Follow Up--Mac OS X PB on Our Power Mac G4

As noted on Thursday, we had problems getting Mac OS X to install on our Power Mac G4/400 Sawtooth because it had 2 video graphics cards, each with a monitor, and the target drive was a Maxtor drive connected to a Sonnet Tempo ATA/66 controller card. The first problem was getting the Mac OS 9.0.4 installed on the target partition fully updated. We continued through Sunday to have lots of problems with the Software Update control panel on any of our computers so we downloaded all the updates since 9.0.4 as .smi files from Apple's servers.

To get the Mac OS X PB installer to work, all we had to do was disconnect the monitor connected to the 3Dfx Voodoo5 PCI 3D graphics card. We did not have to remove the card from its slot. However, Mac OS X PB would not install on any partition of the Maxtor drive attached to the Tempo card. Only the main drive and the slave drive showed up as available. All others were grayed out. We backed up the first partition on the G4's main drive, took a deep breath and installed Mac OS X PB there. The installation proceeded without drama. After installation, Mac OS X PB would not start up if a monitor, the only monitor, was connected to the Voodoo5 card. Apparently, Mac OS X PB will not work with the Voodoo5 card despite reports that it works with a Voodoo3 card.

Two monitors do work, however, according to Xavier Avila:

"In regards to installing Mac OS X PB on a G4 with multiple monitors, I can tell you that I have successfully installed it on a G4/500 with two video cards (original ATI 128 Rage pro & ATI Xclaim VR 4mb) Not only does the machine have two video cards, but it also has two SCSI cards (Adaptec 2906 & ATTO PSC Ultra wide). At first I was also having problems installing OS X, and after many tries and one successful install, the machine would not restart or boot up. After playing with all the external peripherals I discovered that the Yamaha CD-R 8/4/32 attached to the Adaptec SCSI card was the culprit."

We used Mac OS X PB during the weekend and love it. We've read numerous notes on various lists and forums complaining that Mac OS X PB is sluggish or slow. Not so on our G4/400. While Mac OS X PB's GUI is not lightning fast, it is not much different speed-wise from Mac OS 9 and perfectly acceptable. The lack of printing capability is the biggest deficit for most people. However, switching between booting under Mac OS 9 and X to print is relatively painless if not rapid. The carbonized AppleWorks 6 and Internet Explorer worked very well. However, some applications do not work well in Mac OS 9 emulation, "Classic". These are mostly utilities and games, e.g. NewerTech's Gauge Pro didn't launch and launching Quake 3 Arena causes a terrible crash. But by and large, Classic within X works surprisingly well and so far Mac OS 9.0.4 still works as well as it did before the X installation and use.

The Mac OS X interface will take some time to get used to and longer than necessary since for some inexplicable reason Apple changed the location of some functions and renamed others. Still, Mac OS X is a giant leap forward, one that has been promised in the name of "Copland" since the mid-1990's--our Power Mac 7100/80 was bought in 1996 specifically to use Copland. In less than 6 months, that promise will be finally fulfilled some four generations of Power Macs later.

Hands-On First Report--Macsense XRouter Pro: We received the XRouter from Xsense last week and hooked it up over the weekend in place of the LINKSYS Etherfast router that we previously reviewed. It was an easy straight switch, just un- and replugging the WAN and LAN cables, and it worked perfectly. The UDP protocol, the best for streaming QuickTime video, worked on all computers connected directly to the switch and hub. However, none of the computers connected via AirPort could receive UDP, a problem with AirPort not the router. The LINKSYS router only supports one computer on UDP and so far this is the only difference. We'll provide a full comparison soon.