This I found stashed away on an old CD i had made. Maybe it will help someone out. Set all machines to maximum disk cache in the Memory control panel. Eliminate all unneeded extensions and control panels. The larger the disk cache, the more of the system file is stored in memory, and the larger a section of a large application is also stored in memory. Elimination of extensions and control panels reduces the amount of overhead and interrupts on the machine -- toys and neat desktop tricks can slow down a machine 5-10%. Especially important is the elimination of all unused printer drivers -- the MacOS constantly scans for these extra printers, even when not selected. By reducing the search and not loading those resources on bootup, you can increase performance visibly. Use CD-ROM Toolkit for machines with CD's. Apple's driver is crap -- bulky and slow, constantly polling and taking up resources. CDT is written correctly. Find, buy, steal, beg or borrow Conflict Catcher -- not only is it a good way to easily manage your extensions on the machine, but it also has the ability to add to the system heap (guarantee system heap option). This is very important, because it's not addressed properly in any MacOS release for prepress users . . . the system heap should be set to 512k (ignore the percentage). This increases system performance visibly. Be vigilant in optimizing the hard drives . . . keep them clean, and running fast. 1% fragmentation of system files leads to a 10% slow down in performance. Drives in a prepress house should be optimized and checked very Friday before everyone goes home.The first two weeks will take a couple of hours -- after this it will take 15 minutes. Make it the last thing done before anyone goes home for the weekend. [Norton Speed Disk 3.5 and later is much faster than older optimizers. dk] Reduce the number of menu patches, especially in PPC mode. If you look at theConflict Catcher report, you'll be able to see how patches to the menu bar end up slowing down PPC functions because they're PPC code patched over with 68k code. Even CC does this itself, so remove the menu pull down for CC, and try to make sure no one else is using menu patches like this. Using 7.6.1 or lower, Now Menus (part of Now Utilities) is a good menu solution, while every other menu option I've found is a literal disaster. If you're using 8.1, then FinderPop is a better solution, using the Contextual Menu Manager (Pop up menu). For machines without a PowerPC processor, remove all errant PPC code from the system file using a program called PowerPCheck from Hyperarchive. It will remove roughly 1.6MB of the system file, making the system run 30% faster. Of course, if this is a PPC upgraded Mac, you need that code in PPC mode. For all conventional 68040 machines. 8.1 is a real boon. 8.1, part of the NeXTStep project from NeXT, is closer to pure 040 code, and routinely acts much faster than 7.5.5 or 7.6.1. If possible, standardize on this version. If you have 030 machines, don't go beyond 7.5.5 -- 7.6 and 7.6.1 are a disaster. If you run Photoshop, you should create a 4MB RAM disk that is always active. Set the Primary Scratch disk to this 4MB RAM disk, and the Secondary to whatever hard drive you desire. The reason for this is simple. Photoshop has it's own virtual memory scheme, and even though you might have 80 or 90MB attributed to this application, it will always store it's toolboxes and filters in the scratch file, no matter what. The organization of this file is unique -- all the sort headers, plus the active tools, are always at the top of the file -- about the first 2 to 3MB. If the RAM disk is used as the first scratch disk, all of these tools are instantly available in memory, and you'll see the difference the first time you perform a filter such as a Gaussian blur. If you've noticed, the OS isn't quick to respond and update when a filter in Photoshop is performed. When you set all of the settings in the filter, then hit "OK" to apply it, there is a five or ten second delay -- usually accompanied by a white square where the box was, and you continue to wait for the "Performing Filter" window to pop up with the thermometer bar telling you just how much has been accomplished. With a 4MB RAM disk, this is almost instantaneous, because the sort table, and the filter, are immediately available for use. You will notice that filter functions will also work 10-20% faster as well, as rebuilding the sort table during a filter function is not processor intensive, but is instead SCSI intensive -- Processing on the filter must be stopped to rebuild this sort table every few moments -- with the sort being instant now, the filter basically goes along unfettered. This is the most important tip I can give to Photoshop users. If virtual memory is used by the MacOS for other reasons, virtual memory should always set to a factor of 32. Hence a machine with 72MB of memory needs to have VM set to at least 96, or 128MB. This is because the MacOS prefers to make 4MB block transfers, and the sort table inside VM is much easier to work with if it's a direct multiple, instead of having to figure out how to deal with an extra MB floating at the end of the file, or 3MB outstanding. While I don't normally support VM in a prepress house, there are sometimes reasons it must be used. Lastly, I realize that by creating a RAM disk and setting cache to 8MB, I'm sacrificing 12MB of crucial prepress memory. But I still stand by this in a prepress house -- if you're trying to pull those extra hp out of the machine, these are necessary steps. Since you're in a prepress house anyway, getting a bit more money just to increase the memory on these machines shouldn't be that hard -- for the performance it gives, the extra memory, allocated the way I've stated above, will increase computer performance by about 50%.

DISCLAIMER: none of the following applies to OS X. 1) Disk Cache should never be set higher than about 5% of installed physical RAM. Setting it higher than this will degrade performance by eating up RAM unnecessarily. In most cases, Apple's automatic setting is fine, particularly with today's faster drives, but on older Macs where the default is 128K, you should have 128K of disk cache for approximately every 2 MB of installed RAM, or a meg of disk cache for every 16 MB of installed RAM up to a total of no more than 4 MB. 2) FWB's CD-ROM toolkit was a nice piece of software seven years ago. It's horribly slow now, and Apple's CD-ROM drivers have gotten FAR better since that advice was first widely disseminated around the time of System 7.5 and the beginnings of the clone era. If you absolutely need a third-party CD-ROM driver kit, I suggest Intech's CD-ROM SpeedTools, which is much less buggy than FWB and tends to cause fewer problems. 3) Conflict Catcher is great *IF* you can find the proper version for your OS, but versions after 3.x don't work on Mac OS 8 and up, and the version compatible with Mac OS 8 doesn't work well with 7.x or 9.x. I don't think they bothered updating for 9.x. 4) Fragmentation is the most overrated problem in the world. I've been using Macs since 1988 and went through a two-year phase where I was defragging every two to four weeks without *ANY* noticeable performance gains, so I quit doing it and haven't had any negative impact on my work since. It's not worth the time or trouble to do it on Macs, although Windoze machines definitely need it. Using Norton prior to 4.0 on any Mac with an OS after 7.6.1 is a VERY BAD IDEA and MAY RESULT IN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE DRIVE. (By the way, stop stealing copyrighted pieces from Dan Knight. Do that again and you won't be posting here any more.) 5) 8.1 is HORRIBLE on 68Ks as far as speed goes; the same goes with 7.5.x and 7.6.x. 8.1 has more PPC code in it than any previous OS version, and is therefore better than 7.anything for PPCs, but for 68020s and higher, the fastest OS is 7.1. Stability varies somewhat depending on configuration but System 7.1 tends to work out best for most people. And 8.1 has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with NeXT; I'm not sure where this ridiculous misinformation is coming from. 6) 7.5.x is HORRIBLY UNSTABLE. If you have a copy of 7.6.1, USE IT INSTEAD, if you insist on using a 7.5.x-like OS. 7.1 will be much faster, but you're welcome to do whatever you like, however unintelligent that might be. 7) The RAM disk tip for Photoshop is pretty sound. 8) VM for the Mac OS only needs to be assigned in 4 MB multiples, although for best performance on PPCs, it should be set to 1 MB more than installed physical RAM, which will eliminate the performance hit of VM while reducing the RAM usage of PPC applications. p

Pickle, just lighten up a bit, I didn't anywhere say I owned these pieces, I just found them in an archive. And this forum isn't just for "OS X"...it's for "Macs".... I appreciate your wanting to be concise, precise and knowledgeable in your replys but there is a point where someone gets rather offended because they simply can't post without someone taking it apart. If that being the case is my gratitude for being a Mac user then perhaps it's time to review where *your* loyalties lie, with your own self-interpretation of how other's comments make you look or that the sense of community somehow challenges you in some apsect. This is supposed to be a community, communities share. Maybe a small mistake here and there, but nothing we should get all into a big huff over. So please, try not to shoot down every nice guy who wants to just be a mac user and help out. Regards, Ciricon

"The information on Computing.Net is the opinions of its users. Such opinions may not be accurate and they are to be used at your own risk. Computing.Net cannot verify the validity of the statements made on this site." HowTo's, Tip's & Trick's and even software titles get picked apart all the time. How else would we know if something works or not? When someone offers a different opinion its not neccesarily meant as a flame.

I put the disclaimer there because I didn't want to waste the time of the increasing numbers of people who visit this forum for OS X help. Why read something that won't matter to you, and might only confuse you further when you can't find anything referenced for your OS? This is *NOT* a forum for violating other people's copyrights, and that includes anything that a poster doesn't own the rights to or have written permission to disseminate further. It's not MY rule. It's the law of the United States, and if these fora become known as a haven for copyright violators, the DMCA will come down like a big sledgehammer on the server and then you won't have your precious community any more. As moderator, it's my job to protect that from people who, out of ignorance or malice, would break the law. As far as the critiquing of tips, well, a person posting tips that are five years old should *expect* that a goodly number of them have changed quite dramatically in the last five years. In fact, I'm not sure I can think of any but the most general tips from five years ago that still apply (buy as much RAM as you can afford, for instance) to Macs today. p

Fair enough. I should have put a lil note next to them where I found them etc. "these are not mine" and that they were originally for "68k", my fault. My apologies. Btw, know of nay good ways to speed up a 6100? It's currently running Filemaker pro on 8.1. I've got 250mb hard drive and 40mb ram, should i move up to 8.5 or 9?

Post that in a new thread - this one doesn't need to diverge so much from its important topic ;) p