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Editor's Blog: Rik Digs into 20-Year-Old Mac Mags - Everything's the Same, Everything's Different

Rik Myslewski — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:28:32 -0500

Recently, in preparation for a slight piece to be included in the June issue of Mac|Life, I had the occasion to dig through what Poe described as "many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore" - namely, issues of MacUser and Macworld from June 1987 - 20 years ago, to be exact. (That's in magazine time, which runs a couple of months ahead of human time.)

I was researching ancient prices of ancient peripherals, but in my perusal of those hallowed tomes I came upon a number of quotes which I thought you might find of interest, amusement, or value. Here are a few missives from that faraway time - before email, before the Internet, before the world "online" had any meaning to us Normal Humans™.

Predictions:

We're all tempted to offer our opinions about what the future may bring. In most cases, it's safe to do so - no one will call you on it if you're wrong. However, now that everything is saved forever, you might want to be more careful. For example, here's a news item from Macworld, June 1987. Hmmm... Didn't quite work out this way, did it?

"Giant floppies - such as Kodak's costly and rather slow 10MB, 5 1/4-inch drive - may be the wave of the future for people who need to cart around a lot of data and don't want to risk jostling the bits out of place on a hard drive."

Larry Tessler, Apple's then-VP for advanced technology, was more prescient in a Macworld interview that month. Remember as you read this next quote that the idea of a "worldwide network" was quite radical at the time - and Larry also had a solid call on "pervasive use." He was off the mark on ISDN, but otherwise this was virtuoso prognosticating.

"I foresee a personal computer so portable that you will take it everywhere. High-quality, 3-D, interactive computer-generated graphics on the desktop. Integrated Systems Data Network (ISDN) will be adopted as a communications standard, enabling easy use of a worldwide network. Finally, pervasive use of computing. People's communications habits will be based on the assumption that everyone has a computer, much as today we all assume that everyone has a phone."

Oh, and just so you know that Larry wasn't an infallible seer, here's his take on RAM limitations.

"Using NuBus cards, you could go as far as 4GB some day."

In the same month's issue, Macworld columnist Jerry Borrell had a "wish list" for improvements to the Mac experience. Bad call on the plasma-screen notebook, Jerry, but not bad otherwise - and we're all still holding our collective breaths for a comprehensive overhaul of the Finder in Leopard.

"A personal LaserWriter for under $2,000. Update the Finder. A portable Mac for under $2,500. And please don't use one of those miserable LCD displays. Do it right - like Dynamac - and use a gas-plasma or electroluminescent display. Multitasking. I want to be able to open and manipulate more than one window - and more than one application - at once."

Next: Ads from June 1987

Ads:

Ads in the June issues of Macworld and MacUser were a hoot. Check out the Illustrator ad copy, which requires the definite article before the product name. Also, note that we all may have become a wee bit spoiled regarding an application's abilities.

"The Adobe Illustrator is a software program that, for the very first time, combines the control and fine detail of drawing by hand with the speed and mathematical precision of the computer ... instead of building an image with dots like other programs, the Adobe Illustrator uses precise curves and lines."

Regarding this next quote, well, I've been around the block in the Mac biz, but I readily confess that I didn't remember that PowerPoint was originally published by a company named Forethought, Inc. - who, to complete the story, was also the original publisher of FileMaker. Check out their June 1987 ad in MacUser:

"Introducing PowerPoint. With PowerPoint, you actually plan, compose and edit your entire presentation on your Macintosh computer."

A radical promise in 1987; a "Well, duh!" in 2007.

And then there's the Avenue of Broken Dreams:

"Any day now, Scoop will be showing up at dealers all over America. And desktop publishing will never be the same ... Suppose, for instance, you want to wrap text around a circular of irregular image. Or fill that image with text. All it takes is a single click of the mouse."

So long, Scoop - we hardly knew ya.

Next : Opinions from June 1987

Opinions:

The fine line between pontification and punditry hasn't moved much in the last 20 years. Check out these opinionificationers:

"Jazz [an early Mac spreadsheet app from Lotus] was designed to meet the needs of the market that Apple anticipated reaching with Macintosh - yuppie managers in big corporations." - Columnist Michael D. Wesley in MacUser, June, 1987

"Business Software magazine found the Mac II to be 'such a fine machine overall ... that we predict Mac IIs will become a fairly common sight in the DOS-dominated business office.'" - News item, Macworld, June 1987

Ah, and then there's this beautiful bit of Gallic prose from Jean Louis Gassée, Apple's erstwhile VP for product development, whose main claim to fame was his ability to spin webs of influential bull-tookie rather than developing solid products. His Peter-Principle reign helped lead Apple towards ... what do the French call it? Le wc?

"When I watch fifty-year-olds crowing over their Macintoshes, I know they are feeling the sensation I know so well and of which I never tire: the feeling of suddenly having access to domains from which one felt excluded forever. An incomparable sense of freedom ... a limitless space in which they can explore unknown lands containing immense resources."

Finally, I know I'm skipping ahead a decade here, but it's worth noting that readers' wisdom often trumps that of the pundits. In June '97, a MacUser reader, Aaron Benson, wrote:

"If Apple wants to gain ground, it must port the new Mac OS to Pentium processors ... The only way that the Mac OS can ever hope to unseat Windows is to compete on the same machine."

You go, Aaron.

Editor's Blog: Recipes Online - Rik Recommends 47 Places to Find Good Eatin' on the Web

Rik Myslewski — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 21:57:06 -0500

Food is one of my favorite hobbies - both eating it and cooking it. Over the years I've accumulated shelves full of cookbooks, but these days they're gathering dust in a corner of my kitchen. The Web has replaced every one of them except for The Joy of Cooking, which I still prize for its "About..." introductory overviews.

The wealth of recipes on the Web is nothing short of astonishing. What's more, the wide variety of types of recipe websites is amazing, as well. There are large commercial sites, personal recipe collections, sites built by the submissions of people like you and me, and more. Much more. Let's take a look at some 47 recipe sites that I've visted over the past couple of years, and check out representative recipes from each of them.

Submission Sites

These sites were quite possibly the first "Web 2.0" sites that the Web spawned - meaning that their collections are compiled from submissions by their visitors. As such, they can be wildly inconsistent, but most of them contain nuggets of pure culinary genius.

Cooks.com

Here's the mothership, the 800-pound gorilla, the big kid on the block. Its gigantic collection definitely ranks in the aforementioned "wildly inconsistent" category, but enjoy an afternoon perusing its 25 categories, and you're sure to find a gem to cook that evening. After all, what other site can boast 205 different recipes for "Porcupine meatballs?"

Focus: Broad range; good ethnic-food representation

Sample: Yummy Porcupine Meatballs

Recipe Archives
This is primarily a collection of recipes from the Usenet newsgroup rec.food.recipes, plus the occasional recipe from other rec.* and alt.* food and cooking-related newsgroups, such as rec.food.preserving and alt.food.sushi; cf "inconsistent," above.
Focus: Broad range; good ethnic-food representation
Sample: North Carolina Chopped Barbecue

Recipe Source
This giant submissions site holds well over 70,000 recipes, and has a great collection of often-obscure ethnic recipes.
Focus: Broad range; good ethnic-food representation
Sample: Ryba W Sosie Chrzanowym (Polish for Fish in Horseradish)

Recipe Spin
At a mere (?!) 7,190 recipes, this site isn't as comprehensive as some, but its fine ethnic-recipe collection makes it well worth a visit - though finding some more-obscure ingredients might be frustrating.
Focus: Broad range; good ethnic-food representation
Sample: La Paz Batchoy (Filipino pork dish)

VegWeb.com
Vegetarian cooking may not be your cup of miso, but there are more than a few treats hiding on the pages of this sunny site.
Focus: Vegetarian
Sample: Just Like Chicken Strips

Next: Submission Sites (continued)

Submission Sites (continued)

foodgeeks.com: If sharing and discussing recipes is your idea of a good time, join this online community.

Copykat Recipes
This moderate-size site has an active forum community, and in addition to recipes provides cookbook reviews. Although it's occasionally hard to navigate, it's worth it to find the "KidsKuisine" section.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Chicken Spaghetti Bake

All Chefs
Another big site, with "over 40,000 free recipes to choose from," although its ethnic-recipe selection is not as good as some other large collections.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Maryland Corn Chowder With Oysters

All Recipes
This visitor-submission megasite claims to be "the world’s largest community of home cooks — over 10 million strong," and includes "more than 40,000 free recipes."
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Broiled Tilapia Parmesan

foodgeeks.com
These folks describe themselves as a "free online community designed for food geeks to share recipes and information about cooking and ingredients." It also includes a wiki-style "Food Encyclopedia," plus forums.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Chicken Jerusalem

Best Cook Recipes
This site is especially attractive if you're goal is to find a unique spin on cakes and other sweet things.
Focus: Broad range; baking
Sample: Cake for Mother

Next: Submission Sites (continued)

Submission Sites (continued)

FirehouseChef: This submission site has a unique constituency: firefighters.

1001 Recipes 2 Send
Despite its name, the last time I checked this site it had 4,436 (simple) recipes, plus tips, food-related stories, links, and more.
Focus: Family fare
Sample: Brownie a la Mode

Great Recipes Online
Not the largest visitor-submission site, but onpe with more than its share of good stuff.
Focus: Family fare
Sample: Loosemeat Sandwitches

RecipeDude.com
This moderately large collection of vistor-supplied recipes includes one section devoted entirely to South Texas Cuisine
Focus: Family fare
Sample: Quarterback Quesadillas

State Fair Recipes
This site is exactly what its name suggests: a collection of recipes from state fairs. Find out what they're muching on in the heartland.
Focus: Family fare
Sample: Sunnydogs

The Red Kitchen
No, this site has nothing whatsoever to do with communisim - and what could be more American than a recipe that begins, "Finely crush the candy canes"?
Focus: Family fare
Sample: Peppermint Bark

FirehouseChef
The contributors to this submission site are all firefighters, and the recipes in it are as hearty and stick-to-your-ribsian as you might imagine.
Focus: Family fare
Sample: Kielbasa and Cheesy Potatoes

Next: Personal Sites

Personal Sites

Like many personal recipe sites, Mimi's Cyber Kitchen has plenty of personality.

While submission sites draw from the expertise of their many visitors, personal sites - those with recipes compiled by a single cook - are, well, more personal.

A Spoonful of Sugar
The hostess of this site confesses that "I make bread if I am in a bad mood. Thumping dough around is very therapeutic!" She also provides a high percentage of baking and chocolate recipes.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Beef Stifado with Rosemary Roasted Potatoes

Awesome Chef Recipes
While this collection may not be as awesome as its name suggests, it has the unique feature of providing its recipes and instructional articles in English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Classic Sauted Sole Meuniere

Chronicles of a Curious Cook
Many of the recipes in this interesting site are take-offs on recipes published elsewhere - and, yes, they're all credited appropriately.
Focus: Broad range:
Sample: Grandma Alice's Baked Chicken

Frank's Recipes
I'll just quote Frank: "As a Chef for over 30 years, I have amassed an extensive collection of recipes. My Recipe Archive now contains over 23,000 recipes and growing." The sie also includes Includes a "Volume Cooking" section with recipes for up to 100 servings, plus how-tos, a culinary dictionary, extensive online catering course.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Vealburgers for 100

Mimi's Cyber Kitchen
This moderate-size personal recipe collection also includes how-tos and other writings, plus a large set of Web links.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Carrot and Leek Soup

Reluctant Gourmet
A fairly large site that adds a blog, videos (Windows Media Player required), how-tos, gear discussions, and more to its recipes.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Maple Shallot Vinaigrette

Next: Personal Sites (continued)

Personal Sites (continued)

Alicia's Recipes: Luckily for us, it appears that Alicia has plenty of time on her hands.

Alicia's Recipes
How can you not love a personal site that has one section devoted to One section called "Left Over Ham" and another that contains "Waffle recipes that have collected from boxes, box tops, cans, packages, newspapers, magazines, church recipe books, and friends."
Focus: Family Fare
Sample: Cabbage Salad with Lime Jello

Cheesebugers in Paradise
This section of a sailor's blog begins with the quote, "The first and most important point to remember is that eating should be a pleasure - do not eat purely for health, you won't live much longer, but it will feel like an eternity."
Focus: Family fare
Sample: Dorothy's Fantastic Embarrassingly Easy Disappearing Fudge

cooksrecipes.com
This is the biggest personal site I know of, containing "over 18,000 recipes and growing!" It has 28 categories and a small forum - and note that the "Pet Recipes" has nothing to do with frying Fido.
Focus: Family fare
Sample: Mackerel Cat Munchies

Nickaduck's Recipe Nook
Here's a nice, well-rounded, and surprisingly large list of personal-favorite recipes.
Focus: Family fare
Sample: Marinated Flank Steak with Horseradish Sauce

Real Man's Cookbook
A he-person's approach to cooking. Sample quotes: ""Welcome to the Real Man's Cookbook. Where you will find that cooking is not just for the ladies anymore," and "Be a man: EAT BEEF!"
Focus: Family fare
Sample: Grilled Steak

Shoebox Recipes - A Family Recipe Collections
This large personal site features regular eats for regular Joes. And Joannes.
Focus: Family fare
Sample: River Chili

Next: Compendia

Compendia

Recipe Zaar: If you can't find something good here, you're just not trying.

And then there are recipe sites that are simply compendiums of recipes from a variety of sources - and they can be very capacious, indeed.

About: Food & Drink
The About.com site is a vast resource, and its Food & Drink section is not only strong on good ol' American eats, but in ethnic cuisine, as well. This site is gigantic; it includes videos, how-tos, gear discussions, and 25 major subsections - and each subsection also has its own subsections.
Focus: Broad range; good ethnic-food representation
Sample: Greek Sweet Easter Bread: Tsoureki Paschalino

Free Food Recipes
This site contains pretty much what its name suggests. It's ethnic selection is unusally strong, with 52 diffferent categories, including Bengali and Pennsyvanian Dutch.
Focus: Broad range; good ethnic-food representation
Sample: Koenigsberger Klops

Recipe Zaar
Another biggie: "211,000 recipes - 73,000 photos - 14,000 cookbooks." Plus, there's menu-planning advice and active forums with world-wide membership.
Focus: Broad range; good ethnic-food representation
Sample: Baseisei (Fijian Taro Salad)

YumYum.com
Another more-is-better site, with "over 20,000 easy to follow free recipes for your enjoyment," all arranged is a dizzing array of categories.
Focus: Broad range; good ethnic-food representation
Sample: Kadin Budu (Ladies' Thighs' Croquettes)

Next: Compendia (continued)

Compendia (continued)

The Food Network: There's far, far more to life than Emeril.

bbc.co.uk Food

Foregt all those jokes about boiled everything - this British site has some killer stff, including chef's blogs featuring 51 different chefs.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Mince and Tatties

Culinary.net
Here's an eclectic collection from a wide range of commercial contributors. For example, they've got recipes from The Catfish Institute, Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk, and Omaha Steaks.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Catfish With Spicy Fireworks Rub

EasyGourmetRecipes
"Our easy-to-follow restaurant recipes have been submitted by some of the finest chefs across the United States." Take a look - they're not jiving.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Sea Scallops With Basil Beurre Blanc

Food Network.com
This is a huge and thorough companion to the popular cable network, containing recipes, gear discussions, travel, how-tos, celebrity chefs, and hella more.
Focus: Broad range
Sample: Colcannon

Next: Miscellany

Miscellany

WildRecipes.com: If you've ever wanted to learn how to scramble brains, here's the site for you.

Finally, there are some websites that are just too strange, unique, or ... well ... themselves to pass up.

beercook.com
All about cooking with beer, with tons of other beer-oriented content. Many chefs regularly contribute to this rich site.
Focus: Beer, beer, and more beer
Sample: Beer Bean Burgers

Bert Christensen's Weird & Different Recipes
Surprisingly large collection of just-plain-strange stuff. Includes weird art and submissions, plus helpful how-tos such as "Basic Preparation of Pig Heads, Feet, Tails, Ears and Snouts."
Focus: Odd food
Sample: Seal Brain Fritters

Eat Dangerously
Subtitled "The 'blow health out of your ass!!!' Cookbook," this marvel of subtlety contains a lamb chops 'n' cheese recipe withe the note, ""Meat and cheese together! Wash it down with a cigarette and you can literally feel it clogging your arteries. Don't worry though, you've got tons of arteries."
Focus: Unhealthy food
Sample: Lamb Chops Stuffed with Gorgonzola

WildRecipes.com
As their intro says, "If you have a dish you love eating, but your family and friends think it's repulsive, this is your chance to share it with the world"
Focus: Guilty pleasures
Sample: Potato Chip Sandwiches

Next: Miscellany

Miscellany

Mamta's Kitchen: A true labor of love by a talented family.

Julia Child: Lessons with Master Chefs
Sample high-end recipes from the companion cookbook to the TV series, and watch video from the series, as well.
Focus: Gourmet cooking
Sample: Shrimp Étoufée

Mamta's Kitchen
This family-developed site focuses on Indian food, requests submissions from its readers, and has a forum.
Focus: Indian food
Sample: Naan

Really Big Recipes
The next time you need to feed 100 people or more, here's your resource. Includes a useful - for this site especially - link to Recipe Converter.

Focus: Food for crowds
Sample: Mega Meatloaf for 1000

Recession Recipes
Humorous writing and recipes about cooking when you're seriously broke.
Focus: Food on the cheap
Sample: Bran Gruel

Oh, and in case any of you are keeping score at home: six feet, two inches; 210 pounds...

Editor's Blog: Hard Drive Repairman Rik Fixes a Dead Drive (with Photos)

Rik Myslewski — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 17:13:56 -0500

Even if your Mac has plenty of volumes, losing an important one can ruin your day - or at least your regular backup schedule.

The other day one of my backup drives went south - the one holding my photo backups, to be exact. I have about 100GB of photos, and since losing them to a hard-drive failure would be a tragedy, I back them up daily. Well, I actually back everything up daily, but it's the photos I worry most about. Losing photos of my daughters' early years, Rox's performances, Carey's athletic events, my folks, our family vacations, and more would be far more painful than losing my iTunes collection - and besides, that's still on my 'Pods.

But since I'm well-protected by backups, I could actually perversely enjoy the death rattle of this particular drive - at least in a pseudo-scientific way: It died in what was easily the loudest fashion that I've ever heard: loud chirps 'n' sqeeks, clicks noticeably louder than an Iomega Zip Drive's classic Click of Death, and the occasional parrot-like squawk. After this sadism began to bore me, I ejected and disconnected the offending drive - but didn't toss it.

When hard drives die, it's easy - and cheap - to simply replace their innards rather than buy a whole new external FireWire drive. Follow along and learn how - and, by the way, if you're not interested in learning how to replace a drive's guts, cut ahead to the last page of this blog entry to learn some Fun Facts to Know and Tell about hard-drive evolution. Trust me; it's interesting stuff. Really.

Next: The Point of No Return, then The Screws

Step 1: The Point of No Return

When you're digging through this how-to, remember that although all drives' cases are different, the basics of how to replace the drive inside that case is essentially the same: First, open the case; second, find out what kind of drive is in the case; third, order a new drive that's based on the same connection technology; fourth, when the new drive arrives, replace the old drive with the new one; finally, button everything up and get back to work. I'm replacing the drive inside a LaCie d2 case in this article, but if you're putting a drive into a case supplied by WiebeTech, Other World Computing, or whomever, just adapt. It's easy.

But before you crack open the case, first look to see if the back, bottom, side of your drive's case has something similar to this message:

If it does, look at your warranty then look at your calendar. If your drive is still under warranty, get in touch with the drive vendor's customer service folks, and ask about their return policy. Policies vary widely around the industry, with the best being what's called "cross-shipping" and the worst being the dreaded "restocking fee." A vendor who cross-ships will put a replacement drive into the mail as soon as they receive confirmation that you're shipped the bad drive to them - some even pay your shipping fees. Vendors who charge restocking fees require a percentage-of-original-cost payment for taking a bad drive back.

Let me rush to explain that I buy from restocking-fee folks all the time. Why? Two reasons: The first is that because I've religious about backup, I don't need the "gotta have it now!" service that cross-shipping provides. The second is that vendors who require restocking fees generally offer better prices. I'm willing to take the gamble - and after around 25 years of buying parts for various home computers, I've had to pay a restocking fee exactly zero times.

But you pays your money, you makes your choice.

To return to our gutting: That warranty-voiding sticker is almost certainly either hiding a screw that you'll need to remove to open the case or bridging two parts of the case that you'll need to separate to open it. In the case of the LaCie d2 (pun intended), it's the former - so I peel off the sticker and break out my Phillips screwdriver. (Your trivia for the day: in Japan, a Phillip screwdriver is called a "plus driver;" what do you think they call a standard slotted screwdriver? Yup...)

Next: The Screws, then The Culprit

Step 2: The Screws

On my LaCie case, the screw revealed by removing the warranty-voiding tag is matched by another screw at the bottom of the back of the case:

After removing these two screws, the back plate simply lifts off to reveal the back plan of the drive carriage:

Note that your drive's case may open in a completely different way. For example, an old WiebeTech DesktopGB case that I have opens by simply sliding the two halves of the case apart, no screws involved at all. Whatever - I'm 110% certain that you're smart enough to figure it out.

Next: The Culprit, then First the Plugs

Step 3: The Culprit

Slide the drive carriage out of the case (LaCie), slide the drive carriage open (WiebeTech), or whatever you need to do. You'll now be able to see the drive itself, nestled in its carriage and connected to its support electronics by two cables: a data cable and a power cable. Here's what I saw when I slid my dead drive out of its case:

Now it's time for the official "Statistically Unsupportable Personal-Bias Rant:" As soon as I saw that my dead drive was manufactured by Maxtor, its death made sense to me. Y'see, in the past three or four years, I've had three drives die on me - an unusually large number, even for a multi-drive geek such as myself.

There was a pattern to their deaths, however: All three of those drives were manufactured by Maxtor. When, a year or so back, I asked a Maxtor product manager about this high failure rate, he did admit that the company's drives have had some reliability problems. Since my LaCie d2 drive used a Maxtor mechanism that was manufactured a couple of years back, I'm hoping that more-recent Maxtor drives are sturdier. Maybe so - but maybe not.

See the "you pays your money..." reference, above.

Next: First the Plugs, then More Screws

Step 4: First the Plugs

This step is the only one in this entire process that could be remotely regarded as tricky: You need to remove the drive's data and power cables (circled in the image below), then remove the drive itself from its carriage. When removing the plugs, it's perfectly fine to leverage them out with a small slotted (or "minus") screwdriver, but don't - I repeat don't - use any of the drive's electronics as a wedge point or leverage point for the screwdriver. If you crack something green or something with circuit tracings or tiny electronic parts on it, you may destroy the entire drive. Also, try to pull both plugs out straight, not angled, to avoid bending the pins that they're attached to. Start with the power plug (the white one), since it's huskier and, therefore, provides less-dangerous practice. And whatever you do, never, ever pull on a cable - pull only on the plugs themselves. But you knew that.

Next: More Screws, then The Purchase

Step 5: More Screws

Okay, so the plugs were a little bit tough, so now it's time for something both easy and satisfying: removing the screws that hold the drive to its carriage. These screws can be on the bottom of the carriage (as in my LaCie case), on the sides, or even completely missing in cases that kindasorta snap the drive mechanism into their embrace. Find them (or not) - they're big and easy to remove, so remove them. When you've unscrewed them all, simply lift the drive out of the carriage (you may have to angle it a bit to do so, but that should be no problem).

Next: The Purchase, then The Reassembly

Step 6: The Purchase

If you don't have a replacement drive lying around, it's time to buy one. To buy the right one, you need to know what kind of connection your dead drive had with the electronics on the drive carriage. Ninety-nine percent of the drives you'll run into use one of two basic types of connections: the older ATA (short for advanced technology attachment, and also known as IDE, which stands for intelligent drive electronics or integrated drive electronics, depending on whom you ask) and the newer Serial ATA. The former is also sometimes known as parallel ATA or PATA, and the latter as SATA.

It's easy to tell the difference between the two. PATA drives, such as the dead one in my LaCie d2 case, have a wide ribbon cable that transmits all of the drive's data to its support electronics in parallel. SATA drives have a much thinner cable since they transfer their data in serial fashion. Simply put, think of a PATA connection as a multi-lane freeway clogged at rush hour, and a SATA conection as the high-speed diamond lane.

There's another way of finding out what kind of drive you have - look at its label:

You'll notice that this Maxtor MAXLine Plus II drive is listed as a 250GB ATA/133 HDD.You can figure out the 250GB part, HDD simply means hard disk drive, and I just told you about ATA, but what's the "133" after ATA? Simple: The ATA connection has had a long and fruitful life, and has improved in performance over a few generations from, for example, 33 megabytes per second through 66, 100, and 133 megabytes per second. This drive is one of the fast ones, so I want to replace it with an equally fast one.

If, however, I had an old ATA/100 drive lying around, I could simply use it, instead, and the drive carriage's electronics would adjust to the drive's slower speed. Unfortunately it doesn't work the other way around: If you put an ATA/133 drive into a case that only supports ATA/100, the drive's performance will ratchet down to the case's slower speed.

So I went shopping for a 250GB ATA/133 drive - and I didn't want to get one from Maxtor. You can go to your local CompUSA or other raw-equipment dealer, but I'm a big fan of the convenience of online shopping - and, fortunately, I discovered that Other World Computing offers a 250GB Hitachi DeskStar T7K250 for a mere $83.95.

If you've received your AARP solicitation letter, you may remember when DeskStar drives had (deservedly) bad reputations. Don't worry about that - it's history. DeskStar drives have vastly improved since their spotty record in their early IBM incarnation and now - IBM having sold their hard-drive business to Hitachi - are some of my favorite drives.

So I dropped in on Other World Computing's website, made the purchase, and waited for the drive. I trusted my non-backed-up primary Photos drive until the DeskStar arrived - but backed up some extra-crucial photos to DVDs, just in case.

Next: The Reassembly, then Done.

Step 7: The Reassembly

After taking apart your dead drive, bringing it back to life by reversing the process after you get your new drive mechanism is child's play. One piece of advice, however. Some cases - such as the LaCie case - make it somewhat difficult to snap the power and data cables back into their respective sockets due to tight clearances with the carriage's various protruberences. When replacing drives into LaCie d2 cases, I personally find it easier to screw the drive into the carriage before attempting to reattach the cables - though with some other cases, the reverse is true. Your call.

After carefully recabling the cables and rescrewing the screws, simply slide, drop, or whatever the carriage back into the case, reattach any protective plates - if any - and your drive is as good as new. Or, in my case, better.

You'll also notice that many cases - such as the LaCie d2 in this article and the WiebeTech DesktopGB I mentioned earlier - simply make it impossible for you to slide or snap the case back together incorrectly. So if something doesn't seem like it's fitting together smoothly, it's entirely possible that you're trying to insert the carriage upside down and/or backwards. Don't force stuff together - the fault is probably not the case's, but yours.

Next: Done (then Fun Facts):

Step 8: Done

After your drive-fixing is complete, simply hook up your drive to your Mac as it was hooked up before, use Disk Utility to partition it (if you want) or initialize/erase it (if necessary), and you're good to go.

One caveat - and I'm not the only person to have noticed this. Apple's implementation of FireWire is, shall we say, less than perfect. Sometimes drives aren't immediately recognized after being worked on as I've just described. Sometimes reshuffling different drives on a FireWire bus makes perfectly healthy drives that mounted just fine before another drive was worked-on now refuse to mount. I've discovered that this "now it works, now it doesn't" problem is exacerbated when, as with my multi-drive set-up, one is using both FireWire 800 and FireWire 400 drives. It can be thoroughly infuriating.

I wish that I could say that over the years I've developed a bulletproof, works-every-time method for getting a complex FireWire chain to act rationally at each and every boot-up - but I haven't. If your drives refuse to mount, simply shut them off and unplug them (from FireWire, that is), reboot, then turn them back on and replug them - or shut down your Mac, shut down your drives, turn them back on, then reboot - or some other gal-derned combination of shutting down, unplugging/replugging, and rebooting. I've had my best luck with shutting down my Mac, unplugging my drives, then rebooting the Mac and replugging the drives - but sometimes other methods work, instead. %$#@!

However, if all your drives are healthy, they'll eventually all appear on your desktop. Or, at least, they should.

Oh, and then there's the old FireWire reset trick: Shut down your Mac. Remove each and every cable attached to it - AC, USB, FireWire, whatever. Then wait 15 minutes or so, reattach everything, and reboot. This worked for me once, and ex-MacAddict editor and current Mac|Life contributing editor Niko Coucouvanis swears by it.

I just wish I could figure out why it does any good.

So, here's a photo of my newly resuscitated hard drive, second from left, nestled in amongst its peers. And, yes, you observant ones, that is, indeed, a Newton MessagePad 120 hiding over on the right. I never use it, but can't bear to part with it.

Now, before you go, click on to the next page for the above-promised Fun Facts to Know and Tell.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics:

When I bought the 250GB Hitachi DeskStar from Other World Computing for the repair job described in this article, I was - as I often am when buying new computer equipment - amazed at how inexpensive storage has become. However, mere "Wow!" isn't enough (just ask Microsoft's marketing department). I wanted some sort of comparative benchmark on exactly how cheap is cheap, and how far prices have dropped in the past, say, 20 years or so. So I did what I often enjoy doing: I created a set of Meaningless Statistics™.

In December of 1986, my wife and I bought our home here in San Francisco for $199,000. It was small - just 935 square feet - but in a nice neighborhood and close to transportation. (Incidentally, after some extensive renovations and 20 years of appreciation, it was recently assessed at $1.5 million - but that's another story entirely.)

"Hmm," thought I, "A home's square footage can be considered to be loosely analogous to hard-drive capacity, and money is money. If I find out what hard drives were selling for in December of 1986 and how much they cost per megabyte, I can compare that info with my house-buying info and see what bubbles up." Could be fun. Well, geeky, math-wrangling fun, at least.

So I traipsed over to the San Francisco Main Library, and dug into the December 1986 issues of MacUser and Macworld. Merely strolling down that particular memory lane was enjoyable enough: MacUser was 208 pages and Macworld clocked in at 232; and I was reminded of an early Mac game that had entirely slipped my memory: Infocom's Leather Godesses of Phobos, which included a "scratch n'sniff card and a 3-d comic book," with gameplay that featured "3 levels of naughtiness, for the prude to the lewd." Ah, the 80s. But I digress.

The five top-selling hard drives in Macworld's Best Sellers list were all 20MB models, with the euphoniously named Apple Hard Disk 20 the top seller. It listed for $1,199, and while there were less-expensive 20MB drives to be found, there were also more-expensive ones. So I chose the Apple Hard Disk 20 as my benchmark drive.

A little Excel-wrangling then revealed the following FFtKaT (aka MS™):

> Each megabyte of storage on the Apple Hard Disk 20 cost $59.95.

> Each megabyte of storage on the Hitachi DeskStar cost around three-one-thousandths of a cent ($0.000336).

> That's a percentage improvement of about 17,852,789%.

If the price-per-square-foot that we paid for our home in December of 1986 changed at the same rate as did hard-drive prices in the past 20-plus years, we would have two choices today:

> Spend the same amount of money and get a house that was 166,923,574 square feet (about 1,855 football fields).

> Get the same-sized house, but pay only $1.12 for it.

What does this all prove? Simple: If we want to solve the downturn in the housing market, all we have to do is turn the problem over to hard-drive engineers.

Editor's Blog: Rik Fears the RFID Privacy Invasion

Rik Myslewski — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:27:37 -0600

I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but in a couple of ways I'm positively un-American. For example, I've never set foot inside a Wal-Mart, never eaten a McDonald's hamburger, and never signed up for any supermarket's "club card." The first is because I believe big-box stores are destroying small-town America's main-street shops, and the second is because I'm a snooty foodie. My recalcitrance to add my shopping habits to some corporate database, however, is more complicated - but it's based on the simple fact that I'm a privacy junkie. Unfortunately, it's about to get a lot harder for me to keep my personal information personal.

Why? Because of an acronym that's rapidly worming its intrusive way into all of our daily lives: RFID. Short for radio-frequency identification, RFID systems include a tiny transponder that can be embedded into ... well ... practically anything, and a sensor that can read the information carried by that transponder. The information encoded in RFID transponders can be read passively, meaning that if you have one embedded in your MasterCard, for example, all the information stored in it can be read without you even knowing that it has been accessed. These "no-swipe" credit cards may radically increase the possibility of identity theft, raising the ire of observers such as Senator Charles Schumer of the Senate Banking Committee.

What rankles privacy advocates such as myself are the more Orwellian aspects of RFID technology, such as the fact that they can be used quite effectively as location trackers. A recent CNET article about the Department of Homeland Security's Real ID program reports that "A radio frequency identification (RFID) tag is under consideration." With an RFID-enabled Real ID card in your possession, strategically placed sensors could track your every move. Now, call me paranoid (if you haven't done so already...), but I'd rather not have Big Brother keeping an eye on my peregrinations.

How tiny can RFID transponders be? A couple of weeks ago, Hitachi unveiled a prototype of an RFID chip that's a mere 0.05 by 0.05 millimeters - think talcum-powder-size - and that can store and transmit a 38-digit I.D. number. The truly paranoid (raise your hands, now) can imagine anti-government protestors being "dusted" by these micro RFIDs and tracked at leisure. I'm certainly not implying that such skullduggery will happen - I'm just saying that it can happen.

RFIDs certainly have their legitimate uses - inventory-tracking, for example - but even the most innocuous uses have their trade-offs. For example, many states have an RFID-based drive-through toll-paying system for bridges and turnpikes - here in California it's called FasTrack. Thanks to my far-less-uptight-than-me wife, we have a FasTrack transponder on our Mini Cooper - and now some database somewhere knows that I visited my folks across the San Mateo bridge last Saturday, then drove back across the Dumbarton Bridge to catch my daughter's rugby game at Stanford. I can come up with no reasonable reason as to why my comings and goings being monitored should give me pause, but I'm willing to admit - albeit sheepishly - that it does.

That's the problem with being a privacy junkie - you can feel mighty silly sometimes.

But still...