PCI modem

I’ve bought a Speedcom 56 V90 PCI internal modem for my Mac 9500 200MHz MP, but it only came with a Wintel installation CD-ROM. How can I get this modem card to work properly?

Gareth Jones

You’re going to be very lucky indeed to get this internal modem card working in your Power Mac. PCI cards are considerably more sophisticated than older expansion cards, and often require both compatible ROM on the card and a software driver (usually in the Extensions folder). Look on the manufacturer’s Web site to see if it remarks on Mac compatibility; if it doesn’t, try emailing the company’s support desk. The chances are that they’ll simply say they don’t know and aren’t interested in finding out for you. If the card supports Open Firmware, then it may be possible to get it working, and support would be required for it to work in a more recent Mac.

Use Apple’s bundled Apple System Profiler to find out whether your Mac can see the card and make sense of it. If it can, then all you need is a suitable driver ­ another story in its own right. There’s a LocalTalk PCI extension which allows PCI cards to be seen by Open Transport, and that might just allow a communications application to see the modem. Practically, though, you’ll find it much easier to buy a modem with proper Mac support.

Disk problem

When I was importing JPEGs into a database, FileMaker Pro crashed badly. Since then I’ve been unable to start up from that hard disk, in spite of repairing it with Disk First Aid and Norton Utilities. How can I restore the disk so it can be used to start up again?

I Woodward

Before you do anything else, make sure you have everything on that disk backed up (twice, if you prefer the belt-and-braces approach). Then, if you’re feeling technically adventurous, you may be able to restore the boot areas of the disk using Norton Disk Editor +, which is a very powerful tool hidden away on the Norton Utilities install CD-ROM. If that’s too daunting or you lack the required technical bravado, simply re-initialise the volume using the latest version of Apple’s Drive Setup (or your third-party, disk-formatting software, if you prefer). Then re-install the Mac OS and restore everything else from your backup.

PostScript errors

We have several Macs networked to Apple LaserWriter 4/600 PS, Personal LaserWriter 320, and HP LaserJet 2100TN printers. Although the LaserJet seems reliable, the two LaserWriters often give PostScript errors. Is this a problem with the LaserWriter driver, or has the LaserJet got a better PostScript interpreter?

Tony D’Emanuele

PostScript errors aren’t usually a result of problems in the PostScript interpreter, or even duff PostScript generation in the printer driver. Because PostScript is, to put it technically, a stack-based interpreted page-description language, it’s susceptible to all the vagaries of any program ­ in particular, running out of memory. If you’re repeatedly suffering from errors, particularly when trying to print more complex pages, perhaps containing bitmapped colour images or many fonts, then your printer may need more memory.

You may be able to work around the problem by tweaking the printing settings ­ for instance, switching off Colour/Greyscale, turning off double-sided printing, and disabling text and graphics smoothing.

But the bottom line is that you’ll need to add more memory to your printer. If you’re still using the standard installed RAM in yours, the 4/600 will have 2Mb soldered in, and room for an additional single 4Mb module. The 320 will also have 2Mb soldered in, and can be upgraded with further 2Mb or 6Mb modules. In contrast, your Hewlett-Packard printer should have 8Mb of RAM, which is why it has been coping better.

iMovie download

I’ve been unable to download iMovie properly. After a failed download the first time, each time I try again, it now appears to take about two seconds to download the entire 17.2Mb file over a phone line with Internet Explorer 5.0. How can I get it to download properly?

William Hunter

Clearly your browser isn’t really downloading all 17.2Mb in two seconds. This is due to a problem in the browser, or in the server. Some servers will do this when they get busy, or your connection with them is running too slowly. Empty the browser’s cache, and try reconnecting at a time when the server should be quiet, such as early in the morning. If you’re still getting no further, try another browser such as the more lightweight iCab (from www.icab.de).

MiniDisc

Is there any way to connect my recording Sony MiniDisc Walkman to my G4 and use it as a removable disk drive? Is there a PCI card which provides suitable optical output for audio and/or data?

Ben Hextall

MiniDisc recorders aren’t just MO disks, as they have a sophisticated audio front-end which actually makes them unsuitable for any other purpose. At least one computer MiniDisc peripheral has been test-marketed in Japan, but it was far from successful and will probably never make it to Europe.

You can use MiniDisc recorders for recording sound direct from Macs, but even then you’ll need an audio optical output card, such as one of the MIDIMan Dio series (from Turnkey at www.turnkey.uk.com). However, the quality of sound recorded won’t be as good as with a portable DAT recorder, as MiniDisc uses Sony’s proprietary ATRAC lossy compression, which may be perceived to be inferior to MP3 at higher quality settings. If you prefer a MiniDisc player to an MP3 one, you might find a Dio card and your recording Walkman is a useful combination, but otherwise it’s probably simpler just to use it to record direct from a CD player (observing copyright laws, of course).

Norton Anti-Virus

When Norton AntiVirus is running on a Mac, it can’t receive incoming ISDN connections properly. Why not?

Clare Jones

This is a long-standing problem which stems from the fact that Norton AntiVirus (NAV) and ISDN software are extremely processor-intensive. If you’re scanning for viruses, NAV will hog the processor to the extent that your ISDN software can’t get a look in. This is because multitasking (for now) in the Mac OS requires co-operation between active applications, involuntarily giving up processor time to other applications.

For now, you may be able to improve matters by changing your virus-checker (to Virex, perhaps) or ISDN software, but the underlying problem won’t go away. This is set to change, though, with improving support for multiple processors, in the new dual-processor G4 models, and particularly with Mac OS X. Apple’s next operating system software doesn’t require co-operation for multitasking, but forces it pre-emptively by switching between all available tasks on a strict timed rota basis. If you need to check incoming files from ISDN connections, for the time being the best solution may be to link two Macs ­ one simply acting as the ISDN gateway, the other running the virus checks.

MP3 files

I used to download MP3 files and play them using SoundApp. I then upgraded QuickTime to the Pro version, and now new MP3 files appear as QuickTime files and then crash SoundApp (although old MP3 files still work OK). What’s wrong?

Mike Bird

There are several potential problems which may be causing this, two of which could be resulting in crashes. First, connect to the Internet and ensure that the version of QuickTime Pro which you’ve installed is the latest, and so supports variable bit-rate compression in MP3. If you’re not using Mac OS 9’s automatic updating, you can either run the QuickTime Updater application, or download a complete installer for the current version. Your Pro registration should cope with this upgrade.

The other potential problem is that your version of SoundApp may be incompatible with that version of QuickTime or your MP3 files. The latest release of SoundApp is version 2.7. You should also try QuickTime Player and a dedicated MP3 player such as MacMP3 (www.macmp3.net), or SoundJam or Audion (www.panic.com). Once you’ve settled on a robust way of playing your MP3 files, you should then edit your browser’s settings to ensure that downloaded files are saved with the right file type and creator: most players explain how to do this, or else they provide scripts to help.

DVD Video

I’m having all sorts of problems with my built-in DVD drive when playing DVD videos. Is there a test disk available?

Jack Reis

Various test and demo discs have been made available with different publications and elsewhere. Unfortunately, one of the best of these (complete with sound tests and more) is only available for US-style NTSC video, and so has limited usefulness on European PAL systems.

However, one book, DVD Demystified by Jim Taylor (McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-064841-7), has an excellent DVD disc included with it. This has a range of test cards, and a series of scenes which can be used to see how your system copes with different video data rates. Try running these for a series of increasing rates and you should be able to test reading, decoding and display parts of your system very well indeed. (MacUser has detailed most of the known shortcomings with DVD. See DVD, Vol 16 No 4, p54).

PowerBook heat

My PowerBook G3 Series gets far too hot to have on my lap, and starts making a loud whirring noise. Is this normal, given that I have had to turn off energy saving features to get my USB CardBus Adaptor to work properly?

Michael Hawkshaw

PowerBook G3s tend to run quite hot at the best of times, but turning off processor cycling and other ways of prolonging battery life will also make them even hotter: the more power the laptop is using, the more heat it will be putting out. Unless you need your CardBus adaptor running all the time, you should turn on features in the Energy Saver control panel to cut the heat output whenever possible.

The whirring noise is the cooling fan, which is normal. However, if the inside of your PowerBook has got dusty, that will increase the fan noise, and it will not cool as efficiently. So you may be best getting your dealer to check it out anyway: very hot laptops, including PowerBooks, have been known on rare occasions to catch fire.

Photoshop crashes

For several versions of Adobe Photoshop, and on different Power Macs, Wacom tablets and so on, I keep suffering from crashes in Photoshop. Repair and diagnostic software gives each Mac a clean bill of health, and I have reduced extensions to a minimum. How can I get Photoshop to work without crashing like this?

Dave Hardy

Most applications crash at some time or another, but suffering from persistent crashes in a normally robust program like Photoshop suggests you have an underlying problem which needs to be sorted out. Try throwing away the application’s preference file (in the Preferences folder in your System Folder); if that has become corrupted, recurrent crashes can be the

result. Remove all non-standard plug-ins, if necessary even performing a fresh re-installation. Make sure that you’re running current (and proven) versions of ancillary software such as Adobe Type Manager (ATM).

Bring Photoshop up to the latest version using any updaters available from the Adobe Web site (www.adobe.com). Run Disk First Aid on your hard disks, and defragment the volume which Photoshop uses for its scratch disk. If you uncover disk problems that Disk First Aid can’t easily solve, check your backups and use a tool such as Alsoft DiskWarrior immediately. Turn off virtual memory, and increase Photoshop’s memory allocation. Remove your Wacom tablet and disable its driver. When you discover the underlying problem, you should then be able to report it to the responsible manufacturer, who will hopefully be able to address it in a workaround and then an update.

MP3 volume control

When I record from audio CDs to MP3, the volume varies greatly between different CDs. Is there any way to adjust this so they’re played back at a uniform volume?

Mel Morris

The basic volume of audio CDs does vary considerably. While you can alter this using volume controls, or in MacMP3’s or SoundJam’s Equalizer, those settings aren’t saved into the MP3 files which you generate from the CD tracks. Newer versions of Audion, SoundJam, MP3 Rage and other MP3 software allow you to save volume settings as a ‘tag’ rather than by changing the audio content in any way. That’s fine if you just need to tweak a few files, but MP3 Rage also allows you to use an MP3 file as a standard, and to automatically adjust others to that level; that should address this long-standing need.