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Drive Setup 1.3 coming soon?

A reader informs me that he "just received a beta version of Drive Setup 1.3 from Apple and it now properly updates the hard disk's driver. I have tried it on the 6100, 7100, and 8100 series Macintoshes."

a. Another Multi-resolutions glitch

The Multi-resolutions Control Strip module lets you select resolutions not officially supported by your monitor. But be careful. When Bruce Hobson used this feature, it was treated to a distorted screen display. In order to fix it, he had to restart with extensions off and then delete the Control Strip preferences file.

b. QuicKeys and Now Menus glitch Larry Anderson reports that CE Software Tech Support confirmed some incompatibilities between QuicKeys 3.5 and the Now Menus module of Now Utilities. This may relate to a general conflict that QuicKeys may have with utilities that manipulate menus, as reported here last week.… Read more

Still more on the Microsoft Explorer mail problem

Regarding our ongoing coverage of problems send and receiving email via Microsoft Explorer, Adrian Penalo forwarded me the following email message that he received from Microsoft Technical Support. It refers specifically to a particular SMTP host, but the point is of more general interest:

"We are trying to track down a problem when M&N 3.0 goes to send mail and it is communicating with an SMTP server that uses IMail software. Since accesspro.net uses IMail on all of their servers, if you have in your SMTP preferences a host ending with accesspro.net then, when … Read more

TwinTurbo glitches

a. TwinTurbo Acceleration extension and QuickTime glitch Scot Gaznier found that, when the IMS TwinTurbo Acceleration extension 4.01 was installed, it caused QuickTime movies to lock up if they were "advanced or stopped while playing." Scot was running QuickTime 2.5 and Mac OS 7.6.1. He contacted IXMicro (formerly IMS) about this. They suggested changing the loading order of the twinturbo extension. More specifically they said: "Rename the 'twinturbo acceleration' extension to 'atwinturbo acceleration'." Scot reports that this did fix the problem.

b. TwinTurbo and FrontPage glitch Meanwhile, Paul Ringger reports "a … Read more

Tech Info Library: Use the new version for new files

We have previously reported that Apple is moving to a new version of its Tech Info Library. Apparently, even though the new version is supposedly still in beta testing, new TIL files (numbers greater than #0021050) are no longer being added to the old TIL database. So to check on new files, be sure to use the new TIL. (First noted this in the Macintosh Daily Journal.)

Slow access to Apple's ftp site

Apple writes: "[9-Jun-97] It is possible you may experience slow or reduced performance from the ftp.info.apple.com RAIC when attempting to download software. This is a temporary issue and should be resolved by tomorrow (6/10/97) afternoon. We appreciate your patience and understanding. For those that are affected, please direct your download to our mirror location ftp.apple.com."

OT/PPP Strip and Spin Down and Sleep bugs: new version coming soon

There is a conflict between OT/PPP Strip and automatic Sleep (as invoked by the PowerBook control panel), at least on the PowerBook 3400. With OT/PPP Strip installed, automatic Sleep does not occur.

The OT/PPP Strip web page also reports that a bug-fix release, 1.0.1, should be out by early July. It fixes a "hard drive spin-down bug and makes finding the configuration file more robust." According to Dennis Wilkinson, the author of OT/PPP Strip, this spin-down fix should also fix the Sleep problem. (Thanks also to Jason Archibald, for helping in tracking … Read more

b. Conflict Catcher update Catch-22

Several readers have written to complain that the recent Conflict Catcher 4.0.1 to 4.0.2 Updater does not allow you to update from version 4.0.0.

Update: Mike Sterling, of Casady & Greene, offers the following response:

4.0.0 was released for a short amount of time as a *demo* version only. This demo would only last for one week. It never saw the light of day as a released version.

4.0.1 was the first release of CC4, and was also available as a demo. Since 4.0.0 was never released as … Read more

Odds & Ends

a. Large DIMMs problem: an Apple response Ric Ford has been tracking the problem ( also covered here) of certain RAM configurations causing crashes and/or slowing network performance (on PCI-based Macs). MacInTouch posted an official answer from Apple on the subject. Essentially, Apple claims that it is due to the fact that "some third-party RAM does not interleave correctly."