Ethernet between Mac and PC

I have a 10Base-T Ethernet card in my Windows PC. How can I transfer files between it and my beige G3?

Andrew Nowacki

You first need to establish a physical network to which your Mac and your PC will be connected. The cheapest way to do this is with a UTP (10Base-T) crossover cable, which connects to each machine back-to-back. A regular UTP cable won’t work, as the message-carrying leads within it need to be crossed over to save using a hub. Next, you need to turn on the networking software in each machine. On the Mac, this involves setting up the TCP/IP control panel, assigning the machine an IP address, such as 127.9.5.1, and a mask such as 255.255.255.0. Make sure this is run over your Ethernet connection. Full instructions for setting up Windows are given in the manual for Thursby’s DAVE (www.thursby.com). You might like to download a time-limited demo version of DAVE to see how easy it makes networking with Windows systems. Then, with TCP/IP correctly configured, turn on file sharing and run an FTP server such as NetPresenz (shareware from www.stairways.com) on your Mac. You can then run FTP client software on the Windows PC.

Damaged RAM clip

An Apple engineer recently installed a 64Mb memory upgrade in my three-month-old iMac. When doing so, he noticed a crack in one of the retaining clips, which broke off as he pushed the memory into place. He left a piece of cardboard in place to hold in the memory. Is this OK?

David Nightingale

Unless you caused the cracked retaining clip, the damage to your computer either existed prior to delivery to you or resulted from the engineer’s installation. In the first case, you have a warranty claim, and in the second you have a claim against the dealer whose engineer performed the work. You mustn’t accept the bodged repair: the end result isn’t reliable, and there’s a potential risk that the cardboard could become hot and start to burn. You should ensure that the dealer repairs the iMac (it will probably require a replacement motherboard) properly. Be polite but firm in your dealings with them, and don’t hesitate to involve the Citizen’s Advice Bureau and other agencies.

Speeding up old Macs

How can I make my StarMax 3200/200, fitted with an additional 32Mb of RAM, run faster?

Barry Sims

Motorola StarMax 3000 models have three 168-pin DIMM slots which can take up to 160Mb of RAM relatively cheaply. If you only have 32Mb or so, the first big improvement in performance will result from adding more memory. Unfortunately, the three DIMM slots aren’t identical: you should have a single 32Mb DIMM in the first socket (the maximum allowed there), enabling you to add 64Mb into each of the other two. Modules should be 3.3v EDO units of 60ns speed.

Your 200MHz PowerPC 603e processor is old and relatively slow. Upgrading to a faster processor is possible, but will be more expensive than adding memory (see www.xlr8yourmac.com for a range of comments about different upgrade options). If you’re going to upgrade the processor, you should hold off on adding more memory until you know whether it will also work with the upgrade. You should also look at the cost of replacing your entire system with a new G4 model: although this will be more expensive, all the components (hard disk, the internal bus and so on) will run faster, so the end result will be much better.

PGP download

I tried to download PGP from the MIT Web site, but it wouldn’t let me. Why not, and where can I get it from?

James Westaway

The US has a strange attitude to encryption software, classing it as a ‘munition’ and subjecting it to strict export controls. Accordingly, legitimate sources of software in the US shouldn’t allow you (in Europe) to download powerful encryption products such as PGP.

There are two solutions: an international edition of the encryption software which is slightly weaker and doesn’t qualify as a munition; or a European site which isn’t subject to these restrictions. Although it’s possible to obtain ‘illegal’ US versions of PGP from certain European sites, which you can find with a Sherlock search, you may find it simpler to obtain an international version by FTP from ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp.

Installer won't run

When I try to upgrade my Power Mac 6100/66 to Mac OS 8.6, I get the message: ‘This program cannot run on your computer.’ What does that mean?

Kapil Gupta

This appears to be an error report from the Mac OS Installer software, indicating that it can’t start the installation process. There are many possible causes, but the best way to address the problem is to check that your hardware is sufficient for the upgrade, and that you’ve performed all the necessary steps before starting.

You’ll need sufficient memory to run the cut-down version of Mac OS 8.6 supplied on the installation CD-ROM, plus the installer application ­ 24Mb or 32Mb is a practical minimum. Because you’re starting up from the CD-ROM, you can’t rely on virtual memory (or the likes of RAM Doubler) to achieve this. If you have sufficient RAM, restart from the Mac OS CD and run Disk First Aid to fix any problems on your hard disk. Once that’s complete, update your hard disk driver using the supplied copy of Drive Setup. Restart again from the CD and you should be able to complete the installation. If you’re moving up from System 7, you’ll probably find it best to back up the contents of your hard disk completely (you should do this anyway) and re-initialise it using the latest Drive Setup.

Language translation

Where can I find Mac software to automatically translate from German, Spanish, French and Italian into English?

Andrew Jennings

Machine translation, the automatic conversion of text from one language to another, is a surprisingly difficult task. In spite of a sustained and massive research effort, particularly in the Tron computer project in Japan, the results of machine translation leave a lot to be desired, although they can be quite entertaining.

AltaVista has an online translator (babelfish.altavista.com) which translates English to and from French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Transparent’s EasyTranslator 2, available for Windows for around £40, will have a brave stab at translating small passages in its notepad, or whole documents if you really must. The current version supports French, German or Spanish to and from English, with the addition of English to Italian or Portuguese. It should run reasonably under a software PC emulator like VirtualPC, and there are rumours that there may eventually be a Mac-native version. Further details are at www.transparent.com.

Email signature

How can I get Outlook Express to put my signature at the end of my emails?

David McKinlay

There are two steps necessary to get ‘signatures’ ­ a piece of text giving your personal details ­ in email applications: first, you have to set up one or more signatures, and then you must set each message to append a signature. Outlook Express’ signatures are accessed through the Signatures command in the Tools menu. Select this and you’ll see a dialog box listing available signatures.

Add a new signature or edit an existing one and this will bring up the Signature Editor dialog box. Among the options is a checkbox which allows you to include a signature in the random signature system. The dialog box listing available signatures also allows you to set a default signature. (This is poor interface design, as you would have expected this to be in the settings dialog box.) Once you’ve created your signature, open a new mail message and address it to yourself. Click on the Signature tool in the message window to alter the signature from the default. Send the message to yourself, and when it arrives you should see your signature.

QuickTime installer

I want to include a QuickTime for Windows installer on a cross-platform CD-ROM. How can I do this?

Charlie Skinner

If you read the copyright notice on Apple and other commercial software products, you’ll see that commercial redistribution requires you to enter into a licence agreement with the copyright holder. In the case of QuickTime for Mac or PC, Apple has standard licensing arrangements, and standard packages which can be included in your product. Visit developer.apple.com/mkt/swl/ for more details.

Rescued Items

Although I always shut down my blue-and-white Power Mac G3 properly, more often than not I see a folder called Rescued Items From Paul’s G3 when I start up again. Why is this?

Paul Groves

Rescued Items folders are an indication that an application crashed rather than quitting properly, or that you have a problem on your hard disk. Before going any further, rule out the latter using Disk First Aid. If it looks as if the files are being left behind when an application terminates incorrectly, you need to work out which application is doing this. You can often tell by looking in the folder to see what type of files are inside. Otherwise, try restarting your Mac before you start a different application. You then need to work out why that application is crashing instead of quitting: this could be because it’s an old and only partly-compatible version, or maybe there’s an extension conflict.

Umax scanner software

I’ve lost the install disk for our Umax 6100 scanner. Where can I get a replacement? As I can only access the Internet with my PC, I presume I can’t download it from the Internet.

Brian Holland

Umax should be able to supply a replacement install disk, although it’ll probably charge you for doing so. If the software is available from its Web site, you can still use a PC to download it, although you’ll probably need a Mac utility such as StuffIt Deluxe to unscramble the file when you’ve got it onto the Mac.

Make sure your PC downloads the file in binary format rather than text. If it’s small enough to fit onto a single disk, format the floppy disk in the Mac (not the PC) to MS-DOS rather than the Mac specification, then copy the file from the PC onto the disk. Once on the Mac, drop the file onto StuffIt Expander and it should reconstitute the original Mac file properly. If you get a choice as to the format of file to be downloaded to your PC, choose BinHex, as this is more robust than MacBinary if you have to move it across platforms in this way.

USB or SCSI

My G3 233 has a 4Gb internal and a 4Gb external hard disk. As I want to add another 10Gb of hard disk space, should I connect a USB version to my Interex dual-port USB adaptor, or go for SCSI again?

Gavin

If you’re interested in performance, there’s no contest ­ go for a good-quality SCSI drive every time, as it will run rings around any USB disk. However, USB does have some advantages, including hot-swappability and better support for future Macs. As USB becomes more popular, prices will fall, and it may well prove the cheaper option already.

A more worrying trend with USB devices is that problems and incompatibilities with their drivers are growing, and may soon be rife. You may not have experienced this yet with just one or two USB peripherals, but by the time you have a USB mouse, keyboard, scanner and printer, you might dream of returning to the comparative simplicity of SCSI.

Alternative business software

Are there any integrated software packages for the Mac other than AppleWorks and Microsoft Office? I’m not too worried about databases, but need good page layout and spreadsheeting.

Jim Windle

It’s easy to assume that the most popular products ­ in this case, Office and AppleWorks ­ are the only two available. Thankfully, this is far from the truth. B & E’s RagTime (Reviews, Vol 15 No 25, p22) is a mature integrated product which offers sophisticated page layout tools, word processing, and spreadsheeting in a single application. It’s particularly good for constructing high-quality tables, such as financial results, in attractively designed documents. Bundled with it is a basic database, MiniFiler, which is probably the most reliable non-Microsoft application for reading Excel and Word files. A new Windows port has increased its attractiveness to those who need to support PCs as well, and it’s worth noting that RagTime is European, so it copes fine with quirks such as accented characters and the Euro currency symbol.