[G4] Strange G4 issue solved

[Gregory Cortelyou]

Thanks Al for that excellent suggestion. I will indeed post this up on 
the forum. Posting it here was also done primarily as a service to 
others who might be facing the same issue. To be honest I don't know 
what most of the logs written in Console mean. Somewhere along the line 
I learned to look there if you are experiencing crashes or problems. 
Some of it is in a peculiar type of plain English, at least clear 
enough so that I could see that major problems were surrounding ATI 
software every any application had to do anything at all. I basically 
do check for updates and patches on all non Apple software on a regular 
basis. But I know people like my mom with her iMac has no interest in 
doing anything like that. She is not alone. Then again most people I 
know use Windows and just accept the unacceptable daily in a blissful 
sort of ignorance.
Greg

On Dec 15, 2004, at 11:55 AM, Al Poulin wrote:

> 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.
>
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