Mark H. Anbinder informs us, "AppleShare 3.0 has finally shipped! It replaces both the AppleShare 2.0 file sharing and print sharing software packages with a single $1199 package. Briefly, the new software is fully compatible with (and requires) System 7, and it allows the server software to be run at the same time as other applications under the process manager. For best results it’s appropriate to use the AppleShare server software on a dedicated server machine, but it is possible to use it on a personal workstation if high performance isn’t essential."

Mark also passes on this information from Brian Calhoun-Bryant of BAKA Technical Support and SuperMac about compatibility issues between SuperMac products and the Quadras.

Hard Disks: The current version of the Manager (4.2/4.2E) is currently listed as not supporting the Quadras. SuperMac officially claims multiple incompatibilities. The fix is a new version of the Manager that will be out in the first quarter of 1992. This will almost certainly be the last version of the Manager. (I have run an XP200 on a Quadra [NOT as a boot device!] and it appears to run mostly fine.)

Video Products: List as per SuperMac follows:

• Thunder/8 & 24 cards: Compatible.
• Spectrum/24 PDQ: Compatible.
• Spectrum/24 Series III: Not compatible – new ROM in December.
• Spectrum/8*24 PDQ: Compatible, except for RasterOps mode.
• Spectrum/8 Series III: Compatible.
• ColorCard/24: Not fully tested, appears to be compatible.
• Monochrome Card: Not fully tested, appears to be compatible.

Direct-connect SuperMac Video to Quadras: I believe that only the 21" display and the 19" display with the 21" cable will work (in 8-bit mode) with Apple’s built-in video on the Quadras.

Paul Durrant writes, "I recently came across a bug in the British System 7. I know it won’t be of much personal interest to US readers, but you might like to include it. The KCHR resource controls how key codes are interpreted as character codes. In System 7, the KCHR was revamped to allow access to all the accent characters directly from the keyboard. In the British localisation of KCHR a mistake was made, and they seem to have used the old System 6 version. This has been acknowledged by UK.DTS as a bug. (OK, so it’s not a huge bug, it still messes up a Quark Xtension I’ve got in the works) Good luck with the new text format." [Thanks Paul, I try not to be too US-centric, but it’s hard when I live here.]

Information from:
Mark H. Anbinder — [email protected]
Paul Durrant — [email protected]

Anyone who doesn’t consider themselves an expert on configuring memory for the Macintosh should take a look at a small booklet from Connectix called The Macintosh Memory Guide. It is free, and you can get one by calling Connectix at the number below or sending email to [email protected] with your snail mail address included. If you help out with a user group, Connectix will send you 100 copies or as many as you want if you’ll use them. In addition, an electronic version (in Microsoft Word format) is archived at sumex-aim.stanford.edu for anonymous FTP. Just look for /info-mac/report/mac-memory-guide.hqx. I’ve read the booklet and am extremely impressed with it. Highly recommended and well worth the price. 🙂

Slip-up of the week goes to Adobe. A recent batch of Adobe Type Manager 2.0.3 upgrades actually contained Illustrator 3.0.2 upgrades (which happen to include ATM 2.0.3). The two-disk upgrade package included tutorial and update information materials. Adobe has been sheepishly calling the customers who received these to explain what happened, and to ask that the customers prepare the packages to be picked up by Adobe’s shipping service, at no charge to the customer. 🙂

We’ve heard that Apple has been receiving reports of floppy drive problems on PowerBooks, primarily on the 140. Apple is trying to figure out what the cause of the problems might be, and in the meantime, users having trouble with the PowerBook floppy drive can call Apple at 800/SOS-APPLE. We’ll pass on any more information we hear about this problem, and yes, I realize that the phone number I just gave has one too many digits. I assume it still works fine even if you dial the extra "E."

Here’s an odd one. Some people have experienced a problem when printing to the LaserWriter IIf or IIg from a Macintosh using System 7 and the LaserWriter 7.0 driver, where the system will not download the Zapf Dingbats PostScript font that comes on the "LaserWriter II Install 4.0" disks. (These disks come with the LaserWriter IIf and IIg.) Instead, users are getting a bitmapped version of Zapf Dingbats and not the PostScript version, even though they have placed the PostScript version (included on the LaserWriter II Fonts Disk 1) in the System Folder.

The Zapf Dingbats font on the "LaserWriter II Fonts 1" disk is named incorrectly to be temporarily downloaded by the LaserWriter driver. The file name as it appears on the disk is "Zapf Dingbats". For the font to be downloaded by the LaserWriter driver, the file needs to be called "ZapfDin". The incorrect name does not interfere with the LaserWriter Utility’s ability to download the font into the printer’s memory.

The solution is to make sure you rename the Adobe PostScript font to "ZapfDin" (not the TrueType font. The PostScript font icon contains a large hollow "A" character and the background has horizontal lines. PostScript fonts should be placed in the System Folder, as they do not need to be installed.)

Unlike the LaserWriter IINT and IINTX, the first LaserWriter IIf and IIg do not have Zapf Dingbats in the ROMs. Version 1.1 will have this font in the ROMs, but that won’t be on the street for a while.

Connectix — 800/950-5880 — 415/571-5100

Information from:
Roy McDonald, Connectix — [email protected]
Pythaeus

Dantz recently sent me the press release announcing DiskFit Pro, and the press release came wrapped around a copy of the program. That’s the way I like it because it’s much easier to write a decent article about something when you’ve had a chance to try it out. For those of you who haven’t heard the history, Dantz originally developed a backup program, DiskFit, for SuperMac many years ago. It shipped with all Dataframe hard drives from SuperMac, but when SuperMac decided to concentrate on the graphics business, it sold the rights to DiskFit back to Dantz. Dantz cleaned it up a bit, made sure it was System 7-compatible, and recently released it as DiskFit Pro.

DiskFit Pro is a perfect example of a focussed program. It defines its purpose clearly and narrowly, and it performs that task admirably. DiskFit Pro tries to be a fast, easy backup program for people who have better things to worry about than backing up. DiskFit Pro isn’t in the same class as Dantz’s high-end backup and archiving program, Retrospect, but it doesn’t try to be. The main things that Dantz added to DiskFit Pro include a DiskFit Pro Reminder Control Panel that can remind you when to back up and some interesting features to that help deal with the proliferation of aliases in System 7. Dantz also removed support for DC2000 tape drives because they recommend Retrospect for use with all tape drives.

Using DiskFit Pro is indeed simplicity itself. After launching the program, you select a volume from the list (following the prompts at the top of the DiskFit window), then click Backup, Duplicate, or Restore. If you click Backup and wish to use floppies, you can then insert the first floppy and click Proceed. Your backup is underway. There are few options, but they should suffice in most instances. You can limit your backup to Only Documents, Only Applications, Only System Folder, or to a Single File. You can select individual folders to back up and exclude files based on type/creator. Nothing like Retrospect, but easy as all get out. Using the Backup creates what Dantz calls a SmartSet, and a SmartSet can be comprised of any combination of media.

If you have a SyQuest drive or another hard drive to use as a destination disk, you can choose to Duplicate the source disk if it will fit entirely on the destination disk. There are no Duplicate options; it simply makes an exact copy of the source disk on the destination disk. What you can do (and what I do now) is duplicate two 20 MB source disks onto a single 40 MB SyQuest cartridge using Subvolumes, which are really folders you ask DiskFit to look at as volumes. This is one of DiskFit’s few weak points because it defies the standard Macintosh interface. To define a Subvolume, you select a volume in your main window and then click the Subvolume window. You can then select any folder on that volume by way of a Standard File Dialog box. Herein lies the problem. DiskFit will not let you select a folder on any disk other than the one you originally selected and the SFDialog jumps back to the selected volume when you pick another disk in the SFDialog box. A utility like Super Boomerang confuses the issue even more because it will try to move you to the last accessed folder automatically, even if that folder is not on the volume you selected in DiskFit. It does work fine, but you have be careful or you’ll get a bit frustrated. I gather Dantz set it up this way to be consistent with the rest of the program’s interface.

If you wish to Restore an entire disk, it’s equally as easy – just start up the Mac with a floppy, run DiskFit Pro, select the volume to restore, select the backup disk, and you’re off. In the slim 53 page manual Dantz includes a handy table of all the possibilities involved in restoring files and disks. One of the coolest features is the way you can restore a single file with the SmartSet Alias. If that option is selected, DiskFit Pro will create a folder on your desktop with an alias to every file in the backup. You can find the alias to the file you wish to restore, Get Info… on the alias, and then click Find Original. The Finder will then prompt you for the correct backup disk. If you didn’t opt to create that SmartSet Alias, you can always look in the DiskFit Report to see which backup disk holds your file.

One of the reasons all of this is so easy is that DiskFit stores all the files in normal Finder format. So in my case, where I have two partitions backed up to the same SyQuest, I could actually work off that SyQuest if I had to. It’s an exact duplicate. DiskFit even goes so far as to copy my hard disk icons onto the top level of the folders that it is using as Subvolumes, but I suspect that I could even boot that SyQuest (one of the partitions is my boot partition) if I had to.

The problem with storing files in Finder format is that they take up more space than if they were compressed, as Retrospect can do. DiskFit minimizes this problem by packing files onto a disk tightly – Dantz is awfully good about figuring out the best way to arrange the files so that each disk is as full as possible. What I like the most, however, is that DiskFit will replace outdated files and folders with the new ones, thus making sure that the backup set cannot grow much larger than the source volume. Retrospect doesn’t do this in favor of always keeping a copy since it is a true archiving program, but let’s face it, I want to back up my 9 MB TidBITS Archive file each week, but I have no interest in keeping the previous week’s file around. Retrospect duplicated that information each week, which was a pain. Now I use DiskFit Pro for two partitions and Retrospect for the third because that one requires more individual file selection.

I found some other items of interest. DiskFit Pro includes the features of the old Network DiskFit, and it can preserve access privileges and the like. DiskFit can automatically format unformatted disks, shut down after finishing, split and join files that are too large for a single floppy, and exclude folders with square brackets around the name (I’d rather see Dantz use System 7’s labels for this so you could label a folder to be excluded rather than mucking with the name). Finally, DiskFit knows about backing up aliases and their original files, sort of. DiskFit can warn you if it backs up an alias but not the original file (which is good), and it can even optionally back up that original file automatically (which is good too). However, DiskFit cannot back up the original file if it is on a different volume than the alias, which is the case with almost all of mine. I tend to keep aliases in the Startup Items folder and the Apple Menu Items folder and on the desktop of my boot partition, but I keep almost all of the originals on my applications volume. It’s not a big deal as long as I’m warned that the original has not been backed up. Dantz also tells me that they’re working on this problem.

I highly recommend DiskFit Pro based on what I’ve seen and used of it. It’s fast, easy to use, and gets the job done. It definitely doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but if you want that sort of noise, buy Retrospect, which has options galore. As far as the low-end backup programs go, DiskFit Pro is one of the best.

Dantz Development
1400 Shattuck Ave., Suite 1
Berkeley CA 94709
510/849-0293
[email protected]
[email protected]

Penguin Rating: 9 penguins out of a possible 10

Information from:
Dantz propaganda
Larry Zulch, Dantz President

The fact that some popular applications (Word 4.0, for example) are incompatible with the new Quadra processor caches has received enough attention in the trade press that a few potential buyers have indicated that they are hesitating while compatibility problems are sorted out. Apple includes a Cache Control Panel which will turn the caches off, but running a Quadra without the processor caches severely restricts the performance that is the reason for obtaining a Quadra in the first place. A little-publicized feature of Apple’s Cache Control Panel is that you can turn the caches on and off without restarting (hold down the option key while clicking the radio button). However, an even more convenient solution has been made available for free by Alysis Software, a small company best known for SuperDisk!, a fast and transparent file compression and password protection utility.

Alysis’s Compatibility INIT is a System 7 extension that allows a Quadra to run otherwise incompatible software without any interruption in other work. Instead of having to turn the caches on and off from the Control Panel, a user can simply launch applications without fear of crashes from cache incompatibility.

The Compatibility INIT works by keeping track of applications that are incompatible with the Quadra’s cache. When it sees that one of the applications in the exception list is running, it will automatically cut off the Quadra caches to avoid conflicts. Programs like Microsoft Word 4.0, Microsoft Excel 3.0, and Think C 4.0 will now run on "as is" on a Quadra. And if any other program is not compatible with your Quadra’s caching, you can add it to the exception list and it will become immediately and forever "compatible." The application can be used right away without re-booting.

A little experimenting indicates that the Compatibility INIT really is context-sensitive. An application that requires turning off the caches will, naturally, not run nearly as fast as it would if it were compatible, but other background (or foreground) applications which are compatible continue to benefit from the Quadra’s full speed.

Version 2.0 of Compatibility INIT did not permit DAs or extensions to be added to the list of software which needs to have the processor caches disabled. However, Alysis has just released version 2.2, which corrects this limitation. Basically, if you have a Quadra and have any software which is incompatible with the caches, you need Alysis’s Compatibility INIT. It will make your life easier.

Version 2.2 is free for non-commercial use on Macintosh Quadras owned by individuals who own no more than one Macintosh. Companies wishing to license the Alysis Compatibility INIT should contact Alysis. It is widely available on electronic services and bulletin boards, but it remains copyright 1991 by Alysis Software Corporation with some portions copyright Symantec Corporation.

Alysis — 800/825-9747 — 415/566-2263

Information from:
Murph Sewall — [email protected]
Alysis documentation — Alysis on AOL