Re: [WinMac] Mac OS 8.6

Daniel L. Schwartz(expresso[at]snip.net)
Thu, 27 May 1999 15:24:24 -0500

        Hello, John!

At 12:58 PM 5/27/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>"Daniel L. Schwartz" wrote:
>> Hmmm, let's see: I didn't have to reinstall any drivers
>>when installing
>> NT4's Service Pack 2, 3, 4, & 5.
>
>You're very lucky then, I had NT4 sp4 break my NFS client drivers to the
>point of constant bluescreening. Couldn't boot off of anything that let
>me into the system to delete the NFS drivers. Thank go for shift-boot on
>the Mac. (and don't talk about safe mode in Win9X. What mental midget at
>microsoft decided that booting without the CD-ROM usable was a good idea?)

        That one is easy: Don't use windows 9x!

        Actually, you can use a 98 boot floppy WITH CD/ROM support on
a 95 box. It
creates a RAM disk to hold the uncompressed drivers.

>
>>If we look at MacOS 8.5, we see that
>> Service Pack 1 ("MacOS 8.5.1") and Service Pack 2 ("MacOS 8.6") may have
>> needed new drivers.
>
>The only ones I've seen are for CPU upgrade cards. 30 Macs from 8.1 to
>8.6 via 8.5 and 8.5.1 without a single driver download and update required.

        Hmmm... Sonic's PCI ethernet drivers broke with 8.5 - And
they never fixed
it (as of about 2 months ago, when I last checked. Also, Asante's PCI
ethernet driver broke twice, with 8.5 (v3.0 to v3.1), and again with 8.6
(v3.1 to v3.11).

        In fact, I had to yank the Sonic cards and install Asante
NIC's instead...
I did it for free (if I sold the original card) and then threw the Sonic
cards into low stress pee-cees...

>>AND, these drivers operate down in CPU Ring Zero
>> (Supervisor or Kernel Mode), so they are indeed quite easy to break.
>
>You mean like NT4 having the video drivers in the Kernel? Oops,
>something bad happened while you were upgrading your video card. Your
>kernel is hosed. Please reinstall NT. (I've had to recover 4 machines
>from this)

        Yeah, the video drivers being moved from Ring 3 to Ring Zero
played havoc
at first... But then the screen redraw speed also doubled... Can't have
everything, `ya know! :)

        BTW, did you check the Micros~1 HCL before buying those
super-duper video
cards?! If it ain't on that HCL, you take your life in your hands!

        Also, were you a N.E.R.D.? No Emergency Repair Disk!

>> And let's not forget how MacOS 8.5/SP2, err, MacOS 8.6
>>broke the latest
>> released version of Adobe Type Manager. I don't think any of the NT4
>> Service Packs did that trick...
>
>Incorrect, it broke ATM DELUXE. ATM, (the control panel), still works
>fine. Has all along.

        You're right: I stand corrected about ATM Deluxe. But then
again, the NT
version (I use ATM Lite) just kept chugging along...

        [cut]

>ANYTIME you apply an OS update or patch, there exists a reasonable
>chance of something breaking. Regardless of platform. Plan for it, and
>it isn't a big deal. Don't plan for it, and feel Murphy's wrath.
>
>John

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