Over on the MacFixIt forums, "Impish" has posted a step-by-step guide explaining how he got his supported printer (an Espon 888) to work in OS X, OS 9, and Classic.
If you're having difficulties with your supposedly supported printer, you should read the thread on MacFixIt for some ideas on ways to solve your problem.
There's a big security hole if you're using Xmorph [Editor: a theme-switcher for OS X]. Look in ~/Library/Preferences/Xmorph Preferences. If you've authenticated once, you should be looking right at your admin password. The author insists that this is a "feature." Feature or not, no password should ever be stored in plain text. Another Real Basic app...
[Editor's note: See the comments - this 'hole' is completely optional and at the user's discretion. Seems like a reasonable balance of ease-of-use and security - you choose whether or not you'd like your admin password saved in cleartext.]
A question on the Macaddict forums asked how to disconnect other users from an OS X machine using the terminal. One method, courtesy of an experienced UNIX-using friend of mine, is as follows:
1) Type ps aux | grep username, where username is the short name of the user you wish to disconnect.
2) Look for the shell process for the user in question in the 'ps' output. If your users use the standard (tcsh) shell, the process name will be -tcsh (tcsh).
3) Note the process number in the second column. For this example, assume it's 123.
4) Type kill -15 123, where 123 is the actual process number you found in step two. My admittedly poor interpretation of this step is that it attempts to nicely end the processes associated with the user. I'm sure that's not completely correct, but it is the general idea.
5) Type kill -9 123, where 123 is the actual process number from step two. This will end the user's session for certain.
I haven't tried this one myself yet, but I fully expect it will work. Are there other (easier, cleaner?) ways to log out a user from the terminal?
[Editor's note: Submitted by ehintz on July 6th. This story is great news for those of you using non-Apple wireless cards to access your network. Check out the referenced MacNN forum for some great info about the drivers and how they came to be!]
Open source OS X drivers are now available for Lucent's WaveLAN cards. Instructions for installation can be found in this MacNN forum.
I bought a LaCie USB Floppy along with my G4/450 DP, and of course the fact that OS X dosn't support it is rather frustrating. Even more so that LaCie offered no support on this drive whatsoever! The drive is not manufactured by LaCie at all, it's made by Y-E Data, a company in Japan; http://www.yedata.com.
They call it "USB Floppy Disk Drive FlashBuster-U" and "USB FDD SNAP-ON Color Cover Model". There are two other variants; one made for the early iMacs, and one for Windows. Just now, I received a mail from Y-E Data:
Apple will support USB FDD on Mac OS X with built-in driver. But current version of Apple's Mac OS X driver has problem with mount and un-mount operation. Please wait. Apple will fix this problem on future update.
If you want force to take USB Floppy on current version:
Do not install driver from driver CD-ROM. USB floppy drive work with Built-in Driver of Mac OS X.
Insert Floppy Disk to USB Floppy before connecting USB Cable.
Connect USB Cable to your Mac.
Floppy will mount on your Mac.
But, you could not un-mount and change floppy disk.
Apple release Mac OS update 10.0.4, we already test it but, it has still problem. Please wait Apple's next update.
Regards,
========================
Yoshi Sasaya Y-E DATA INC.
It's not a perfect solution, but it does help a bit. Thanx to Mr. Sasaya for his help! ;-)
I am curious how long people have been able to keep their OS X systems up and running without a reboot for any reason. If you are not sure how to check this go to the terminal and type
The bit that says up 8 days 15 hours is what I am interested in. Reasons for rebooting would also be of use. For example I have found that over time my idle process time goes down so drastically that I must periodically reboot to improve overall system responsiveness and stability. But I also tend to get a kernel panic every 5-8 days as well. Others may find that they have to reboot into OS 9.x to use some app. 8.5 days is the longest I have been able to remain up thus far. I look forward to hearing about this...
[Editor's note: Seems like a reasonably interesting topic, given the relative lack of OS X news lately! Chime in ... my current uptime is 2 days, 23:15. Last reboot was due to a need to burn an iDVD.]
Just a quick note to let you know: I have a Logitech USB optical 2-Button Wheelmouse (3-button if you include the wheel!). It used to freeze if left unused for more than about 15-20 minutes. Pointer would not move, but mouse seemed to be registering the movement (optical LED lights up).
With update 4, I have not had a freeze in 4 days. Seems they fixed some USB issues - Yipee!!
Symptom: Print Center says your document is printing, but nothing is happening.
If you have a printer supported by X that prints sometimes but not at others, it may be that you have too many applications open, thus preventing Print Center from getting the RAM it needs. I've discovered that X (any build) doesn't provide an error message saying "there is not enough memory for this task" (or some such).
Like many others, I've gotten in the habit of leaving my frequently-used apps open all the time, and with 617 Mgs of RAM, I thought I had plenty of memory to spare.
But on trying to print some docs, the Print Center would open and say the doc was printing (no error message) when in fact nothing was happening. When I tested with a one-word doc ("testing") it would print fine.
I quit several other apps, and now my more complicated doc printed just fine.
So if suddenly your printer is unresponsive, try again with fewer applications open in the background!
Check your Software Update panel - it's out there! This is from the Read Me:
"The 10.0.4 Update delivers a significant number of improvements for USB devices including additional external device support for iTunes CD burning, improved battery life for many PowerBook G3 systems, and Classic compatibility improvements. This update also provides the latest security updates to OpenSSH and 'sudo' services and includes support for Apple's newest digital flat-panel, the 17-inch Apple Studio Display."
The list of modified files is way too long to post here -- you can see it yourself by doing this from the terminal:
[prompt] cd /Library/Receipts/10.0.4Update.pkg/Contents/Resources [prompt] lsbom 10.0.4Update.bom
Don't type the [prompt], that's just my representation of your command-line prompt. This will show you all the updated files installed by the updater.
NOTE: Apple has released (for the first time!) update notes which detail exactly what was changed, in easy-to-understand language. Give them a read-through to see everything that was updated (and why!).
Back in the OS X Public Beta days, Ryan Rempel created a hack to get OS X installed on older machines. Now, thanks to Other World Computing, he's been able to create an installer that handles a number of the older machines with the release version of OS X. Read all about it (and download the installer) on Other World Computing's OS X for Legacy Macs page.
