Last fall I took the plunge and purchased a Daystar PowerPro 601/100Mhz accelerator card for my old Quadra 700 Mac. I really wanted one of the new PowerMacs, but I'm waiting for the new MacOS, as many of you are, to assure myself it will run on the new box. So, in the meantime I'm incrementally upgrading those pieces of my system that will give me the most satisfaction for the next two years. For now, that means more speed, a la PowerPC, and more storage capacity.

To satisfy my storage needs, I purchased an APS 2.1GB Ultra SCSI external drive and it's performing extremely well, even on my old 8-bit SCSI bus (I'll be able to use it on my next new Mac, I hope).

For speed, I turned to Daystar's PowerPro accelerator. This is a first generation PowerPC chip, to be sure, but it was selling for half of what it was introduced at, and not only would it run native PowerPC applications (it runs at 100Mhz vice the 25Mhz external/50Mhz internal speed of the Quadra's 68040 processor), I could plug it right into my Quadra's Processor Direct Slot (PDS), so I'd get much better system responsiveness (at least for PowerPC programs) for a minimum of fuss. Also, I wouldn't have to muck around with the old 68040 processor plugged into the motherboard, giving me the option to disable the accelerator with a Control Panel, and reboot with the old processor if compatibility turned out to be a problem, all without having to reopen the box.

After I installed it (about twenty minutes), all was well. I ran MacBench on the new hybrid system and confirmed that I was now able to run the PowerPC versions of my old applications at around three times what the 68040 processor code would handle. Great! I also confirmed that my old 68040 code applications would run successfully with the emulator built into the accelerator card, but at only about 80% of the speed the 68040 could run the old code natively. That's OK for the odd old 68040 code program I still need to use, and an acceptable tradeoff to get the speed of the accelerator for everything else, especially since I could use both! So, I was quite pleased with the upgrade.

I next upgraded my system to MacOS 7.5.5 and turned on Open Transport 1.1.1. Concurrently, I had recently begun using Claris' Emailer to login to the Internet and grab the email from my four on-line accounts (As an aside, I really like Emailer!). So, there I was, running my new accelerator in my old Quadra with the latest MacOS and surfing the Internet. I was in bliss! Except...

About 10 minutes into my surfing, my Mac bombed! After much frustration, I realized it was due to Claris' Emailer trying to open a separate thread to the Internet in the background to check my email, while I was surfing via Netscape in the foreground. This scenario had worked just fine without the accelerator, albeit much slower, so sweat beads began to form on my forehead...

I fired an email off to Daystar to see what they could offer, and only received an automated reply thanking me for my query. Not much help. I rebooted in 68040-only mode from another startup drive and everything returned to normal, but muuuucccchhhh slooooooower. Frankly, I was already spoiled on the accelerator speed and would do nearly anything to keep it. So, I began searching for another solution.

After much rumination, I finally settled on turning off Open Transport and returning to Classic Networking. This didn't really cause me much concern, since everything I had been doing up to the upgrade had been with Classic Networking (that's what Apple now calls the Mac's old networking software). Vualla! Everything began working again! Except...

I thought everything had returned to normal, that is, until I tried to print. Now I started getting -91 errors whenever I tried to print. Not good! After much more rumination and testing, I discovered if I went to the Chooser and turned AppleTalk off, and then back on, printing started working again. Great, I had a work around, and I could continue to use the accelerator.

Now it's MacExpo time, and I decide to unload on Apple and Daystar in person. Before I could finish my trials and tribulations to the Apple tech, he told me he was researching this very problem and asked me to send him an email with the details of my system, what I had done, etc., so he could look into it. Nice. Then to Daystar. Do you think they were surprised at my problem? Ha! Their tech acknowledged they were aware of some problems with this old accelerator and Apple's new Open Transport, and running anything later than MacOS 7.5.1 was problematic with it. He took my name and said he'd get back with me. Do you want to buy a bridge?

Meanwhile, I'm scanning MacWeek on-line and come across a link to a site called MacFixit. Never heard of it, so I hop over to take a look, and what do I see? It seems this site is dedicated to troubleshooting solutions for the Mac, so I decide to check out their topics. About half-way down the list is a heading named 'Open Transport Bug Affects FreePPP (and mystery solved)'.

Apparently, there is a bug in Open Transport wherein it improperly unloads from memory, resulting in a crash whenever you try to reconnect after a connection is closed. EXACTLY the problem I'd been having with Emailer! And further, IT ONLY HAPPENS IF APPLETALK IS OFF. Exactly the situation, again, when Open Transport is controlling Mac communications. And the solution is... Wait until the forthcoming version 1.5.

Well, at least a possible solution is in the works. But wait, MacFixit has a temporary fix that will allow you to use Open Transport and surf in the meantime. Apparently, while beta testing the new AOL 3.0 (I'm also a beta tester for AOL, and had heard of this problem, but it hadn't registered as applying to me at the time.), user's Macs were crashing while they were using AOL's new Internet browser (Microsoft's Internet Explorer). I had ignored the solution, because I always used Netscape and directly connected to the Internet when I wanted to surf. Going through AOL's front door and all their system overhead to surf out their back door, was simply too slow (and at the time, too expensive, since they charged by the hour).

However, to solve that problem, AOL had written a Mac extension that users could install into their System Folders that would force Open Transport to remain open. I rushed home early on that Friday and tested it, and it worked! Talk about synergy! Bookmark http://www.macfixit.com now, you'll thank yourself later!

So, here I am, running my accelerator, MacOS 7.5.5, Open Transport 1.1.2, Emailer is quietly checking my email in the background on a schedule I've set up, knocking out a quick and dirty newsletter in PageMaker for our next user's group meeting, and getting ready to upload this article to our web site. The newsletter is now quietly printing the background. Again, all is well.

Until that next MacOS upgrade, due-in next week...

- Dave Marsh