There are a number of subheads—don’t overlook them when formatting. Also, there’s an EPS file called “Swimming in 7.1” in this folder. Enjoy!
-----------------
Broken Trash
and other 7.1 maladies
by Jeanne Lorenzo
A new computer, a new operating system, a new troubleshooting adventure!
My new Centris 650 sat in all its glory on my desk. It was a beautiful machine. I had just made a quantum leap from my little black & white SE loaded with System 6.05 to this colorful beauty running 7.1. I looked at some CD’s, made my Desktop every color in the rainbow, and even made balloon help tell me about everything on the Desktop.
Then I began missing my old DAs and fonts. My beloved miniWRITER was one of the first things to get tossed onto the System Folder. I let it put it where it wanted to — what fun. I had all kinds of inits and Cdevs for it to store for me.
Terry decided to update her system to 7.1, too. She had been running System 7.0 for quite a while and was a seasoned pro. So we got filesharing working in no time at all and I put in the CD with the new system installer on it in my Mac and her machine sucked it right up. She finished her installation, and being a typesetter, she wasn’t taking any chances with her fonts and left Suitcase 2 running. Her machine started bombing on startup. She got busy removing extensions for diagnosis.
Meanwhile, I had two external hard drives hooked up to Rainbow Rider and I gleefully dragged things over to my new startup drive. Filesaver had another hard disk to watch over now. One of the things I didn’t drag over was Suitcase 2. I heard that fonts were handled beautifully by the new system. So I dragged over a few of my fonts. Actually it was one huge suitcase. I like a big long font list and had always had at least 60 families loaded. I decided to take it easy with the new machine and only load twenty or so. I couldn’t wait to click on the suitcase and see the fonts. Goodbye to clumsy, old Font/DA Mover. I clicked and got a dialog that told me that my suitcase was damaged. This was impossible, I thought, it was working fine just yesterday on my old machine. I opened MacDraw and tried to print an old file. It just bombed. I opened Quark and it ‘unexpectedly quit.’
Exercising the Reset button
Whenever you go to a new system there are bound to be incompatibilities, so the old Reset button gets a workout. Our machines were both playing ‘Bombs Away,’ only my machine took almost ten times longer to start than Terry’s. The Filesaver icon whirled away for what seemed like hours before the machine reluctantly allowed access to the hard drives.
Some things I had were old and needed updates to be compatible. ATM had to be v3.0 to work with fonts in the Fonts folder; fortunately a friend had it. How quickly we get spoiled and how some things are totally unacceptable. I wondered how we ever dealt with jaggedy type displays.
I happily threw the old ATM version in the Trash which bulged out waiting for an Empty Trash command. I obligingly pulled down the Special menu. My trash can stayed bulged out. It would not empty. “My trash can is broken,” I told Terry incredulously. I restarted with a CD that had a System on it. I emptied the trash. It’s a pretty awkward way to do such a simple task.
I looked at my new machine. It had a broken trash can, it wouldn’t run my favorite programs, and it took forever to start up. I began to wonder if the Centris was really ready for prime time. My beautiful new machine was only good for playing CD’s, I thought.
Meanwhile…
Terry was having problems too. She pulled out half her inits and restarted, and her machine froze at the Finder level. She kept trying different combinations until she isolated Suitcase 2 as the culprit. She got on AOL and found out that Suitcase needs to be version 2.1.2 and has to load after ATM (accomplished by putting it loose in the System Folder). Her machine was happy again — her problems were over. Mine were only beginning.
I was having so many bombs that I hardly knew where to start. I decided to remove all the fonts from my Font folder. Now after the next bomb, my machine started up in no time at all. I still couldn’t do anything, but at least I got to see my beautiful startup screen a lot quicker.
Obsession
Something happens to you when your machine starts acting up. No one can walk away from a malfunctioning computer. We become so completely obsessed by the problem of a sick Mac that hunger, sleep, and any other activity seems unimportant. How much better it would be to walk away from the problem for awhile and how utterly impossible. I was so tired and almost beyond frustration, and still I kept pulling things out of my system folder and restarting.
The trash can was still refusing to empty and the whirling Filesaver icon made me think that Filesaver had something to do with the trash. Maybe it was being overly protective about not losing files. Terry fished out an updated Norton Utilities still in its shrink wrap and I loaded the new improved Filesaver — my trash can functioned normally.
Terry got back on AOL and found out that 7.1 handles fonts differently and any ‘damaged’ font has to be replaced. Sometimes it only needs to be unpacked by Suitcase’s utility, Font & Sound Valet. I dragged over Terry’s updated Suitcase and dutifully unpacked my fonts and found out that most were really okay (one was damaged, although it worked fine under 6.05). I replaced the damaged font and both Quark and MacDraw were happy and printed fine.
Looking for more trouble
Life was good again. So good that I got adventurous and wanted to load MacroMaker. I use this little gem a lot. I have macros that do almost everything from typing out names of cities to changing rulers in MacDraw. MacroMaker has to be loose in the System Folder to load correctly. We were getting to be pros at this System 7.1 stuff.
I restarted to kick in MacroMaker. The Filesaver icon whirled around forever and I got dialogs about connecting to Terry’s hard drive, which was not shared. The little arrows flashed in the menu bar telling me that it was trying to file-share something.
When my machine finally stopped chugging away, it refused to start up Quark and MacDraw again. We shut off filesharing. We were convinced that something had gone wrong with it. I restarted and still my machine wanted to connect to Terry’s hard drive. The filesaver icon whirled around ominously. Once more we went through everything.
Finally, Terry opened Suitcase and noticed all the sets from her machine. Of course—I had copied her updated Suitcase instead of updating my own copy. My Suitcase was trying in vain to locate the Permanent fonts; it even tried to break into Terry’s computer looking for them.
Terry Cut all the sets and suitcases, and we loaded suitcases from my drive. Restarted and everything worked fine. Whew! I even got to click on the suitcase icons and see what is in them. It’s great to click on the fonts and get a sample of what they look like.
Life is good. Mac’s are great. System 7.1 is wonderful. Oh—I forgot to load my Moose…
Don’t reprint the following in your newsletter, just read it and do it:
This article may be reprinted in newsletters published by non-profit user groups, provided an issue of the newsletter in which the article appears is sent to:
