New G5 owner needs advice!

Hello, I just snagged a Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0ghz on eBay and absolutely love it! It works perfectly with the current set-up: DVR-104 Superdrive, 160GB hard drive, and Radeon 9600XT 128mb video card. However, I also picked up a used Radeon 9800 256mb Pro Special Edition card. When I put the card in the computer wouldn't boot past the gray screen. So I did a restart and it hung again, but this time the screen was all garbled. Did another restart and now nothing at all appears on the screen. Did a PRAM reset and SMU reset to no avail.
My question for those of you that have this card is this: is there anything special I need to do? Or do yo think I just have a bad card? I'm running Tiger 10.4.11 and have the latest ATI Displays 4.5.7 installed. I also installed the driver they had listed on the ATI website for the 9800SE. Is there any other way for me to test the condition of the card before I try to get a refund or replacement?
Thanks so much!

Well, I temporarily solved my problem and I hope it lasts. After researching the posts on this board regarding the temperamental heat sinks and fans on the Radeon 9800s, I took the heat sink off and discovered that the thermal paste had completely degraded and that the contact between the GPU and heat sink was not solid. So I cleaned it up, applied some arctic silver, put it back together and lo and behold, the computer booted up without incident, the display appeared normally and my frame rates for Halo doubled.

Similar Messages

Syncing iPod to new user account-need advice

Hey All! I set up a new user account for my friend on my imac, so he will want to sync his iPod Touch to iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, etc. in his new user account. I know there are plenty of freeware and shareware apps to get his music from the iPod into iTunes, but need advice concerning everything else oh his iPod.
I know I'll first get that pop up window that says his iPod is synced to another computer, and that I use "cancel" rather than "sync and erase". After doing that, I guess I use one of the shareware apps to get the music transferred over.
Now, after that, if I do a regular sync, will iTunes transfer his apps that are on the iPod?
Do I need to open iPhoto and download the photos on his iPod into iPhotot before doing a sync?
What about text messages? Will they remain in tact?
I don't think he uses the calendar on his iPod so no worries there....
What about Playlists that he has on the iPod? Will just the music transfer with the shareware apps or playlists also?
Will Notes be saved?
Thanks for your help. Don't wanna screw up his iPod by setting up this user account for him.

Apps are tied to the ID I assume the new account is just on the iMac and not a new iTunes account?
Yes, you can import photos into iPhoto the same as you would off any camera.
You would need to transfer purchased content (like apps). You can't do that via sync as it's a new computer and all content will be erased as you are aware.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1848
What happened to your friends computer? Was there no backup?

New X-fi Xtreme Music owner need advice.

I just upgraded from Audigy 2 ZS to X-Fi Xtreme Music. I'm using Vista 64bit SP2 and will be upgrading to Win 7 64 bit soon. I have Logitech X-530 5. speakers set. Before this, I used Daniel's Audigy Support Pack 3.5 and quite happy with it. Now I'm I'm using X-Fi Support Pack 2.0. Being new to X-Fi, I'm quite confused and have a few questions on X-Fi's mode.
1) Games
If I play any games, I assume I have to switch to Game Mode. Do need to enable X-Fi CMSS 3D, X-Fi Crystalizer,SVM and EQ? I have 5. speakers and will enabling those enhancement spoilts the games' sound. If I'm not mistaken, most newer games supports OpenAL so 5. speakers are automatically supported.
2) Music
So far I have been using Foobar for music. I'm using DirectSound output and and Channel Mixer to upmix stereo to 5.. I believe X-Fi CMSS 3D does the same thing so I need to switch to Entertainment mode. If I want to use CMSS 3D, I would need to disable Channel Mixer in Foobar but I still havent try which sounds better. What are the best settings for CMSS 3D for 5. speakers set? Do I need to enable SVM, X-Fo Crystalizer and etc?
3) Movies
This is the hardest part for me because I don't know which is the best settings. I normally use Media Player Classic Home Cinema and AC3 filter for sound. If my movie is stereo, AC3 Filter will upmix to 5. and if the audio is DTS or DD AC3, it will play as it is. Which mode should I choose for movies? Do I need to enable CMSS3D, X-Fi Crystalizer, SVM and etc?
I would appreciate if you guys could advice me the best settings for my setup because I'm really confused. Thank you!

Hello. XtremeMusic owner here
For most games you don't have to switch modes and can happily play in ENT or GAME mode. Some exceptions. If you play a game like BF242 then it's better to switch to GAME mode. If you are playing over headphones then again go to game mode and select HEADPHONES under the speaker tab, enable CMSS to get 3D surround over headphones in games. I think the newer games handle sound a bit differently - i.e. they don't use EAX and such so experiment with this one.
For Music I switch to ENT mode because I have different EQ settings for MP3s. I up the bass slightly, turn on Crystalizer and set CMSS to SURROUND and the front/rear balance slider to about 75% front.
I also use MPC for movies and stay in ENT mode. The only difference I make is to switch of CMSS for a movie that has a true surround track otherwise the XFI will mix the front channels into the rears.

New mac owner needing help & advice

Hi there , at long last I took the plunge and got a macbook, one of the new 2.2ghz ones in white. Just thought I would let you know. Anyway as this is my first experience of a mac , which also has a new OS for me to learn, I am probably going to ask loads of stupid, and what could seem obvious questions so let me apologize now. My first question is with regard to backing up my system,it looks as though this has to be done to an external HD does this need to be a dedicated HD or can it be shared with other items such as movies and music etc. I have also seen mention a program called carbon copy cloner being used for backup ,what is the difference between this and Time machine in leopard i.e. which is best. And as my laptop is going to be used in different places and i wont have the HD connected all the time will this affect any automatic backup set up.

First let me say welcome aboard.
Carbon copy cloner can make a bootable copy on a back up drive. Time Machine makes a copy that you can do a full recovery from if needed so in a way they're both good. I have used Time machine with a hard drive that had other stuff on it and it did not interfere with it. It was a partition with a bootable Tiger setup on. Time Machine filled almost all the space on the partition and I could still boot the Tiger copy. I have used Time Machine to recover from a complete mess up to just replacing one file. It has worked great.
You don't have to worry about the Hard Drive being hooked up all the time. Time Machine will sense the drive is not there and stop until it is hooked back up and pick up right where it left off.
As David said it is best to have a hard drive dedicated to Time machine but you can get by with one tht isn't.
Don't worry about asking questions. Remember there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.
Message was edited by: First Magus

Looking to buy a new system! Need advice!

Looking to buy a brand new mac and somewhat confused by the choices.
Firstly, speed. The default is "Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon" and I'm wondering what I will get if I go higher. Is it worth going to 3?
The other question I have is about the graphics cards.
I work in the ad business and deal with graphics and some FCP, but not sure which is best.
Will definitely get a cinema display.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks!

If you work professionally and do a lot of FCP, Motion or other highly processor intense work it is probably worth it to spend the extra money since a little speed here and there will make you money...but in that case, go 8 core. Most folks won't see a huge difference between the 2.66 and 3GHz models. Maxing RAM is more important than processor speed for almost everyone. By max I don't mean 32gb . IMHO not much point in getting a Mac Pro without the ATI card. Some things won't need or use it but enough opportunities will arise to make it worth while for anyone doing video and graphics to say nothing of the occasional game. If I were you, in the ad business, I'd look at professional monitors like Eizo. That's what I settled on after extensive comparisons and I'm very glad I did. Get at least 8 gb of RAM. 4x2gb is probably the best configuration to start with so as to allow even more RAM later. I got 4x1gb and am moving to 8gb soon. Adequate. Get the smallest 160gb drive that is offered then put it on a shelf. If you are going to do HD then you'll want to look at RAID arrays. If you are going to do simple DV then populate your machine with 4 x 1TB drives and you're good to go till they fill up heh.

Add RAM or buy a new machine? Need advice please.

Hello,
I am asking this question for a friend who owns a 5 year old iMac. It only has a 500GB hard drive, and it is almost full (475 GB are in use, and we recently had to dump some items because it had reached it's limit). It has the factory-installed 8GB of RAM, but there are two empty slots which can hold 4GB each (or a grand total of 8GB of additional RAM, for a total of 16GB of RAM).
He also is a HUGE user of iTunes, and he has a 1.5 TB external drive that contains all of his iTunes files (we have iTunes set to automatically place all iTunes files onto the external hard drive so that it does not take up hard drive space on the iMac).
He is running OS 10.8, Lion (and wants to upgrade to Mountain Lion).
So, here is my question.....Will adding 8 GB of RAM make this machine "faster"? This machine has gotten very, very slow over the last year. When you launch any application, you get the spinning beach ball for a few minutes and then eventually, sooner or later, the app will come up. But everything moves very slowly----everything.
I was thinking that if we added the 8GB of RAM, that would fix a lot of our slow problems. Am I correct here, or would this not do anything? I was wondering if a 5 year old iMac with 8GB of RAM even has sufficient power to be running Lion in the first place.
Any thoughts on this? Thanks much!

smitty195 wrote:
Will a full hard drive slow down a computer? I was under the impression that it was RAM. This might be very important, because his hard drive is extremely full. Last week, he was getting messages that his hard drive was full, so we took lots of "stuff" out and put it into the trash can and deleted it.
Yes for a couple of reasons. OS X needs plenty of room to move around and work in, plus read and write becomes slower on that part of the hard drives platter.
At this point your friend really needs to backup if he is not already doing so and
1. Farm out his photo's, movies and/or music to an External HD, as per the following article's:
iPhoto '11: Move your iPhoto library to a new location
iMovie '11: Copy or move a project to an external hard disk
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder
or
2. Have an Apple Authorized Service Provider replace the 500GB Hard Drive with a 1T or larger Hard Drive.

Best way to manage new library with new hdd. Need Advice.

I am new to this whole aperture thing. i've been reading about aperture for a few months now. there's just so much to soak in at this moment. i'm about to put in a 320gb hdd in my 1st gen mbp and i would like the best or really just the most efficient way to managing my images. what i am trying to do is import all my images (20gbs right now just family/friend stuff) into my mbp on the new hdd. i am also in the process of getting a 30d or 40d for my photo work.
should i partition out the new hdd for aperture or just keeping it one partition. one of my partitions will be for bootcamp. i just dont want to partition it and run out of space in the partition. i also have 2 externals (300gb and 400gb) that i will use one of them for vault?, external backup. im also trying to scan all my film stuff and put it in there and manage that too. i also want to use iphoto too so is there a way to use one library for both without one or the other making doubles?
i read about the manage and referenced masters methods, but i'm still a little confused on it. i would like to know how you guys manage your libraries and how u organized your folders. i read about people setting up raids on their mac pros but i would like to know more about people who doing the managing on their mbps. i running on leopard but are not using time machine. i currently have my folders setup in this way, i.e. 20080224-vacation pics day 1. there's prolly more to ask but i cant think of any right now. any help is appreciated.

On a laptop generally you do want to manage by Referencing image Masters. Hard drives slow as they fill, so at some point - perhaps immediately - you will want your Masters on one or more external Firewire 800 hard drives. OWC <http://www.owcomputing.com/> "Mercury to go" FW800/USB2 drives are a good external solution if you need portable.
A good rule of thumb is not to fill any drive more than 70%, and for best speed keep important drives no more than 50% full.
With Referenced Masters, simply Finder-copy each batch of images to the external hard drive and eject the camera card. Then (after backup of images) from within Aperture Import the images by Reference (when you go to import, on the right hand side of the import window select "Store files in their current location").
Existing images on your hard drive can similarly be imported selecting "Store files in their current location" however personally I would move the originals to an external drive prior to importing into Aperture because trying to keep originals on a laptop drive will sooner or later overfill the drive.
During the import process is a good time to assign all manner of keywords, so take some time in advance thinking about keywording.
Also, I recommend the US$35 tutorial CD Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 2 (Apple Pro Training Series) by Ben Long, Richard Harrington, and Orlando Luna (Paperback - May 8, 2008), Amazon.com. Note that the value is in the tutorial, not in using the book as a manual.
Good luck!
-Allen Wicks

About to purchase new Mac Pro - Need Advice

I am about to purchase a new mac pro and have some questions
I am planning to use final cut pro as well as Edius on Boot Camp.
I intend to edit footage in HDV from a sony Z1 and also from the new sony - pmw -ex3 which i will be planning to edit in HD and 24p.
1) the default config for the mac pro is dual 2.8.ghz processors, what advantage gain will i get i upgrade to 3.0 or 3.2, is the extra power worth the money? will this give me more real-time editing
How many layers of HD 1920 x 1080 from the sony pmw-ex3, will i be able to edit in FCP 6.0 without any problems? would you advise more ram
2) i prefer to work from RAID 5 drives and keep system drive separate, this is how i have worked on in PC/Windows environment. Can anyone confirm if i can have one JBOD drive for the system and 3 drives configured as a RAID 5 drive?
Will i be able to use a boot to run windows and also be able to use the RAID 5 drive on windows side?
3) Is anyone using the 3ware RAID 5 side car? what is experienece is this compatible on the windows partition from boot camp
4) How will i be able to preview HD footage?
5) Do i need to invest in a better Graphics
Thanks in advance

Hi,
Here are a few answers.
1. The Mac Pro 2.8 GHz model performs so well that it is difficult to justify paying 28% more for 7% of additional processor power in the case of the Mac Pro 3.0 GHz or 56% more for 14% additional processor power with the Mac Pro 3.2 GHz model. You might see a small 5-10% increase in performance when compressing video with the 3.2GHz model but it certainly would not be worth paying 50% more to me. In addition, Amazon has the 2.8 on sale for $2599 after an easy rebate:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000VR4F2Q/arizomacinusergr
That is a $200 savings off the retail price.
2. If you want to use boot camp I would NOT recommend the Apple RAID card. Boot camp does not work with this card which leaves you wondering why you bought the card and how to get around this HUGE limitation. Instead, I would recommend the Areca ARC-1221x, HighPoint RR 3522 or the ARC-1680x if you want a SAS card. All of these cards have new firmware available that provide awesome performance and boot capability with the Mac Pro 2008. I would also get a SeriTek/2eEN4 4-bay and 1TB Samsung HDs. This gives a solid, quiet 4-bay enclosure that can support RAID 5 with any of the cards and you can add a second enclosure later if you want to use all eight external ports with RAID 6 (for added redundancy and increased volume size). This leaves the internal bays available for Boot Camp, Mac OS X, backups or mirrors and provides RAID 5/6 capability that can be configured to perform almost twice as fast as the Apple RAID card and provide double the redundancy with RAID 6. Links with more information are found here:
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata2een4.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152102
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/3522/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1221x/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1680x/
3. The 3Ware RAID 5 card is not a top pick in the Macintosh market. The options outlined above will provide much better performance and RAID 6 capabilities.
4. You can view the the HD footage on the monitor.
5. You may want a better graphics card but I would try the stock card first. I was surprised how well the ATI radeon HD 2600 XT card performs with Apple applications.
Have fun!

New Purchase and need advice

I purchased an iPod on Ebay and it did not come with the CD software that you would get had I purchased brand new. I attempted to download software from the website but once downloaded it won't install. Can someone help me with the exact link I should use to get this software? I'm totally lost here...

http://www.apple.com/ipod/download/
You'll also need iTunes
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

New to this--NEED Advice!!

My fiance needs a new car badly (He's driving a robin's egg blue '94 Chrysler Lebaron with gorgeous pink/white polka dots) We're in our early 20s, but have a joint income of $70k.Don't have a single clue about financing a car, what we can expect in the way of APR, or who should finance it so I'll give you the background and maybe someone can help us get a better picture of what's affordable and in our range. I just don't trust the dealerships because they wanna run your credit 14 times and put you in a car you can't afford.He's looking at the $20k range and hopefully a $300-ish monthly payment (any lower would be wonderful). Haven't totally pinpointed the car itself, though. Me: 6 month AAoA--16 month oldest account. 700+ scores across the board. 7 cards and 1 student loan. Quite a few inquiries and new accounts, but 100% positive payment history and 1% UTIL. 3 paid medical collections all under $100 on EQ and EX.Him: Mid/upper 600 scores. Was an AU for 5+ years, but has since removed himself. 2 yr 2 month AAoA. Very thin file.. has been rejected for cards due to lack of history. Student loans aged a few years. 3 new accounts in the last 2 months. Inquiries, but not as many as me. 100% positive payment history and 1% UTIL. No baddies whatsoever. Basically... do we have a shot whatsoever at lower interest rates? Or is our credit too new/shotty for those 1.9/2.9 rates? Will we have to lower our cars to the $15k range to get the monthly payment where we'd like? Who's name would be the safer one to finance it under? Or is it a good option for him to finance and me to co-sign in order to help both of our credit profile?Our finances are totally tied together, we have a joint checking, live together, split the bills and have a child together so, although I know people here frown on co-signing, it's totally an option for us.

I think you have a good chance at qualifying for a top shelf interest rate loan. Ask your sales consultant if they deal with Chase. If they do, be sure to negotiate 1.99% APR thru Chase. If not, tell the sales consultant you'll be back and pre-approve with Penfed or DCU. $20,000 OTD with zero down and 1.99% APR at 60mo would net $350/mo

New macbook owner need insight on downloading a word document?

I just got a new macbook for college.. never had one before and im use to hp with windows..now, is there a program like Microsoft Word i need to download?? to write word documents and stuff?

Download?
If you mean how to read/edit/use WORD documents on your Mac....your University should be able to sell you MS Office, or you can buy/download from Amazon.
You can also use NeoOffice (Google is your friend), or switch to Pages, the Apple solution.

All new to flah, need advice on website

I've read alot of stuff by now, and I just want to be sure if
this is the correct way to build up a simple flash website. Keep in
mind that the design isn't finished. But is this really how it
should be done? Please check code etc.
Link
to flash document
~Rigo2000

So let’s try another approach ;-)
Flash is a very powerful tool and it is unique in one way:
Its use of the timeline appeals to designers like me you and me,
and gives the possibility to create advanced interaction without
deeper knowledge of programming. That is great and I’ve had a
colleague once that did games without knowing anything about
variables.
Those games worked well looked very well and were fun to play
– they don’t come any more correct than that.
On the other hand some things are a lot easier to program
with real programming and abstraction can really be helpful if
things get complex.
I assume when you speak of a website you want to build
something like a conventional html-page based website in Flash.
Advantages:
It can look much cooler, and you can have interactivity,
animation and sound on it that just work.
Once loaded there is no wait for new pages to load.
Control over layout including fonts (Big point for a design
major!)
Disadvantages:
Harder to make accessible to search engines and disabled
users.
Making the Back button, book marking and other regular
browser features work.
You need the viewer to have the plug-in (over 90% have not
too big a deal but still it keeps out some of them)
You are doing you site by placing key frames on the timeline
with animations between them (and a stop when a “page”
is reached) that is a quite common and “correct” way to
do it:
Advantages:
Easy to do animations.
Very visual even while working in the authoring environment
Great control over the design at every moment.
Disadvantages:
Even for small updates (correcting typos – a favorite
of mine ;-) ) you have to go into the Flash Authoring tool (Have to
have it if you’re not the only one working on it), and the
visitor that comes to you site has to download the whole site again
(Can use cache) afterwards.
With bigger sites it will get confusing if the timeline grows
too big.
Adding new pages in the middle is hard or breaking the logic.
Other way to make a site entirely in Flash could be:
• Making scenes or (sub-) movie clips for each page.
Making a framework that loads external swfs for each page
• Building a framework that relies on external content
in form of xml and loaded images.
• Building a html page structure that loads swfs as
main content for each page in a new html page.
You can combine all of those in a million ways, even make
Flash sites that do not have any design elements on the Stage of
the authoring environment but only action script.
And here I have a last smartass remark from an old man:
Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, go a head the way
you figured, and learn from your mistakes. I made sites that won
prices and where great for the time and my level of experience, but
from where I am now I wouldn’t do them anything like they
are. (I built ****** ones too but forgot about them). Do it - use
it – throw it away – Make it better –use it
The waste paper basket is one of the most powerful tools of
creativity!

New To Sap need advice for the start

Hi all i am new to this technology and i want to have a carrier in SAP I have mcse and ccna holder have got experience in IT so where and what and how shall i start
As i want to know it so can someone Advice me Please as i will be looking forward to talk the course but if no advice is given i am loss Thanks Bonito

Hello,
Get a job as a junior and learn as much as you can. After a couple of years you will start to get good enough to get a job which isnt a junior role.
Good luck.
Kind regards
Ash Thomas
<a href=http://www.ashthomas.com>Sap Abap CV & Sap Abap Resume</a>
<a href=http://www.ashthomas.com>www.ashthomas.com</a>

New macbook user needs advice

Hello everyone, I have just placed my order and my first macbook will arrive this weekend. I am really excited and can't wait. Since I am new to mac, could anyone give me some advices? What are the things that I must do or I must NOT do? Thanks a lot.

Here are also some good things to check out.
MacBook
Mac 101: All Work and Play
It is OK to leave your battery hooked to the charger most of the time. The only time I unhook mine from the charger is when I calibrate. You should calibrate your battery in the first few days. Then you should calibrate every two months or so to keep the battery fully functioning. If you use your MacBook infrequently, it’s best to re-calibrate the battery at least once a month.
The following links have good information about the MacBook and the care of it's battery.
Tips for maximizing your Notebook battery charge
MacBook reduces processor speed when battery is removed while operating from an A/C adaptor
Apple portable computer's battery does not show a full charge in Mac OS X
Look here and here for some good tips about battery care.
MacBook: How to remove or install the battery
Determining Battery Cycle Count
Use and cleaning of MagSafe power connector

Semi-New Mac owner need help please!

I have had my Mac for a couple months now and I haven't experimented with all the applications yet, when I tried to open iChat all that it does is the little light underneath it turned on and nothing popped up. I don't know if I need to download anything else, or what... Can anyone help me please?!

It seems that others have pointed the Hosts to the Duplicates and this one's left.
I take it the issue is solved anyway ?
8:38 PM Sunday; June 22, 2008

New G5 owner needs advice!

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