PowerMac G4 Weirdness

My PowerMac G4 started acting a little weird last week — upon a reboot after installing some low-level software, it “found” a PCI card with an Ethernet port. Just one problem — there is no such card in my machine.

This created a bit of a problem, apparently, because the built-in Ethernet port couldn’t accurately connect to my network despite over a year of problem-free usage since I connected it to the freshly-wired network port in our basement office. It kept connecting/disconnecting, and would never stay “up” long enough to get a good IP address. And there’s a new configuration in my Network PrefPane for a PCI Ethernet card that I can’t even delete. Not good.

Reinstalling a clean system on a new hard drive didn’t solve anything — I still get the phantom port in my Network PrefPane. I even moved one of my PCI add-in cards (a FW800/USB2 card) to another slot, and while the phantom port seemed to move from “Slot 3″ to “Slot 4″ (which doesn’t seem to match the slot for the add-in board either before or after, unless the slots are numbered out-of-order), it’s still there.

Troubling. Especially because I don’t want to buy a new machine until the second-generation Intel-based Mac desktops are available.

Resetting Handset Registration for the AT&T E5965C Cordless Phone System

The AT&T E5965C Cordless Answering System is a pretty nice 5.8Ghz expandable phone system. I picked up a base unit and four extra handsets. The problem came when I was setting them up…none of the handsets were registering as “Handset #1,” even though the base unit thought there was a #1 handset. This was a pretty big annoyance, since you transfer calls and use the intercom based on handset numbers.

AT&T’s web site FAQ didn’t have the answer, and I couldn’t get to a human the first time I called. So I took the first unit back to Best Buy and exchanged it, but the new one had the same problem. Time to call again–this time I got a human in about two minutes of waiting (must have called outside normal hours the first time), who had no problem telling me how to reset the base unit to “de-register” all the handsets. Since it isn’t on-line anywhere, here’s the procedure:

• On the base unit, hit the middle navigation key (marked “Menu” on the LCD screen).
• Scroll down to “Base Settings” and hit “OK.”
• Immediately enter the code “* * 3 3 5 7 8 2″ on the numeric keypad. (Note: the keys won’t beep while you’re doing this.)
• All of your handsets will be immediately de-registered and the base unit will reset.
• Now you can re-register your handsets per normal procedures.

This worked like a charm for me! I’m quite please with these phones overall. Now, to pick up a Sipura 3000 analog telephone adapter to merge VOIP and POTS onto the same phone line in the house, and bye-bye expensive phone bills while still having 911 service!

Tiger Annoyances

As with any new OS release, there are some annoying things in there. Here are the once’s I’ve noticed so far.

Tiger Installation, Day 7

Well, I’ve finally gotten the last bit of time necessary to finish up my installation of Tiger. Here’s what I did:

• Copied over all files from the user accounts on the old installation to the new one.
• Created SMB shares for all drives and appropriate directories using SharePoint.
• Downloaded and installed Download Comment 1.0. This makes Safari put the download URL into the comments field for downloaded files, like browsers used to do under Mac OS 9.
• Installed some cool Dashboard widgets:
  • Cinema Times
  • DashflixMini
  • iComic
  • Package Tracker
  • PHPQuick Reference
  • TV Tracker
  • Widget Manager
  • WordPressDash
• Downloaded and installed WebGrabber (an oldie but a goodie) for archiving web sites to local disk.
• Got a link for SoundSource 1.0.5 (pre-release) from the folks at Rogue Amoeba, after sending a note asking about some SoundSource-related entries in my console log. Downloaded and installed.

Software I’m Retiring

Although the following titles have been good to me through the years, I’ve decided not to upgrade them and use them any more:

• Acquisition
• BackLight
• Download Deputy
• Final Vinyl
• iBeezz (which is too bad — it’s not compatible, but I could really still use it)
• iBert
• iComic
• Interarchy
• Internet Explorer (good riddance)
• LimeWire
• Microsoft IntelliPoint mouse driver (doesn’t recognize my mouse–dumb bastards)
• Norton SystemWorks
• OSXPlanet
• Poisoned
• PopChar X
• SharingMenu
• Splash Wallet

Tiger “To-Do” List

Here’s the stuff I’ve had to put on my “to-do” list related to my Tiger upgrade, due to incompatibilities or what have you:

• Upgrade and install CodeTek Virtual Desktop.
• Upgrade and install DivX Pro.
• Upgrade and install Documents To Go.
• Upgrade and install Drive 10. Should also track down whether I ever got the free upgrade to TechTool Pro 4 I think I was supposed to get.
• Upgrade and install FileMaker Pro. Maybe.
• Install ffmpeg X.
• Upgrade and install GraphicConverter. Maybe.
• MenuCalendarClock. Maybe.
• Set up SpamSieve with e-mail client(s).
• Purchase and set up Menu Master.
• Download more cool Alert Sounds somewhere.

Tiger Installation, Day 6

OK, so I got tied up yesterday on other stuff and didn’t get as far along as I had hoped. Oh, well. Here’s what I got done today:

Tiger Installation, Day 5

OK, I’ve finally gotten some time to get back to updating my system to run Tiger and a whole new application baseline. Man, it’s been so long that Apple decided to switch to the Intel platform in 2007 while I was away from doing this!

Anyway, here’s what I got done today…

Tiger Installation, Day 4

And so we come to Day 4 of this journey, wherein the following actions were taken:

Tiger Installation, Day 3

OK, day three. Time to start the changelog: