Forums » Bugs

PowerBook G4 Ti Crashes

Apr 22, 2006 SNGecko link
I've been playing VO for about 12 hours now and I've had trouble with my PB G4 Ti crashing to computer... not just the program, but the whole machine. I'm running the latest Mac OS X update (10.4.6) on a PB G4 Ti 1GHz 1GB Ram, 64Mb video. The graphics and framerate are very good, then all of a sudden in the middle of travelling around the universe -- BAM -- the whole thing freezes. I wish I had some better information about the crash, but that's all I've got. I do know that it will run on a PB G4 Aluminum -- but since the latest VO update, the framerate crashes so bad, I can't really play on that platform anymore. Please help me out, I love the game!

-Scott Newman
"Serpico Romani"
Apr 22, 2006 raybondo link
Is the machine overheating and throttling the cpu down?
Apr 23, 2006 SNGecko link
Hi Raybondo-
After an hour of digging deep through the message archives and another hour of making changes, I'm back up to GLORIOUS speed WITHOUT crashing! Here's the issue at hand -- especially pertinent for those with Macs with some ATI cards!
My video card is an ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 - 64Mb. Last August (2005) ATI developed a firmware patch for their Apple-configured ATI cards. There is also an piece of ATI-developed software to control the newly jazzed video card. It allows users like me to use AntiAliasing and Vertical Sync in Vendetta -- back up to 60fps on an old PowerBook G4.

The new software can be found near here (read carefully which systems are affected):
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894&task=knowledge&folderID=27

-Serpico Romani
Apr 23, 2006 Whistler link
You're the best! Thanks for posting the fix.
Apr 24, 2006 SNGecko link
New Issue? Perhaps I posted too hastily.

My PB still crashes. The video card firmware update certainly sped things up -- whoa -- but it still crashes. After I updated the firmware a couple of nights ago, I played like crazy, like several hours without a glitch (late at night -- 1am). This afternoon, after the update brought me up to today's client standard, the program and computer completely froze up. By the time I hard rebooted, I discovered the bots had no trouble destroying my out of control carcasse. Grr.

Anyway, this may be time-of-day dependent (i.e., server busy, or some such). It doesn't appear to be CPU-usage related since I've played a lot longer on more complex missions and been fine. Strangely, I tried a mining mission in a Centaur MkII, and it froze hard a couple of minutes into mining operations. I repeated this several times to confirm the phenomenon (and justify my annoyance).

Does time-of-day seem to affect some PowerBooks out there?

-Serpico Romani
Apr 24, 2006 SNGecko link
New Update on this problem.

It affects Centaur Mk II mining in GR
It affects Hog MkII fighting in Deneb
It does not affect Atlas Mk II in GR
It does not affect SVG anywhere known.

This looks like one for the devs.

-Serpico Romani
May 02, 2006 SNGecko link
Final Post:

Stupid me -- just remember to turn all the graphics settings to minimum before panicing. That fixed all my problems. I'm in the process of turning them up one at a time to determine the optimal settings. Thanks Raybondo for the help!

-Serpico Romani
May 08, 2006 VoidCadet link
It's not just PowerBook, my Mac Mini G4 does the same thing. It seems especially prone when using the mining drill (turning it on, turning it off), but it also happens when being tossed by an ion storm, in battle, picking up crates, or just flying around. Never inside a station, though.

Funny thing, after it froze when I turned on the drill, I left it a bit to see if it'd fix itself. When I restarted the game, the cargo hold was full and the rock had gone from 10 K to over 100 K. I think until you turn off the computer, the server keeps you doing whatever you were doing when it froze.

-- David Cote
May 14, 2006 netherby link
Getting the same problem on Dual 1.25 G4 with OSX 10.4.6

Complete system crash, have to hard reboot it (can't telnet/shh in and cmd+opt+esc doesn't work)..

No particular time it happens, just intermittently.. It has never happened while docked at a station though, only when out flying..

Possibly Audio related? The last messages I have in my system log before the last crash were (I think, next time it happens I will take more careful notice):

May 15 09:49:34 singularity kernel[0]: IOAudioStream[0x1f70700]::clipIfNecessary() - Error: attempting to clip to a position more than one buffer ahead of last clip position (0,659)->(1,af4).
May 15 09:49:34 singularity kernel[0]: IOAudioStream[0x1f70700]::clipIfNecessary() - adjusting clipped position to (1,659)