Upgrading and Troubleshooting Your Mac(R): MacOS X Edition Book

Gene Steinberg understands that the new Macintoshes--like all computers--are systems of hardware and software, and that neither may be separated from the other. Upgrading and Troubleshooting Your Mac: Mac OS X Edition is an intimate picture of modern Mac hardware (the Power Mac, PowerBook, iBook and iMac platforms) and the points at which it interacts with Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X. As you'd expect, readers learn how to select and install add-in hardware like SuperDrives and supplementary RAM, but the Mac makes those procedures pretty easy by design. The real value in this book comes in two areas. First, Steinberg answers all kinds of common, but officially undealt-with, questions. Is it absolutely safe to put your laptop through an airport x-ray machine? How does a G4 behave when a SCSI card is malfunctioning at the hardware level? What happens if you try to make an officially unsupported graphics card work? Do third-party processor upgrades work? He explains most of these matters with stories taken from his experience as a long-time Mac user. Second, the author knows a ton of tricks for working with the Mac OS itself, and is liberal with his recommendations of utilities for diagnosing, repairing and adjusting its behaviour. His thoughts on how to solve problems by reinstalling your operating system without wiping out your installed programs will save you time in all but the gravest situations. You'll find this book particularly valuable if you do upgrade and repair work on unfamiliar Macs. --David Wall Topics covered: changing and adjusting hardware on modern Macintosh computers (PowerBooks, iBooks, iMacs, Power Mac G4s and to a lesser extent Power Mac G3s). All the key subsystems get attention: monitors, networks, SCSI chains, FireWire peripherals and hard drives. Special (and especially valuable) coverage of Windows emulators and video capture hardware appears as well.Read More