[G4] Strange G4 issue solved

[Al Poulin]

Gregory:

It seems it would be a good service if you posted the problem and the 
fix to the Apple forum if you have not already done it.

Apple posted the 10.3.6 update on 11/5/04.  You say Raedon's patch for 
ATI software was in early November.  Perhaps that was in direct 
response to 10.3.6.  There could have been problems on your G4 after 
10.3.6 which you did not notice until Apple's security update made 
things apparent.

Apple sets standards for coding software which Raedon may not have 
followed until after the 10.3.6 updater.  Apple does not test its 
software against the thousands of possible third party modifications to 
its computers.  That is left up to us in realtime.  A lot of 
speculation here.

But the hard question you raise is what about the people who would not 
know how to troubleshoot such a problem.  I have no clue what to look 
for in Console mode, which I understand is also called Single User mode 
in Terminal.  For folks like me, I guess the lesson is to check the web 
sites of all manufacturers of third part equipment and software 
installed on our Macs after any experience like yours.
>
Al Poulin
Anger, hate, and revenge are for the devil, forgiveness is for God, 
proactive self-defense is for the rest of us.

On Dec 13, 2004, at 9:46 PM, Gregory Cortelyou wrote:

> I have an antique G4 350 AGP that I am in love with. It has served me 
> well for several years and hope it continues to for several more. 
> About 10 days ago I installed the most recent security updates over 
> 10.3.6 and immediately noticed things had slowed down considerably. 
> Especially web browsing in Safari. I repaired permissions as always. A 
> restart helped but things were not as before. Of course I found a 
> whole bunch of people on the Apple forum with the usual all sorts of 
> horrible problems but not anything like mine. Things seemed better for 
> a while, then over the weekend it got really bad. Web pages would take 
> forever to load (I have a speedy Verizon DSL) and some of the games I 
> have were impossible. Mail was acting strange. I thought I had a 
> virus. But no. So I checked in Console and saw LOTS of problems with 
> ATI software not responding properly. I have a Radeon 8500 Mac edition 
> which I installed about 2 years ago and never had any problems. I 
> downloaded their latest update patch last night, restarted and all was 
> back to even better than normal. Everything is faster than ever 
> (knocking on wood) and I am pretty happy. So, why would this happen? 
> What would I have done if I didn't know enough to look in console and 
> known that I had that card, etc? Most people I know don't know 
> anything about that stuff. The update to the ATI software was put out 
> in early November, well before the Apple security update that 
> apparently caused problems with my video. And it can be installed on 
> any system above 10.2.8. Has anybody else had any experience like 
> this? I am grateful for the easy fix. But I wonder why it happened.