Monday, October 25, 2004
System 7.6.1 and Find File
For various reasons I've been using System 7.6.1 on some Quadras recently, and I'm pleased at what a nice version of Mac OS this is.
A little essay was posted to one of the Low End Mac email lists titled "Why I like OS 7.6.1 better than OS 8 or 9" by Melvyn Halbert. In summary, he says that graphics are snappier, there is better/faster feedback to commands, and certain old behaviors of the Finder and Save As dialogs can be useful.
He also notes that the older Find File utility from System 7.6.1 is more convenient than Sherlock in many cases, and it still works with systems as new as 9.1 -- "provided that Find File and Find File Extension have been copied from the 7.6.1 System Folder into the new System Folder AND Sherlock 2 is moved out of Applications (Mac OS 9)."
I copied this plan on my every-day Mac OS 9 Power Mac and it works great. You can even have both Find File and Sherlock in your Apple menu.
A little essay was posted to one of the Low End Mac email lists titled "Why I like OS 7.6.1 better than OS 8 or 9" by Melvyn Halbert. In summary, he says that graphics are snappier, there is better/faster feedback to commands, and certain old behaviors of the Finder and Save As dialogs can be useful.
He also notes that the older Find File utility from System 7.6.1 is more convenient than Sherlock in many cases, and it still works with systems as new as 9.1 -- "provided that Find File and Find File Extension have been copied from the 7.6.1 System Folder into the new System Folder AND Sherlock 2 is moved out of Applications (Mac OS 9)."
I copied this plan on my every-day Mac OS 9 Power Mac and it works great. You can even have both Find File and Sherlock in your Apple menu.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Smart Steps Kindergarten
After a reasonably good experience with the 1st grade version of Smart Steps, I noticed that the program is one of a series and bought the Kindergarten version. This CD seemed to be working fine, but then we noticed none of the students' individual names and progress were being saved. Worse, on some Macs the game crashes when you finish the first activity, right at the time it would normally write the progress to the disk.
No luck contacting the publisher and no relevant info on web sites. I didn't expect much since the program seems to be selling in bargain bins. Poking around I noticed a newer date on the application program, and clear evidence the program was malfunctioning when attempting to write into its data folder. It also has a "FileIOXtraPPC" which the 1st grade version does not.
For now we can use Smart Steps Kindergarten in guest mode, not saving the students' names and progress. It does appear that a patch was made, and there is reason to believe an earlier version of the program might work better in MacOS 9. If you have one where the application date is earlier than 2002, please contact me!
Update: we discovered a workaround for the problem by accident: Just be sure to press the Return key after typing your name! There is no instruction to do this and no indication at the time that it makes any difference, but doing this causes the name and progress to be saved properly.
A student had somehow gotten her name into the program. She could not explain what she did, so we asked her to use the program on another Mac, and as we watched she typed in her name and pressed Return as if by habit. That's how the problem got solved!
No luck contacting the publisher and no relevant info on web sites. I didn't expect much since the program seems to be selling in bargain bins. Poking around I noticed a newer date on the application program, and clear evidence the program was malfunctioning when attempting to write into its data folder. It also has a "FileIOXtraPPC" which the 1st grade version does not.
For now we can use Smart Steps Kindergarten in guest mode, not saving the students' names and progress. It does appear that a patch was made, and there is reason to believe an earlier version of the program might work better in MacOS 9. If you have one where the application date is earlier than 2002, please contact me!
Update: we discovered a workaround for the problem by accident: Just be sure to press the Return key after typing your name! There is no instruction to do this and no indication at the time that it makes any difference, but doing this causes the name and progress to be saved properly.
A student had somehow gotten her name into the program. She could not explain what she did, so we asked her to use the program on another Mac, and as we watched she typed in her name and pressed Return as if by habit. That's how the problem got solved!
Smart Steps 1st Grade
This program was already at the school, and works well with the 1st graders. It is a CD with a number of files that stay on the CD and a folder which gets copied to the hard drive. When you try to exit the program under Mac OS 9.1, it gives an error dialog about a certain .mov file. You can dismiss the dialog and continue.
I found the specific .mov file on the CD, and noticed it had a different icon and newer date than other .mov files. I guessed that the error might be avoided if I rebuilt the file. So MoviePlayer 2.5, new movie, copy and paste, position at start, and save as self-contained got me a file with the correct icon. Copying the CD with this one file replaced, and the problem is solved.
I relate this story because we subsequently obtained another Smart Steps program which has a more difficult problem. My guess is that the publisher is trying to patch these titles for some environment other than Mac OS 9, and are causing more problems with their patches.
I found the specific .mov file on the CD, and noticed it had a different icon and newer date than other .mov files. I guessed that the error might be avoided if I rebuilt the file. So MoviePlayer 2.5, new movie, copy and paste, position at start, and save as self-contained got me a file with the correct icon. Copying the CD with this one file replaced, and the problem is solved.
I relate this story because we subsequently obtained another Smart Steps program which has a more difficult problem. My guess is that the publisher is trying to patch these titles for some environment other than Mac OS 9, and are causing more problems with their patches.
