Ask Dave by Dave Hamilton He from whom all Mac knowledge flows... Font Problems, Mac/PC Networking, & Upgrade Advice January 28th, 2000 Hidy-Ho Net-Neighbor! Welcome back for this week's edition of Ask Dave! We've got a strange disk request message that keeps popping up, we talk about burning Windows data to CD's on a Mac, and we discuss the effectiveness of G3 upgrades. Have a question of your own? Either e-mail me or ask everyone in the forums. Enjoy! John Thelin writes, "I have a problem with Adobe Illustrator always asking for my Fonts Zip disk when I start it - I get similar effects on IE and various other programs from time to time, but it is in Illustrator that it is most annoying, and I have to push the 'cancel' button fifteen to twenty times every time I start it. "Now, I'm running ATM, which I use to enable certain fonts from the aforementioned disk (I don't have the HD space just yet to keep them all locally), when they're required, but I always turn them off before ejecting the disk. I've tried starting Illustrator with ATM open and then disabling all non-System fonts and then quitting Illustrator, or starting it with the asked-for-disk in and then starting ATM and enabling all used non-system fonts, disabling them, etc. - any number of combinations of that, and nothing seems to end the incessant 'Please insert the disk Fonts 1'. I've tried trashing the Illustrator preferences, but no luck. "So, what the heck is going on here? Any ideas?" Hmmm... this is *certainly* a good one! Lets think about what we have here. Certainly it would stand to reason that it's font-related, both from the application you mention AND the name of the disk itself. However, perhaps that's NOT it. The way to test, of course, would be to disable ATM and try the same thing. If it doesn't happen, then it is ATM-related. But I don't think it is. I think that some part of the System (perhaps some 3rd party extension) has saved temp files on that zip disk, and THAT's why you're getting asked for it. Assuming that disabling ATM doesn't do it, try disabling the rest of your extensions and see if it happens. A last thought -- you don't have RAMDoubler enabled do you? If so, I seem to remember it asking for a "temp" drive in one version or another, and that may be what's going on here. Let us know how this turns out, eh? Take it to the forums and keep us all involved. Maarten Polman writes, "My father has a Mac with a CD-writer attached to it and I have a PC. We are connected to each other with a 10Base-T network, but how can I see and copy MY files, the PC files, to his computer, the Mac, to write them on a CD? Is it difficult to do this? By the way, he's got a SCSI CD-writer and I don't have a SCSI card in my PC so can't use it directly." Well, the first part of this goes back to my columns on PC MacLan Connect and DAVE. In a nutshell, PC MacLan Connect will let your PC talk the "Mac" networking protocols, and DAVE will let your Mac talk "Windows" networking protocols. Once you've got either one of those running, you can copy files back and forth. As far as burning CD's, this is certainly possible. Assuming your Dad is using something like Adaptec's Toast to burn CD's, he can burn ISO9660 CD's on his Mac -- that's the format that your PC will need. So just copy the files to a folder on the Mac, organize it the way you like, and then burn an ISO9660 CD with the Mac and it should work great! Rudolph W. Link writes, "I have a Power Mac 6500/300. I am thinking of getting a Crescendo G3/L2 card. Is this a good idea? Would it allow me to use the software IBM'S Via Voice." Upgrading to a G3 has been one of the best things I ever did to extend the lifecycle of my PowerCenter 150 (which is what I'm still using to this day!). Adding a USB and a FireWire card were the next two things, but hey, that's not really relevant here, is it? Assuming you have peripherals (ADB and SCSI) that you want to continue using, and/or your budget doesn't afford you a G4, then by all means, this is the way to go. It keeps you in the game without spending a whole lot of money at once. That said, I would not expect my machine to run ViaVoice all that well. I know what the requirements are, and to be completely fair I haven't tried it on this machine, but I have had experience with that type of software in the past and have not had good luck with it on anything but a REALLY fast machine. Perhaps this means it's time for a ViaVoice review here -- better to give them a fair shake, eh? That's it for this week, folks. Tune in next time for more web-tastic answers, or send in a question of your own! You can either post to the Ask Dave Forums, or you can e-mail me directly at askdave@macobserver.com. P.S. Have a Nice Day. is President and CEO of The Mac Observer, Inc. He has worked in the computer industry as a consultant, trainer, network engineer, webmaster, and a programmer for most of the last 10 years. During that time he has worked on the Mac, all the various Windows flavors, Be, a few brands of Unix, and it is rumored he once saw an OS/2 machine in action. Before that he ran some of the earliest Bulletin Board systems, but most of the charges have since been dropped, and not even the FBI requests that he check in more than twice a year. Ask Dave is here to answer all the Mac questions you have. Networking, system conflicts, hardware, you ask it, he can answer it. He is the person from whom all Mac knowledge flows.... 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