Common Sense

Common sense encompasses most of the steps you need to take to ensure that your Mac works properly.

First - Back up. Keep a current backup of everything you want to keep. Usually it is not necessary to back up your applications and System contents, 'cause you'll want to reinstall these things from the original disks after a lethal crash, but a full mirror image backup can get you back to work very quickly if you have one.

Second - Make sure the environment it is set up in is actually safe and appropriate for it. You Mac doesn't like dusty places. The dust builds up inside, blocking off air circulation and raising the internal temperature. Similarly, sitting in from of the window in full sunlight may be comfy for you, but may get too warm for the machine. Setting your computer under a house plant is probably not a good idea unless the plant is a cactus. Make sure you have a good quality surge protector on the power line.

Third - Keep the cables behind your Mac under control. A rat's nest of cables increases the chances that one of the cables will become kinked or get pulled inadvertently. SCSI cables are extremely sensitive to kinks, so treat them with care. If you have a lot of SCSI devices, place them as close together as you can, and use the shortest cables you can get to connect them. If you have a PowerPC Mac, invest in double shielded SCSI cables and an active terminator.

Fourth - Keep your extensions to a minimum. The more stuff you have loaded, the more likely one of them will not get along with one of the others. Be particularly wary of extensions that make global changes to the machines basic behaviour or appearance (Aaron and similar extensions patch a lot of different traps, and thereby are quite likely to interfere with something somewhere.)

Fifth - Be really wary of getting anything with a version number ending in zero. This is the version where the bugs that slipped through beta testing will show up. While we're at it - don't beta test new products unless you know what you are doing and can afford to spend time rebuilding after a lethal crash.