[WinMac] OrangePC Blues....

caerwyn(caerwyn[at]bigfoot.com)
Thu, 26 Nov 1998 15:34:51 +0100

Env: MacOS 8.5 on G3/333, Windows 95 running on OrangePC card.

Hi again,

It's a long time since I've been subscribe to this list, my last
questions were related to sharing keyboards between a Mac and PC.
Unsatisfied with any of the possible solutions I bought an OrangePC card
to slot in a G3/333. It's pretty good but I've got a few problems.
Is this list the right place to ask and does anyone else run a similar
configuration.

The numbers aren't consecutive cos I've copied it straight from my
original mail message to Orange Micro. I've found these guys helpful, but
I just haven't got the right answer yet!

Here's my list of problems....

I include the first question cos I thought it was interesting but I've
already got the answer from Orange Micro tech support. Disable the Apple
Enet extension!! Anybody got any clues why that works, there's something
really funny going on. It doesn't make my card work any faster it just
displays the right clock speed now. Shame I thought it may speed up!

1) I bought a 620 with a K6 300, that's what the box says. However the
BIOS says the clock speed is 225. Why the discrepancy? Can I set the CPU
clock speed on the card higher? Am I actually running a K6 225 or am I
running a K6 300 at 225MHz?

8) I'm having a major problem getting COM1 to use the modem on the Modem
Port. I've installed com1 using the Orange Micro serial port driver. I've
installed the driver for my modem, a USR Sportster. However when I try
and access the modem, I get the blue screen every time. I've tried using
a vanilla modem driver but nothing wants to play ball. Any clues would be
welcome, I really need to have internet and email access from the
OrangePC.

     Okay, I take that one back!! I restarted with just MacOS 8.5
extensions and I managed to configure and use COM1 okay. I'm running
FaxStf 5.0 on the Mac, but I don't really see why that should crash the
Windows side of things. When FaxStf is waiting for calls other Mac comms
programs can grab the port and use it, why should OrangePC be different?
Is this a known problem? I haven't tried it out but it begs the question,
what's going to happen if a Mac telecomms program is using the Modem Port
when I tried to dial from windows?.

    I'm not out of the woods completely with this one because I'm
developing using the Langner Universal Comms API, and it doesn't seem to
recognise COM1. This is probably their problem and not OrangePC but I'd
be interested if you have any comment to make about it's compatibility.

11) Is there anyway to shut down the OrangePC from Mac using AppleScript.
Say I want to automate a Retrospect backup which includes volumes on the
Windows machine, or even a shut down script which can check to see what
the state of the OrangePC is and then switch to it if Windows needs
closing down. The OrangePC application is a little dumb about the state
of the Windows machine, isn't it possible to know whether shut down has
been executed or not? It still comes up with the "I need to Shut Down"
dialog whether or not Windows is running or already shutdown.
Incidentally the phraseology of this dialog is misleading anyway, does it
mean I need to shut down my Mac, forget about Windows, or does it mean I
need to shutdown Windows. Perhaps buttons with "Switch to PC" and "Quit"
would be clearer. Just speaking as a Mac user here! I realise that some
of these things are in Windows and you can't do much. But if I don't say
what I'd like you won't know!!!

12) Would disk access speed be improved if I were to add a seperate SCSI
drive just for use by OrangePC? Say for example I were to add a 4Gb disk
with a couple of PC disk images? I ask this because I'm using the
OrangePC for software development (though not testing) If I start a
compile on Windows and then move to the Mac to work there, I find that
occasionally the Mac freezes for a view seconds and I can't type. This is
only an inconvenience no data is lost and it catches up again. I assume
it's the OrangePC application hogging the processor a little, but I
wonder what it was doing that needed it.

Are there any PD benchmark utilities which I can run on the OrangePC
board to see how it's performing and what speed the processor actually
is??

Well that's a handful, but I'd appreciate any help or advice anyone can
offer.

Regards

Caerwyn Pearce

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Thu Nov 26 1998 - 06:37:47 PST