving down to Small Dog (or by calling Apple). I did not buy anything at the Apple Store. I usually do not drive down to Small Dog unless I am going to buy something.
I usually do not include information here from other newsletters, but this week's Small Dog Kibbles and Bytes was special.
Small Dog won the Better Business Bureau's Local Torch Award for Northern New England and will now be competing for the national award. Judging is based upon seven ethical and personnel management business practices. Congratulations to Small Dog.
Apple made a second quarter profit of $40 million despite the slump in the computer market and Apple's difficulties in getting enough new design iMacs out the door! Kibbles & Bytes included a lot more statistics to make Macintosh users feel good, like 1.25 million downloads of iPhoto.
Don Mayer's rebuttal to the Popular Science comparison between an $1,800 iMac and a $3,400 Sony made a good read. I thought the Popular Science comparison would sell a lot of iMacs, but Don's rebuttal would sell a lot more.
Don says the same thing Steve said, if you have Mac OS X, use the Software Update in the Preferences. Don supplied more information about what the current updates do. Among other things, Mac OS X update 10.1.4, makes dial-up connections over PPP are more reliable and system responsiveness has been improved (YEAH!)
His SOAPBOX article is about atrazine which in very low concentrations causes deformities in resulting juvenile frogs. Altrazine is the most commonly used weed killer in North America. More than 30,000 tons are used every year in the U.S. alone. No one knows the long term effects of such killer pesticides on people, but if it does that to frogs, it is probably not to good for us. Of course he includes more information than this and says it better.
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