I (write | copy | use) many DATA DVD at home, so after a while I got very fustrated becouse OS X desides to spawn the DVD Player with every insert of a DVD (including data DVD`s).
I searched but did not find any hints, so I did some investigation, after a while (finding out how mounting works, reading man autodiskmount and some wild guesses), I came up with this solution. Edit the com.apple.finder.plist file (in your user's Library / Preferences folder) using your favorite text editor. Here is the top part of the file:
<!DOCTYPE plist SYSTEM "file://localhost/System/Library/DTDs/PropertyList.dtd"> <plist version="0.9"> <dict>
Keep the rest of the file intact, save your changes, and then logout/login (or relaunch the Finder). Your discs should no longer autoplay.
[Editor's note: I thought for certain there was a Finder pref for this, but I certainly can't see one! This seems to be the best solution at present ... if there's a simpler way that I'm missing, let us know!]
Recently an iMac was recovered using Timbuktu and AppleScript.
The same can be done on OSX easily using this shell script in a cron task or startup item:
#!/bin/sh
cat <<EOF | mail -s "G4 Status: `/bin/date`" your_email@abc.com
NETWORK SETUP `/sbin/ifconfig -a 2>&1`
PROCESS LISTING `ps axw 2>&1`
TRACEROUTE TO HOME `/usr/sbin/traceroute -q1 1.2.3.4 2>&1` EOF
(Replace 'your_email@abc.com' with your real email address and '1.2.3.4' with your home IP number).
You will need to enable sendmail which this tip sort of explains how to do. I set my script up to email me daily at 6:30PM using the system crontab via the cron GUI frontend Cronnix, and I will also put it in a startup item (I'd not suggest a login item).
I'd suggest using a throwaway web-based free-email address, so you will be able to easily access it if you lose your mac. You can cc to multiple addresses using the -c option to mail.
[Editor's note: The following note was submitted to me well over a month ago. Somehow, I lost it in the in-box queue, and finally found it this morning as I was cleaning out some old Help Requests. My apologies for the delay in getting this posted! I have no idea if it's still relevant or not, but it seems important enough to merit a mention. Someone please let me know if it's already non-relevant and what the new solution is...]
I use two Beige G3 machines (now upgraded to G4's) and both have had the problem that when I use Startup Disk on System Preferences to go back to OS9, I can't get back to OS X. It appears that the Startup Disk control panel in OS9 never actually writes the correct Open Firmware values to the nvram. Several times I got back to normal by doing a OSX reinstall -- suffering the whole process just to get the nvram fixed.
Today, I found the painfully simple answer -- download System Disk 2.6.2 from Apple's download site and use it instead of the Startup Disk control panel. This worked perfectly...
A co-worker was option-clicking on an OS 9 desktop, which hid the foreground application. I have been using Macs most of my life and I had no idea you could do that. Anyhow I tried it in OS X and sure enough it worked!
Is this common knowledge? I didn't see it posted.
[Editor's note: I'm not sure it's common knowledge, and I don't think it's been posted here before. It's also not just a Finder thing -- if you option-click any background application's window, the foreground application becomes hidden.]
I have a Brother HL-1270N that I bought when 10.0 was released. This is an ethernet-capable LPR via IP printer, and that's how I set it up in 10.0, using the PPD from OS 9. Although it worked OK, it would bomb up on the second print job submitted. If you manually powered it off and on, it would then work again. Also, my printer was randomly switching its IP address, which was also a bit of a problem!
Over on the macosxhints' forum site, this thread gave me a solution I hadn't considered - switching from LPR via IP to AppleTalk. So I deleted the LPR via IP printer, enabled AppleTalk (which was added in the 10.1 update) on my desktop machine, then selected the now-visible Brother printer and chose the OS 9 Brother HL-1270N PPD file.
Despite an email from Brother Tech Support posted in the thread that the PPD is only OS 9 comptabile, it works flawlessly in OS X. I can now print multiple print jobs without errors, and I don't need to worry about the randomly switching IP numbers any more. I also switched our iBook, and it works great over the Airport, too.
This should also work for any other AppleTalk capable laser printer that is currently set up under LPR via IP.
I was just mucking around and I saw that in Sherlock there is a "Languages..." button on the Preferences screen. Mine had many ones checked like French, Danish, German, etc. that I do not need. The text there says indexing will be faster and use less space if you uncheck the ones you don't need. I didn't do any tests but it did finish as I was writing this note!
I have an old 9500 connected to an even older Laserwriter II NTX. When I tried to use LaserWriter Bridge in order to print from MacOS X from a G4, the printer would produce a PostScript error and that was that. Through trial and error I found that you can:
1) Print your job to a postscript file (I use the AdobePS driver from Classic).
2) Send it over to the 9500, through EtherTalk.
3) Just drop the file on the printer once it is on the 9500.
Bingo it works! Now I can print from my G4 to my old printer, with no special software at all!
After a bewildering and frustrating troubleshooting session, I realized the following:
Mac OS X's screen brightness will be set to "off" at settings that are merely "dim" in Mac OS 9.
I was booted into OS 9 on my iBook, and turned the screen brightness all the way down, just one notch above "off". Later I booted into OS X, and was disturbed to find that the iBook was shutting down suddenly, partway into the boot sequence! The hard drive kept spinning, but the screen went black and the computer wouldn't respond.
I tried Disk First Aid, booting into single-user mode, reinstalling 10.1, and was about to buy a disk-repair utility, when I remembered my brightness setting. I went back to 9, turned up the brightness, and all was well.
Humiliating, but I thought I'd put this out there in case anyone else runs into a similar problem one day.
An anonymous reader sent a tip regarding Beige G3's with the Fast/Wide SCSI option. If you've been getting a "Can't Find...53C875" error when trying to cold-boot the machine, here's one possible solution: Boot from the OS X Install CD and use the Startup Disk utility (Control Panels) to specify the desired startup disk.
I can't verify either the problem or the solution, but thought this may be of interest to some of you. If this is way off base, please let me know and I'll revise or remove the tip.
