I futzed around with various Mac settings yesterday and discovered at least one which keeps RD5 stable. Turn off all virtual memory, open RD5 and change the prefs to not use system memory and not display disk access (Norton has a similar DiskLight feature which causes problems). Remember that RD5 only needs 24M to run. Cut the minimum and maximum memory requirements to 24 and 25M and as long as you've got that much memory free, RD5 won't even bother trying to create a scratch disk. The probs I've had in the recent past (before and after upgrading from OS 9.0.4 to 9.1) were all related to menus freezing the program -- menu bar menus, dropdown menus, it made no diff; sooner or later a menu would hang the machine. In one case the menu bar was littered with nonexistent menus with gibberish titles. If anyone else here has stories / solutions to share relating to RDS on the Mac I'd like to hear them.

There was a Metcreations update to RDS for OS 9 that somebody put on their website, but I assume you applied that and still found it to be unstable. I think somebody else mentioned disabling file exchange as well.

Actually, without that patch RDS is just plain unusable.

I'm just now (re) installing RD 5.5 for my son to start learning 3D with (I've moved on to Lightwave). I can't even get it to start. Where is the patch available? LW is NOT a good starter program. RDS was very good to me as a beginner.

You can get the "patches" here: http://raystew.virtualave.net/downloads/os9fix.html

Thanks very much. I'm delighted my son's interested in doing some of the things I do. This will encourage him.

Come to think of it, I'm also delighted that I can access the 850 models on my Ray Dream CD again .