An extension is a background program. It loads into memory when you turn on the Mac, and stays there until you turn it off. You might think of an extension as a control panel without a panel — it has no settings for you to change.
Extensions generally reside in your Extensions folder, although they can also be loose in your System Folder (or even in the Control Panels folder). Extensions are notable — and confusing to beginners — because they exist purely for the benefit and reference of the computer, not you. That is, if you double-click an extension, you just get an error message; the extension has no controls that you, the user, are meant to play with. Just put extensions in the Extensions folder and forget them.
To confuse the issue, extensions aren’t the only things you’ll find in your Extensions folder. It contains drivers, for one thing — those essential software tidbits that teach your Mac to communicate with some external appliance, such as a printer or a modem. Before System 7.1, printer-font files sat in the Extensions folder, too. And lately, all manner of Apple bug fixes and conflict patches have been spewing from Cupertino. These “updates,” too, live in your Extensions folder.
Which brings us to our memo to Apple: clean up your act! Put those 35 modem CCL files into one CCLs folder! Put the 6 CD-ROM drivers into a folder by themselves! Get those printer drivers together — as you did with the LaserWriter 8 settings files. Let’s see some organization in the next system rev, OK?
Anyway, here‘s the list.
!PowerAV Update — A later version of the !TYC extension, still designed to fix that Power Mac AV 21-inch monitor problem.
!TYC — A bug-fix extension for Power Mac AV models with Apple’s 21-inch monitor.
040 VM Update — For 575- and 630-series Macs only. This extension fixes a bug that makes your Macs freeze when virtual memory is on.
630 SCSI Update — A bug-fix patch for LC, Quadra, or Performa 630-series machines that eliminates system freezes when transferring lots of data (such as to a tape backup).
A/ROSE — Although the name may smell as sweet, A/ROSE by its other name is Apple Real-time Operating System Extension. This extension gets installed only if, when you use the Installer, you choose TokenTalk or EtherTalk. You should select only one of those if you do, in fact, have a TokenTalk card (Apple’s Token Ring card, for example) or EtherTalk circuitry installed. See Chapter 31 for more on NuBus cards, and see Chapter 32 for details on Ethernet networking.
Abaton Interfax, Farallon Remote... — An increasing number of today’s telecommunications programs — America Online, Apple Remote Access, FirstClass, and so on — rely on a software structure called Apple’s Communications Toolbox (CT). One of the convenient features of CT-aware programs is that you can select your modem’s model, by name, from a pop-up list instead of having to enter its technical parameters (in a Setup dialog box, for example).
Unfortunately, some of these modem programs put their driver icons (known as CCLs) for all of those modem brands into your Extensions folder. Fortunately, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with throwing away all these modem-specific documents except the one that you own. (Other examples of these CT modem documents: anything beginning with the words Zoom, Prometheus, Hayes, Global Village, Practical Peripherals, and so on.)
About Apple Guide — See “Apple Guide (and related files).”
Apple CD-ROM (and related files) — Apple CD-ROM is the cornerstone of Apple’s sprawling constellation of CD-ROM extensions. It’s the driver that permits your Mac to talk to any Apple CD-ROM drive, internal or external. (See Chapter 28 for more on CD-ROM.)
The Apple CD-ROM suite also includes a special translator extension called Foreign File Access. It lets your Mac play non-Mac CDs, such as PhotoCD, music-only, and DOS-format discs, provided you have the proper translation extension installed. Your Mac comes with four such foreign-file translators: Apple Photo Access (lets your Mac read Kodak PhotoCD discs); Audio CD Access (lets your Mac play regular, non-computer music compact discs — requires the AppleCD Audio Player program, described in the previous chapter); High Sierra File Access (lets your Mac use non-Mac CD-ROMs, such as those designed for PCs); and ISO 9660 File Access (lets your Mac read another format of non-Mac CD-ROM discs). You can feel free to trash any of these four extensions if you never plan to use discs of the corresponding type.
Apple Event Manager — In older system software, an extension that lets AppleScript programmers send messages from one program to another. Later incorporated into the AppleScript extension itself.
That’s 800-SOS-APPL
An actual transcript from Apple’s Austin, TX-based Assistance Center, which you can reach by dialing 800-SOS-APPL.
Customer: Yeah, I’m calling about my free towel?
Apple Rep: Your what?
Customer: I received this pamphlet saying if I ordered 100 labels...I could receive a free Snapple towel.
Apple Rep: Sorry, did you say a free towel?
Customer: Yeah, I’d like to get my towel.
Apple Rep: What number did you dial to get to me?
Customer: 800-SNA-APPL.
Apple Guide (and related files) — Balloon Help, introduced in System 7, was supposed to change the world and put book authors like us out of business. Yet few people use Balloon Help. It’s slow; it doesn’t work in many programs; and perhaps above all, it doesn’t show you what to do next if you’re trying to accomplish something specific.
Enter Apple Guide, one of the major features introduced in System 7.5. When you choose this command from the Help (or Guide or question-mark) menu, you get on-screen index cards that walk you through specific tasks, one step at a time. See Chapter 5 for details. This file is the master switch for the Apple Guide feature.
In order to provide information about a certain program, Apple Guide must see a Guide document — which stores all the text and graphics for the help screens. Unfortunately, you don’t get this kind of help with every program; the Finder is still the only significant program that comes with a Guide document.
Among the other Guide documents you may find in your Extensions folder, however, are: About Apple Guide (gives information about Apple Guide itself); Shortcuts (keyboard shortcut summary); Macintosh Guide (contains instructions for basic Finder, printing, and control panel functions); PowerBook Guide Additions (laptop-related instructions); PowerTalk Guide (details on PowerTalk networking software); Speech Guide Additions (info on using speech-recognition features of Power Macs and AV models); and Video Guide Additions (about using video features of AV models).
Apple Multimedia Tuner — This important extension fixes bugs in QuickTime 2.0 and makes playback of your movies smoother. Unnecessary if you have QuickTime 2.1 or later.
Apple Photo Access — See “Apple CD-ROM (and related files).”
AppleScript (and related files) — This extension, provided with System 7.5 and later, is — as programming languages go — a fairly easy system for “scripting” your Mac (making macros to perform repetitive tasks). For details on AppleScript, see Chapter 22.
AppleScript is the extension itself. Accompanying it in your System Folder are such files as AppleScript Lib (for Power Macs only; a shared library that makes AppleScript run in “native mode”); Finder Scripting Extension (lets you control the Finder with your AppleScripts — and gives the Find File program its special drag-and-drop features, as described in the previous chapter); InLineFilter (lets you control your Mac by voice command on certain Macs, which, behind the scenes, relies on AppleScript); and Scripting Additions (a folder of modules that provide additional features to the AppleScript language);
AppleScriptLib — See “AppleScript (and related files).”
AppleShare (and related files) — The AppleShare extension teaches your Mac how to talk to other Macs over a network; one of its most useful communication skills is File Sharing, which lets you access a file on one Mac while you’re sitting at another. Details in Chapter 31.
To accomplish all of this, your Mac comes with another typical Apple rat’s nest of extensions and control panels. They include control panels like Sharing Setup, Network, Users & Groups, and File Sharing Monitor (all described earlier in this chapter), as well as extensions like Network (which monitors which network type you’re using).
Also part of this collection are the individual network-type extensions, which let your Mac speak to various kinds of networks: EtherTalk Phase 2, Mac TCP Token Ring (and Mac TCP DNR, for Internet domain names), TokenTalk Phase 2 (for the Token Ring card), and TokenTalk Prep (the driver).
If you’re not on a network, and have no desire to transfer files between two Macs, you can safely trash all of this stuff.
Assistant Toolbox — This extension is only for PowerBooks — and it comes only with recent models, or with System 7.5 and later.
As you’ll discover in Chapter 12, a RAM disk remains safely on your Desktop, even if you restart, even if you have a system crash; the only time you’ll vaporize its contents is by shutting it down. Enter Assistant Toolbox, whose primary purpose in life is to copy your RAM disk contents back to the hard drive when you shut down — and to re-establish the RAM disk, with contents, the next time you start up again.
Assistant Toolbox also lets you control certain functions from the keyboard: Command-Shift-zero puts your laptop to sleep, and Command-Shift-Control-zero makes your hard drive stop spinning. Finally, in deference to those who use their PowerBooks on the plane or in the cab, Assistant Toolbox adds deferred printing and deferred e-mail sending features — your printouts and e-mails are held in limbo until you reconnect to a network, whereupon they’re sent automatically.
This extension works with the PowerBook File Assistant file-syncing program, provided with recent PowerBooks and System 7.5.
Audio CD Access — See “Apple CD-ROM (and related files).”
AudioVision Extension — This one’s not too tough: it’s required for your Mac to work with the AudioVision color monitors — the ones with built-in speakers. (Recently, Apple changed the name of this line of monitors to AppleVision.)
AV Serial Extension — A bug-fix extension that solves certain printing problems on the Quadra 660AV.
Caps Lock — This extension comes only with 100-series PowerBooks. (If you have any other Mac, throw this out.)
The traditional typewriter’s Caps Lock key doesn’t merely lock you into ALL-CAPITALS typing; the key itself locks in a depressed position until you press it a second time to release it. Most standard Apple keyboards have locking Caps Lock keys.
But PowerBook keyboards’ Caps Lock keys don’t stay down. And on the PowerBook 100–180c, there’s not even a light to signal you that you’re about to start typing in caps. For this reason, Apple created the Caps Lock extension. When your Caps Lock key is engaged, this extension draws a fat, hollow arrow symbol at the upper-right end of your menu bar.
Catalogs Extension — See “PowerTalk Extension (and related files).”
Clipping Extension — This little guy lets you drag a selected picture or paragraph out of a program and onto your desktop, where it turns into a Clipping file (using System 7.5’s Drag and Drop — see Chapter 1 for details). Without this extension, you can still drag text, sounds, and graphics between Drag-and-Drop-savvy programs — you just can’t drag them back and forth to your desktop.
Color Classic Update — A patch to fix a bug that kept Apple IIe cards from working on Color Classics using System 7.5. Talk about obscure. (Available from online services, if you don’t have it.)
Color Picker — The Color Picker is that dialog box that shows a big color wheel, allowing you to choose a particular color. It appears, for example, when you’re in the Labels control panel and you click a label color to change it.
This extension adds a More Choices button to that dialog box, allowing you to choose from between two technical color-representation schemes: HSL (for Hue, Saturation, Luminosity) and RGB (for Red, Green, Blue).
ColorSync — This extension is the actual guts of ColorSync, Apple’s color-matching system (see “ColorSync System Profile” earlier in this chapter). If you don’t have ColorSync Profiles in your System Folder for each scanner, monitor, and color printer you plan to use, you may as well toss this.
Display Enabler — This extension is for multisync monitors only (see Chapter 11). It adds, to your Monitors control panel, the ability to change the screen resolution (to enlarge or reduce the screen picture, allowing you to see less or more “real estate” at once).
Drag and Drop — For System 7.1 variants only. Gives you the Macintosh Drag & Drop feature described in Chapter 1; unnecessary in System 7.5.
Duo Battery Patch — Lets your PowerBook Duo work with Type II batteries.
EM Extension — This extension is a component of Extensions Manager (see “Extensions Manager” earlier in this chapter). As a control panel, Extensions Manager actually loads after the very extensions it’s supposed to manage. Therefore, you also have this extension, which loads before all other extensions. It gives you the chance, by pressing the Space bar during startup, to bring up the Extensions Manager control-panel screen, so that you can choose which extensions you want to load.
EM Sound Update — Only for 630-series Macs with internal Express Modems. This extension lets your built-in Mac speaker carry the sounds you hear when using that modem (dial tones, modem squawks, etc.). (Available from online services, if you don’t have it.)
EtherTalk Phase 2 — See “AppleShare (and related files).”
External CD Sound — Exclusively for 5200 models with external CD-ROM drives. Fixes a bug in which you couldn’t hear, through your built-in speakers, sound from music CDs. Requires a Y-adapter cable that connects the CD-ROM drive’s audio RCA jacks to the Mac’s microphone jack.
Fax Extension — See “GeoPort Extension (and related files).”
Fax Terminal 7.5 Compatibility — See “GeoPort Extension (and related files).”
Find File Extension — This extension simply launches System 7.5’s Find File program when you choose Find File (or press Command-F). If it weren’t for this little guy, you’d get the old Find box instead. And even without this extension, you can still call up the new Find File — by choosing its name from your Apple menu.
Finder Help — This file contains the text for Balloon Help about the Finder.
Finder Scripting Extension — See “AppleScript (and related files).”
Foreign File Access — See “Apple CD-ROM (and related files).”
Graphics Accelerator — For Power Macs with PCI slots; speeds up graphics display.
GeoPort Extension (and related files) — This extension is the driver for a GeoPort Telecom Adapter, a $100 fax/modem simulator for Power Mac or AV-model Macs. See Chapter 27 for details.
You’ll find other files in your System Folder, too, all pertaining to your GeoPort, such as the Fax Extension (lets you send and receive faxes with the GeoPort Adapter); the Express Modem control panel (described earlier), Fax Terminal 7.5 Compatibility (lets your GeoPort software work with System 7.5); and, in some cases, anything with the word MegaPhone in it (another set of extensions and control panels that lets your Power Mac act as a telephone answering machine).
How inactive is that number?
An actual transcript of a call to Apple’s Austin-based Assistance Center.
The customer had called because her Express Modem would no longer fax. She had an extra phone line, so the Apple agent tried to walk her through it to see what the error was.
Agent: Hold down the Control and Shift keys, and select “Fax Desktop” from the File menu.
Caller: OK. The fax dialog box came up.
Agent: OK, do you know the number of a fax machine?
Caller: No.
Agent: Then just go ahead and put some inactive number in there so we can see what happens when it tries to dial. Then click on “Send.”
Caller: Oh my God! It’s my grandfather and he’s freaking out! How do I hang up!?
High Sierra File Access — See “Apple CD-ROM (and related files).”
IIci/IIsi Monitors — See “Quadra Monitors extension (and related files).”
InLineFilter — See “AppleScript (and related files).”
ISO 9660 File Access — See “Apple CD-ROM (and related files).”
LaserWriter (and related files) — These extensions are printer drivers — they teach your Mac to communicate with specific printer models. Obviously, you need only the one (or ones) that matches your printer (or printers). Without the driver, you can’t print. Throw all the others away. Other printer drivers that probably got dumped into your Extensions folder are various StyleWriter, LaserWriter Select, ImageWriter drivers, and so on.
A better mouse trap
Another actual, true transcript of a call to Apple’s Austin, TX 800-SOS-APPL help line.
While troubleshooting for printer problems with a customer, the Apple agent noticed that simple tasks were taking an inordinately long time.
Caller: This COMPUTER makes me SO mad! EVERY TIME I need to use the mouse I have to move my DESK back from the wall, UNPLUG the keyboard and connect the MOUSE. HOW FRUSTRATING!!
Agent: Ma’am, The mouse plugs into the keyboard.
Caller: You’re kidding — you’ve GOT to be KIDDING. Oh, my God, I just knew there was something wrong. I’ve been using it this way for over a month!
MacinTalk Pro — Included with System 7.5 and later: lets your Mac speak text you’ve typed into SimpleText. Requires the Voices folder in your Extensions folder, too.
Macintosh Guide — See “Apple Guide (and related files).”
MacTCP DNR — See “AppleShare (and related files).”
MacTCP Token Ring — See “AppleShare (and related files).”
Mailbox Extension — See “PowerTalk Extension (and related files).”
Mount IDE Drive — For Macs with IDE-style hard drives only (such as PowerBook 150 and 630-series machines). This extension is designed to mount (bring onto the screen) your internal hard drive’s icon if you’re starting up from some other disk. (Available from online services, if you don’t have it.)
My Speech Macros — See “Speech Setup (and related files).”
Network Extension — See “AppleShare (and related files).
ObjectSupportLib — For Power Macintosh only; lets several running programs exchange Apple Event messages regarding shared libraries. See Chapter 13 for details.
PlainTalk Speech Recognition — See “Speech Recognition (and related files)”
PowerBook 150 Update — A patch to fix a bug on PowerBook 150s in which the modem sucks up too much battery power while asleep. (Available from online services if you don’t have it.)
PowerBook Guide Additions — See “Apple Guide (and related files).”
PowerBook Monitors Extension — See “Quadra Monitors extension (and related files).”
PowerPC Finder Update — This extension, for Power Macs only, is the master switch for letting a Power Mac run “native-PowerPC” software. It also adds a new segment to the dialog box that appears when you highlight a Power Mac-native program and choose Get Info from the File menu. The new segment contains a message that tells you how much actual RAM you’ll save if you turn on virtual memory. See Chapters 9 and 13 for details.
PowerPC Monitors Extension — See “Quadra Monitors extension (and related files).”
PowerTalk Extension (and related files) — PowerTalk is a complex, very technical set of interrelated software components for use in office networks. It’s described more fully in Chapter 32. In brief, however, PowerTalk’s purpose is to provide a single password, and a single folder on your desktop, to collect e-mail, fax, and voice messages from a variety of different sources and services.
Some of the PowerTalk components you’ll find in your System Folder after installation are: Catalogs Extension (lets you create and manage icons full of addressee data called catalogs); Mailbox Extension (creates the Mailbox icon on your desktop to store incoming e-mails, faxes, etc.); PowerTalk Manager (manages the Mailbox and other services); Serial Tool (lets your PowerTalk software dial the modem to retrieve e-mail); and others.
PowerTalk Guide — See “Apple Guide (and related files).”
PowerTalk Manager — See “PowerTalk Extension (and related files).”
Printer Descriptions — This folder contains PPDs (PostScript Printer Descriptions) for individual printer models. It’s used only by the LaserWriter 8 printer driver (see Chapter 25). Feel free to open this folder and discard the icons for any printers you don’t plan to use.
Printer Share — This handy extension lets you share one StyleWriter among several networked Macs. See Chapter 25 for details.
PrintMonitor — The only full-fledged application in your Extensions folder. For details on PrintMonitor, see Chapter 25.
Quadra AV Monitors Extension — See “Quadra Monitors extension (and related files).”
Quadra Monitors Extension (and related files) — This optional extension provides your Monitors control panel with specific information about the Quadra’s (or Centris’s) video features. The only way you can see its effect is by opening the Monitors control panel and clicking the Options button. There you may see some additional choices — such as the ability to change the gamma settings (see “Monitors” in the first half of this chapter), which are specific to your Mac model’s family.
Other model-specific Monitors Extensions include PowerBook Monitors Extension, PowerPC Monitors Extension, and so on.
QuickDraw GX — The cornerstone of the vast QuickDraw GX fonts-and-printing empire, provided with System 7.5 and later. See Chapter 25 for details.
For now, note that when you install QuickDraw GX, you may notice a curious change to the icons in your Chooser: they all have the letters GX added to their names. Yes, it’s true: the QuickDraw GX extension hides the icons of all your normal printer drivers.
If you want your original drivers to return to the Chooser — for example, if your laser printer or software doesn’t work with the GX drivers — the fix is simple. Just restart your Mac with the QuickDraw GX extension turned off. (Turn it off by using Extensions Manager or Conflict Catcher, included with Mac SECRETS.) Your normal icons return, and it will be the GX drivers’ turn to vanish.
QuickTime — When you add this extension to your System Folder, your Mac can run programs that record, edit, and play digital movies — QuickTime movies. It also helps graphics programs open certain kinds of compressed graphics formats, such as JPEG. Read Chapter 23 for details on this amazing movie technology.
QuickTime Musical Instruments — This amazing file contains the realistic sounds of 30 musical instruments. In conjunction with the QuickTime extension — and a program like Movie Player 2.0 — it lets you open standard MIDI music files and play them using the Mac as a synthesizer. For the first time, the Mac is free from its age-old four-notes-simultaneously chord limit. See Chapter 23 for details.
This extension comes only with the CD-ROM version of System 7.5, not with the floppy-disk version.
QuickTime Power Plug — For Power Macs only. Adds PowerPC-native programming for QuickTime movies. Doesn’t help playback especially, but dramatically shortens the time it takes to create (compile and save) QuickTime movies of your own.
Record Button Extension — Man, did we ever have to dig around to find out what this was (in response to a reader’s request). Turns out that it comes with the Apple Adjustable Keyboard (the weird-looking one that splits in half). This keyboard has special buttons for controlling the Sound control panel: volume up, volume down, and — you guessed it — Record. The Record Button Extension is what allows the Adjustable Keyboard to send signals to the Sound control panel.
Not needed for Power Mac and AV models.
Scripting Additions — See “AppleScript (and related files).”
SCSI Manager 4.3 — This extension, part of System 7.5 and later, is the software that lets AV and Power Mac models take advantage of their faster SCSI circuitry, resulting in faster data transfer between SCSI devices (see Chapter 30 for more on SCSI). It only works if the software driver for each SCSI device (each hard drive, for example) has itself been upgraded to work with SCSI Manager.
If you don’t have an AV or Power Mac, and if your drives aren’t SCSI Manager-upgraded, don’t use this extension. It’s been known to cause conflicts, especially on non-AV Quadras.
Serial Tool — See “PowerTalk Extension (and related files).”
Shortcuts — See “Apple Guide (and related files).”
Sound Manager — This extension, for pre-System 7.5 systems only, brings to your Mac an improved package of sound recording-and-playback features. The most immediate changes to your Mac are a new, glassier Simple Beep alert sound; and a new Sound control panel (see “Sound,” earlier in this chapter).
Any number of installations introduce the Sound Manager to your System Folder: one of the hardware System updates, System 7 Pro, System 7.5, and so on.
Speech Guide Additions — See “Apple Guide (and related files).”
Speech Recognition (and related files) — The Power Mac and AV lines, among other features, introduce speech recognition: you speak into your Mac’s microphone, issuing orders, and the Mac obeys. A separate set of programs provides text-to-speech features — which can run on any recent Mac — in which the Mac reads out loud, in a pseudo-human voice, what you’ve typed into SimpleText. See Chapter 13 for details on both features.
These speech features add all kinds of junk to your Extensions folder: several TTS Voice files (the voices used for text-to-speech); SR North American English (dictionary for recognized terms); SR Monitor (listens to the mike); System Speech Rules (teaches the Mac how English works); PlainTalk Text-To-Speech (the heart of the text-to-speech feature); My Speech Macros (new spoken commands you’ve created, using the Speech Macro Editor program, for the Mac to understand); and so on. See Chapter 13 for details on this technology.
SR Monitor — See “Speech Recognition (and related files).”
StyleWriter — See “LaserWriter (and related files).”
System AV and Video Startup — Exclusively for those lucky Mac owners of models that can make QuickTime digital movies from your home camcorder footage.
System Speech Rules — See “Speech Recognition (and related files).”
Thread Manager — A pre-System 7.5 extension that opens the way for certain programs (of which very few exist) to perform one task — like initializing a floppy disk — while you continue to work on something else. Not needed with System 7.5.
TokenTalk Phase 2 — See “AppleShare (and related files).”
TokenTalk Prep — See “AppleShare (and related files).”
TTS Male Voice, etc. — See “Speech Recognition (and related files).”
Tuner — When Apple unleashed System 7 upon the world, there were great cries of joy from power users. From ordinary folks, however, there was considerable consternation: System 7 was a memory hog, produced frequent out-of-memory errors, and seemed to slow everything. Some people reported that printing took four times longer than it had under System 6.
To improve the situation, Apple released a disk called System Tune-Up. This disk contained a new Chooser and new drivers for the LaserWriter and the original StyleWriter, which gives the Mac faster, more reliable printing power.
The Tune-Up disk also provided an extension called System 7 Tuner. When installed in your System Folder, this extension patched System 7 (superseded specific portions of the code) to provide smarter memory management and, therefore, fewer out-of-memory messages. (What a lovely thought — to be able to patch one’s work after it’s been released to the public. Can you imagine our sending you replacement sheets to paste over specific pages of this book?)
There’s a famous story involving the Tune-Up extension (see the True Fact sidebar). The punch line, however, is important: if you use System 7.0 or 7.0.1 (or, for Performas, 7.0.1p), you definitely need Tune-Up 1.1.1 (or a later system version altogether). Any version of Tune-Up with fewer decimal places or fewer 1s needs replacing, urgently. You can get Tune-Up from an on-line service like America Online, or, possibly, from a user group. You don’t need the Tune-Up if you have System 7.1 or later.
So how do you know whether you have the Tuner installed? Choose About This Macintosh from the Apple menu. If a bullet (•) appears after the System version number, it’s installed. The bullet doesn’t, however, indicate which version of the Tuner you have. If it’s not 1.1.1, it won’t protect you from the vanishing-folders bug. (To find out what version you have, highlight the Tuner’s icon in your System Folder and choose Get Info from the File menu.)
Recipe for disaster
Shortly after System 7 made its debut, frequent visitors to services like America Online noticed alarming complaints from Mac users: apparently, people began to see folders disappearing from the screen, sometimes right before their eyes!
It turns out that a fairly whopping System 7 bug was responsible for this pattern. Fortunately, this bug was corrected by the Tune-Up 1.1.1 system extension. Unfortunately, Tune-Up 1.1.1 arrived on the scene too late for many. It couldn’t restore any vanished folders; it could only prevent the problem from happening in the future.
Here, for history’s (or warning’s) sake, is the recipe for disaster. The following steps will make your files disappear if you use System 7.0 or 7.0.1 and you haven’t installed Tune-Up 1.1.1.
Don’t try this at home; don’t try this at all.
* Open your hard-drive window.
* Click the desktop.
* Create a new folder and name it. For now, we’ll call this folder Death Folder.
* Drag the new folder to your hard drive.
* Insert a floppy disk and drag a file from the floppy into the Death Folder.
That’s it: when the copying is finished, all folders whose names fall alphabetically after “Death Folder” will disappear!
You can resurrect them if you know their names by using the Find command. Otherwise, they’re gone for good.
Note that System 7 Tuner versions 1.0 and 1.1 do not solve the disappearing-folder bug; you need 1.1.1 (or System 7.1).
Type III Battery — Lets your PowerBook take advantage of the Type III battery’s extended life.
Video Guide Additions — See “Apple Guide (and related files).”
WorldScript Power Adapter — This extension lets your Power Macintosh use WorldScript Language Kits (if you’ve bought any).
