Macking 48

Temporarily Using Someone Else's ISP
If you travel with your PowerBook and don't want to make a long-distance call to your ISP to send and receive your mail, there is an easy way to use someone else's account in whatever city you find yourself in.
Open up the PPP control panel (8.0/8.1) or Remote Access (8.5/8.6) and choose Configurations from the File menu (Cmd-K). You may have already created a Local and a Long Distance configuration. Select one of them, then click on Duplicate. Name it Temporary and say OK. Have your friend type in their username, password and the local phone number. You don't want your own name or info here.
Click Connect. The call should go through, same as if it were on their own machine. When connected, just launch Eudora and collect your mail. You won't need to make any changes to your Eudora Settings to do this.
You will not, however, be able to send mail because most ISPs put in a filter to prevent mail coming from someone else's account. This is a (mostly useless) spam prevention, but it also cuts down on spoofing, or sending mail under someone else's name. At least you can browse the Web through their account without running up a LD bill. When you want to send mail, just log off, read and respond to your mail, click Queue to save mail for later sending and then dial in long distance under your own name. When you leave your guest's place, open up Configurations again, make the Default or your other setting active again, and delete the Temporary settings.

G3 PB Insomnia
Does your G3 powerbook fail to sleep when on battery power? A friend took a long time with Apple tech support to finally discover that when the fax software is set to automatically answer, the sleep function is disabled. This is a change from when the fax software could wake a sleeping powerbook. If you want the energy saving software to work when you are on the battery, you must disable fax auto-detect and set to manually receive faxes. Apple has no plans to return to the original method of letting the fax software wake up the PowerBook.

About Bloody Time
Canon announced the first Mac-compatible multi-function printer. Due in July, the $379 MultiPASS C635 features color printing, scanning, and faxing. Of course the problem with this type of device is when one thing goes wrong, you lose all the other functions while it is off being fixed.

Keyspan SX Pro bug
Users of beige G3 Macs with ROM number "xxx.40F2" cannot use the Keyspan SX Pro PCI 4-port PCI card. A "firmware bug" in that model simply prevents the extension from loading or the card from working. So wrote Patrick Beart of Web Architecture, who spent about $25 in tech calls and half a day tracking down the problem, later posted on the MacInTouch site. The older cards, the SX-4 and SX-2 work fine, but those cards aren't being made any more. The SX-4 costs $100 more than the Pro, but the Pro simply will not work. To find out if you have the offending ROMs, you need Apple System Profiler 2.1.2, installed with OS 8.5 or available on Apple's web site. The Profiler included with 8.1 does not give this information.
Run Profiler, then scroll to the bottom of the System Information window and look for the Production Information subcategory. It will give you a ROM revision number. Ignore the numbers to the left of the dot, the 40F2 at the end means you have the bug. There is no fix; you will need to locate the older card from a reseller somewhere, or buy a competing product, such as the one from Mega Wolf "Romulus" for $249. That one works in the affected G3s. Other PowerMac models do not have this problem and can use the $179 SX-Pro.
Owners of Blue&White G3s with internal modems also cannot use the Keyspan card. It attempts to reconfigure the modem port every time you restart, crashing the machine when you try to run your Web browser. If you have to use this card, physically remove your internal modem and buy an external one for use with the card. (Thanks, MacFixIt, who also points out serious MIDI problems with the card.)
Finally, MacFixIt writes that there may be a fix to the SX Pro problem after all; Apple is working with Keyspan to identify and implement a fix.

Apple Software/Firmware Updates
It is always good to keep up with the official updates for your machine. Today's recommendations from MacFixIt are for iMac owners to get the Firmware Update 1.2 to fix possible startup problems. Check out the list of updates at Apple periodically if you don't visit the Mac news sites.

QuickBooks and Y2K fix: a follow-up
(Also from MacFixIt): Last time, we noted that Intuit stated that it would "provide a free solution by the end of June" for a Y2K problem with QuickBooks. In this regard, Glenn Boley writes:
"I received a letter from Intuit that stated, in a nut shell, that they will not be posting a fix for QuickBooks for Macintosh! What they will do, is send a copy (free) of QB Pro for Macintosh in July, and as of Dec. '99, they will no longer be supporting the tax tables for Mac at all and recommend Aatrix for payroll - if you continue to use QB Pro. Apparently, the payroll module is not Y2K 'fixable' in any version without a rewrite, and they are not going to do it."
Yet another writer in MacInTouch with "close ties to Intuit," says "Intuit plans to release an update to both its QuickBooks 3 and 4 within the next few weeks." The update is just to fix the known Y2K bugs. Since it is anybody's guess what is really going on, you users of QB should just start sending email to their support department until you get a definitive answer.

Good News for Iomega Users
For two months now, the Corvallis MUG newsletter "Mouse Droppings" has been reporting positive experiences from people calling Iomega customer service and tech support. All have been related to the dreaded "Click of Death" (a hardware failure that kills both the drive and all cartridges inserted into it) and all have resulted in quick connection to a helpful and friendly human and fast replacement of both drives and disks.
This is really great news; a year ago Iomega was referred to as the "Quark of hardware" (Quark is still notorious for having a bad attitude toward their customers, but that too may be changing) and now it seems they are striving to be the best.
I am always glad to hear when bad companies go good. I would like to hear from you: tell me your Quark and Iomega stories from the last three months.

ObjectSupportLib: Delete It!
If you are running any version of OS8 or later, do a command-F and search for ObjectSupportLib in your Extensions Folder. (It does not show up in Extensions Manager.) If you locate it, you have probably been experiencing regular crashes. Put it in the Trash.
System versions 8.0.0 and later have had ObjectSupportLib as part of the System File and no longer need a separate library. But Photoshop, PhotoDeluxe and other card-making and graphics programs install it anyway because when they were written the programmer did not know or remember that the file was not needed. An installer script can be written to check the version number of the system and not install the file, and eventually they will be, but there are still lots of Macs being plagued with this unneeded file and the user is wondering why they crash so often. (Thanks, Phil Russell of Mouse Droppings.)

SCSI is Voodoo
It took me almost a week of struggle, but my beige G3 now has a Seagate 9-gig internal SCSI in addition to the 4-gig IDE that came with it. For some reason, I could no longer have an internal drive on the internal part of the SCSI bus and also external devices, even though all the IDs were set correctly and I tried every which-way of termination and load order. (I had removed a dying 2-gig internal that ran just fine on the internal/external bus.)
The cure was to pick up a $99 FWB JackHammer SCSI card at PowerMax and plug the internal into that. The card was a good buy because it also supports Fast&Wide SCSI (but not both at the same time), so if I decide to lose the 9-gig and get an F&W HD to replace it, I already have the card.
Now I can start collecting MP3 files. 13 gigs on line. Whoda thunk, eh?
But the lesson learned is that just because you are supposed to be able to have devices on the internal/external bus, and the system is designed for just that, don't expect it to actually work every time in every configuration. You too might have to get a SCSI card. Now it is happily running all my devices and OS 8.6 to boot. This is why Apple has migrated all future models away from SCSI and onto FireWire and USB.
There are still a lot of beige 233-MHz G3 units around, as low as $1099. If you don't need the latest and greatest, this is a nice box.

ATM Deluxe 4.5 is out
But it will cost owners of 4.0, which is not compatible with OS 8.5, $49 to upgrade. The better deal is Extensis Suitcase 8, which does a better job of juggling your font libraries, and works in conjunction with the free version of ATM, which smooths fonts on screen and on non-PostScript printers. The Suitcase 8 upgrade is $10 cheaper. A fully functioning 30-day demo may be downloaded from the Extensis website.

iMac Mouse Alternative
Contour Design, Inc. has released a snap-on shell with 5 colored buttons to match whichever flavor of iMac or G3/BW model you have. At $15 it is cheaper than the MacAlly mouse, but $5 more than the iCatch mouse shell mentioned a couple of months ago. I think I like this one better, but the iCatch cat logo is cuter.

AOL Assistant
Problems printing and/or saving from AOL 3 or 4? Steve Becker's AOL Assistant is a $17 shareware utility that improves things. I have not tried it myself. (Thanks, MacInTouch)

Command-Tab fix
If you upgraded to 8.5 or later and discovered that Command-Tab switches you out of PageMaker instead of changing to the next page, the problem is in the Application Switcher enhancement to the old Applications menu (right end of the menubar). MacAddict's Ask Us section details how to fix this. Process: In the Finder, choose MacOS Help from the Help menu. Type "Application Switcher" (without quotes) in the field and click Search. At the top of the results list, click on "Switching between open programs." This window tells how Application Switcher works, how to change the look of icons, names, etc. in the tear-off Switcher window. Scroll down to find a diamond link called "Help me modify keyboard shortcuts." Click this and follow the onscreen instructions to assign a new keyboard command that doesn't interfere with PageMaker and other programs you use. I switched mine to Control-Tab.
This tip alone made it worth my subscription price, but there is something like this in every issue. Go ahead and spend the $30, even though I just gave you the tip here.

No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.

email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)