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Claris Emailer: "alive and kicking" or not?

An article in MacWEEK quotes a Claris spokesman as saying that: "Claris has not ceased development of Emailer." This is intended to counter "rumors" that Claris intends to kill Emailer. While the Claris statement is technically true (a version 2.0v3 is due out soon, as we noted here last week), it doesn't exactly deny the rumors about Emailer's long term prospects. My sources (which included two people currently working for Claris) were quite emphatic that these prospects were not good. However, let's not bury Emailer prematurely. I hope Claris does indeed continue … Read more

FWB CD-ROM ToolKit lack of support for Philips PCA8OSC drive is intentional

Regarding our report last time that FWB's recently released CD-ROM Toolkit 3.0.1 does not work with Philips PCA8OSC drive:

A reader (who wishes to remain anonymous) writes: "FWB has actually deliberately taken support for this drive out of the product, only they haven't told anyone. You can verify this by looking in the resource 'SDev', ID=208 "P", which has the SCSI strings of the supported drives (for manufacturers starting with "P"). The entry for the drive is missing. It seems that the support at FWB decided that the drive was … Read more

Odds & Ends

CD-ROM Toolkit 3.0.1 glitch Two readers have now reported that FWB's recently released CD-ROM Toolkit 3.0.1 does not work with Philips PCA8OSC drive. Version 3.0 did work.

PowerWatch update Jeff Keller writes: "PowerWatch has expanded its offerings to include powerful technical support information for Power Computing users, as well as updating our message boards to cover issues for all Macintosh users."

Tell Claris what you think Readers interested in expressing their view on Claris' apparent decision to drop further development of Emailer, should check out this Claris web page.

Mailbag redux The … Read more

FreePPP 2.6.2 Beta 5 MDEV released; contains a "known bug"

From Steve Dagley: "The FreePPP 2.6.2 Beta 5 MDEV is now available. There is a known bug in this version, as well as all previous versions after 2.6, of the FreePPP MDEV that will cause a crash when re-configuring Open Transport on 68K machines. I have a possible workaround from Apple's Developer Tech Support group and once I have a chance to incorporate the change and test it I will declare FreePPP 2.6.2 finished and release a non-expiring version. The prefs import/export feature of FreePPP Setup will be deferred to a later … Read more

From Apple: recent files of interest

TIL 30336 (G3 Custom Install/Remove) notes that you can access the Custom Install and Remove options from the Software Installers that come with G3 Macs if you hold down the Option key when launching the Installer.

TIL 24308 (removing PowerBook batteries) states that "In the time between removing the first battery and inserting the second battery, the PowerBook is using the backup lithium battery to power the RAM. If you have a large RAM card that draws an excessive amount of power, the RAM card can drain the backup battery before the second main battery is inserted. This … Read more

Microsoft Bookshelf slow launch in Mac OS 8

Robert Hohlfelder writes that Microsoft's Bookshelf software installs a control panel called "QuickShelf" which places an icon in your menu bar. He experienced a problem which is confirmed in article Q171937 (Bookshelf 98: QuickShelf Search From Desktop Takes Long Time) from Microsoft's tech support library. In brief, "there's an incompatibility between the OS 8 Finder and QuickShelf. When you're in the Finder and select an item from the Quickshelf menu, the system freezes for about a minute (the mouse pointer moves, but the system is otherwise frozen) before launching Bookshelf."

When Robert … Read more

ATTO dual channel problem with G3 Macs

Mark Derbyshire writes: "We do a lot of ultra wide SCSI with our Macs using both ATTO ExpressPCI (dual channel) and Adaptec PowerDomain 3940W (dual channel) PCI cards. Generally the ATTO cards are faster. We recently put an ATTO card into our Apple 233 MHz G3 desktop and the boot process hung even before the happy Mac shows up (the mouse cursor freezes on the blank gray screen)." He contacted ATTO about this and they replied: "The dual channel is not compatible with the G3 platform. Apple is currently working on a fix for this. In addition, … Read more

Surf Express issues: a follow-up

Mike Sterling of Connectix, writes that he is unable to duplicate the "Surf Express encountered a network error..." problem (as reported last time) that I continue to experience intermittently (and which a few other readers have now confirmed).

I have also occasionally had a related problem where a web page takes unusually long to load (or never started loading at all) from the network (as opposed to the cache, which remains fast) until I disabled Surf Express by turning off the proxy access from Netscape's Preferences options. Reader Ketan Vikal had the same problem. In my case, … Read more

Microsoft Internet Explorer: 128 bit version does not work on some servers; follow-ups to previous item

Continuing with reports of problems with the new Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, as covered last time:

128 bit version problem; a reply from Microsoft Omar Shahine contacted Microsoft stating that: "IE 128-bit encryption version of IE 4.0 does not work. I updated and no sites recognize the 128 bit key size." He received this reply from Microsoft: "We have discovered a problem using the 128 bit version of Mac IE 4.0 with some secure servers. The problem seems to be when the server tries to use the strong triple DES cipher. The problem seems … Read more