Q I have a file stuck in the Trash. It’s not locked but I still can’t empty the Trash. What can I do about it?
Hopefully, you have already checked the permissions on the file. You can do that by selecting the file and choosing “Get Info” from the File menu. On the info pallet that opens you can click the triangle beside “Ownership & Permissions” to see who owns it and what the permissions are. To change the owner or permissions you can click the lock to unlock the pull-down menus and change the settings.
On the command line you can also change the owner with the “chown” command and change permissions with “chmod”. Using the Get Info pallet can do the job for most users.
If you still can’t delete the file you may find that the “immutable” flag has been set. This flag is used to protect files from changing or from being deleted. Open the Terminal, and navigate to your file (You can drag the file into the Terminal to save from typing the path to the file.) To check if there is an immutable flag type “ls -alo” at the prompt. The “-o” shows the immutable flag and you will see “uchg” beside the file.
To change the immutable flag type “chflags nouchg filename” to unlock it and “chflag uchg filename” to lock it.
Once you resolved the ownership, permissions and flags you should be able to empty the Trash.
Q For some reason my keyboard keeps acting up. When I type a slash I get a “é”. Other keys are wrong. Do I need a new keyboard or can this be fixed.
No your keyboard is fine. The culprit is the International settings. It is a common problem with Macs that are sold in Canada. For some reason when you install MacOS X or buy a new Mac with MacOSX installed the folks at Apple assume that your using a French Canadian keyboard. When you enter the name of a Canadian city the computer sets up a slew of Canadian preferences. The keyboard remaps the keys to match the French Canadian keyboard which has easier access to accented characters. The date formats sometimes switch to French and printers that use “Rendezvous” sharing show up as “Bonjour” printers (Perhaps someone should tell Apple that “Rendezvous” is already a French word.)
To fix your problem I recommend that you change a few settings in the “International” pane in the System Preferences. Begin by going to “Input Menu” tab and unchecking the “Canadian CSA” keyboard layout (Incidentally, holding “Apple and Option” will flip between Keyboard layouts – Yes, it’s the same keys used by Adobe to magnify.)
Once you fixed the “Input Menu”, visit the “Formats” tab and change the “Region” to “United States” unless you like the date and number formats that Apple has chosen. (Again I have no idea where they get their info from!)
With Macs that you’ve purchase the setting may be set but you can avoid this in future if you buy another Mac or if you install a new copy of MacOS X. When you put in the city and province enter the Canadian city where you live or work, then when the installer asks which keyboard layout to choose select “United States”.
Q I want to move to MacOS X but I have some SCSI devices that I need. I’ve heard that SCSI cards don’t work on MacOSX. Are there any that work?
Unfortunately many of us have the same problem. There are a lot of FireWire and USB devices that make it hard to hang onto SCSI devices, Zips, Jaz drives and Scanners et al. But you may also have hard drives and tape drives that you need. Most of us switched over to Adaptec cards when buying G3s and G4s. Adaptec is not supporting MacOS X and the drivers that Apple has included don’t work reliably. Other SCSI card manufacturers, Orange Micro and FWB have either gone out of business or been acquired by other companies, so drivers are not available.
We’ve recently had great success with SCSI cards from ATTO Technologies. Their ExpressPCI UL3S and UL4S are the only cards recommended by EMC Dantz makers of Retrospect Backup software and LaCie, makers of SCSI tape drives. If you have a mission critical application like a Tape Library or a RAID then you may want to get an ATTO card. Otherwise, I would take the money that it would cost for the card and invest in FireWire products.
