Just to illustrate how computers have been in a pain in my arse, since lord knows when (well Apples since Apple II europlus days I guess ;) ), lets illustrate some G3 gripes and Issues I suffered in 2002, which I recently discovered written down on one of my drives, but never published (maybe as a covering note to apple repair) from back in June 2002, now Apple can take the negative publicity issues from this rubbish lol.
My motorola G3 CPU was covertly replaced, because only on the IBM version of the CPU could you actually install Mac os X 10.0 on, something that all lombard machines were supposed to be ready for. They had a swapout program going on in the US, but nothing ever got setup for UK customers with the motorola version of the CPU. Tech support at Apple US is much better than the UK equivalent, the guy at apple US support admitted to me he owned the same powerbook as I did, and had the Motorola CPU in his replaced almost a year before my query, with the correctly functioning IBM one, he informed that my unit had the same problem as his did before the swap, ie Macos X was impossible to install and run stably. EU and UK governments are good at guaranteeing cucumbers to be straight, but laughable when it comes to take tech companies to task through trading standards, its always been a serve yourself mentality in getting some true response from tech giants and their non recalled fuck ups, How many recalls have you heard of in the last 10 years ? truthfully they should have launched double or triple that number of recalls on products, but have managed to avoid it but playing stumb with their own customers about design flaws in models. early ibook users have allot to complain about in this dept, the number of motherboard failures were appalling, also all post on apple sites are heavily groomed to remove non flattering information.
sadly this machine was in use by my uncle until quite recently, but now has replaced it with a cheap crummy Pc laptop, as there was no low priced apple alternative.
WRITTEN 12 JUNE 2002 ABOUT MY APPLE G3 LOMBARD LAPTOP ——————————>
Dear Apple I have tried upgrading this machine with a 256 Mb memory module twice, bought from a mac memory supplier, who I have explicitly told them, what machine i have ie bronze keyboard with usb and scsi no built in firewire, with grackle memory controller. It is endlessly tiresome trying to sort these problems, The first simm recognized as a 128Mb Ram Simm, when it was described as a 256Mb ram simm from the retailer, The second simm came up with this error “The built in memory test has detected a problem please contact a service technician”
So now I have resorted back to my old 128Mb simm in the top slot.
These pages seem to explain and confuse at the same time, worth looking at though, to explain the complexity of the issue, which users shouldn’t be forced to have to delve into. The developer site seems to have more logical information sometimes than the user support site, and is probably a tiny bit more honest about errors with machines.
256 mbit chip ram simms
amazingly the first link above still works :)
the second link below no longer does better to delete bad publicity I think apple has always thought :)
http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/kbase.woa/122/wa/query?searchMode =Expert&type=id&val=KC.58325
In english I think the memory controller in my machine the “grackle chip”, is only capable of reading simms with a 128 megabit chip density, which means from the table theres only one kind of 256 Mb simm that will work with it ?
If im reading it wrong and my machine does not work with more than 128Mb simms at all then, Apple has really sold me up the swanny, Because the Pdf brochure for my machine definitely states it as being capable of a memory maximum of 384Mb ram
I wish to have these problems resolved ie 3 years after purchase it would be nice to have a fully functioning machine as I feel I deserve it having shelled out over £2000.00 pounds of hard earned money on my machine. not including all the other purchases bought because of it.
It seems almost impossible to even just email Apple on these matters, on the basis there service policy involves pay up front for a service contract of any reasonable kind, Most company’s even those who sell simple devices costing less than £30.00 offer email support for most of the products life if I go through the contacts page there is not anywhere,I can get support about my machine via email with a person who knows what they’re talking about, I have exhausted all avenues of automated online support to solve this problem. Least without spending my entire life trying to solve the problems with this machine. I didn’t purchase it for that reason.
I feel Apples attitude toward legacy hardware, is to disown as quickly as possible any responsibility for older machines they manufactured and encourage you to upgrade to something newer.
especially the older early G3 adopters and MacosX compatibility being a case in point.
The is the genuine story of my powerbook, and its troubles is really quite different to the marketing that apple employs to state how wonderful apples are, here it is :
1. Paid over £2000.00 for the machine, waited expectantly for the machine received it, and my joy changed to high annoyance and stress. 2. The first problem I had to deal was after OS installation, and discovering the machine booted to a certain point and stopped, and would only continue in the boot process if the DVD drive was open and closed by pressing its eject button. Spent two days trying sort with minor upgrades etc. 3. This turned out to be a fault in apples production of the units. 3. got furious at the supplier, demanded a refund, bought another machine from another supplier this wasted another further couple weeks of my life in Stress and annoyance. 4. Second G3 400DVD powerbook arrived this began to cause similar trouble, eventually cured by DVD drive firmware upgrade. 5. During installation of the second powerbook I noticed an extra extension appeared to have to be installed to cure modem, microphone and speaker issues, where without the extension being run all sorts of popping sounds would come through the speakers at unwanted moments. (Another nice kludge fix their by apple, anything rather than except they’re was problems with the design) 5a. The microphone input both on the screen and the back of the machine offers terrible sound quality 5b. They’re have also since the beginning been minor screen redraw problems, little lines randomly flashing across the screen and disappearing, not always evident but just enough to be annoying 6. A couple of months later, once I decided to do the permanent install!, I had drive formatting issues with drives going down and losing data eventually cured using the latest drive setup software. 7. The machine then seemed to work for a period of time in which I learned to deal with about a crash a day or more. 7a. Also my machine seems to crash an awful lot when waking from sleep, I dont think its right to state the solution is to not use/turn off such sleep functionality in order to avoid such crashes. (that is a copout) 8. Eventually I was thinking about upgrading to MacOsX, Not trusting apple that it would be compatible with my machine, even though my mine was stated as a machine that would be compatible, So rather than lash out £100.00 on MacosX, and find that I had problems with it, I borrowed my friends cd, who had bought a copy for his G4, to test run on my machine before making the £100.00 purchase, thank god I did, why? because getting it to install at all, was a total crashy nightmare, and when it finally did(after removing all extra memory) my machine crashes all the time, practically randomly under macosX. with no programs installed even running the chess program caused my machine to crash, I didn’t even venture into running a classic program within it. there was no logic to the crashing. 9. eventually after removing my 128Mb simm in the top slot it stabilized, this concluded me to believe that it was the memory at fault and that this might have been causing my generalised crashing in the older OS as well. 10 this is when I purchased the new memory 256 mb memory module which was recognized as a 128 Mb simm, then changed it for another, being unbelievably specific about machine model, with lots nods of guarantee that it would work this time, apple part number etc(jedec II CLS3 specified etc). Installed the simm only for this message to come up “The built in memory test has detected a problem please contact a service technician”. It then booted and recognized the simm as a 128Mb simm.
Trying to find the person who “really” knows what the hell they’re talking about on this issue seems impossible, im beginning to suspect that the memory controller is faulty, or there is a subtle motherboard fault that has been there from the outset. The funny thing is when I go to the web site there already trying to enforce the idea that my machine is a legacy machine (how long do they accept responsibility for their manufacturing efforts), the information I require on it is harder to get at, they have a separate page for G3 powerbook’s (all G3 powerbooks lumped together!) which is a small link from the G4 powerbook page, and there is not technically proficient enough information to enable me to solve or properly deduce my own my problems, yet do apple provide a decent contact with a technically enough inclined individual…NO. all I get is automated system response and the tiresome task of searching they’re support web site in the hope of finding a solution to my problem. or shelling out lots of money and losing machine time at a technical repair centre. and its me thats been suffering the consequences of it for the past 3 years of unhappy unstable computing. While apple have been presuming that I’ve been having a wonderful computing experience, they cut of their own ears, and when they hear nothing, they presume it as a sign that they’re machines are wonderful.
I need software that can truly determine and highlight hardware errors, this is not yet in any manufacturers interest is it. computers are practically sold as seen, if you ask me.
The problem with current computing in this day and age, as I have had the misfortune of finding out, is that computers can have partial semi- random failures and minor hardware flaws from the day of manufacture, whereby your computing experience doesn’t cease, it just becomes less stable, this is even on setups with only the OS installed. These machines are in no way tested enough to ensure that each user gets an identical machine in terms of stability even if its an identical model, often manufacturers will improve a model as its production run goes along, as users beta test the machines and, dig up errors manufacturers will correct problems either through software kludges(the modem and sound problem on the lombard) or hardware tweaks (covert CPU daughtercard replacement program for certain manufacture dates), So that the users early in the run who have real problems will be a small group, the majority of these users will suffer with their problems, and rarely know enough about the problem to be able to complain successfully, especially if the issues relate to technical areas internal to the machine, I have several times sent a machine for repair, and the machine has failed identically within weeks of return. Retailers and manufacturer do not often wish to accept responsibility for these errors, the user versus machine error is the biggest stick used. Also tolerances have big effect on build quality and too many times tolerances will not be adequate. For instance four CPU’s of the same type at different speeds start of as identical Cpus’s, what makes them different speeds, is that they are graded for speed on the basis of failure at those speeds, so some Cpus’s are dialled up to 800mhz and dont fail and others do, they are set to be used at a speed at which they dont fail in factory testing. What this means is that most cpus’s have flaws in them of some kind, but they only show up at certain speeds, as long as the testing is to be trusted.
I have certainly known machines , which are identical models, identical spec, identical OS and one will always be less stable than another. and if you happen to own the unstable one, you/most users will end up living with it, not knowing there computing experience could be any different, thinking that machines make mistakes just like humans, a pity they don’t compensate for it like humans by having some humour with their error, but since computers are logic engines they shouldn’t error, the old expression gigo (Garbage In Garbage Out) betrays that human error is always somewhere to be blamed.