02-25-2005, 10:52 PM

It only took 2 days, but I found an app that caused my entire OS to lock up.

Celestia caused my mac mini to freeze hard, requiring a power off. It ran for about 5 seconds, then the screen froze (cursor still moved, but no response from the dock) and then the cursor disappeared altogether.

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ <--- the offending application, an open source 3D space simulator.

The box booted back up just fine, not even a delay for a disk check.
I just ran XBench as sort of a torture test, no problems, overall score = 146.90.

Anybody else want to try celestia and see what happens? I ran it from inside the disk image if that makes any difference.

02-25-2005, 11:41 PM

Run repair permissions After every software update, and about every 2 weeks: close all apps and log totally off. Log on, go in Finder, Applications. Utilities, Disk Utility. After the message -getting disk information- select volume (below the hard drive name -upper left corner). Just highlight it. Now look to the lower two things are there near the middle, verify permissions, repair permissions. Click repair permissions

02-25-2005, 11:56 PM

Originally Posted by Thud

Anybody else want to try celestia and see what happens? I ran it from inside the disk image if that makes any difference.

I downloaded it, and while I haven't had a chance to really play around with it (it appears to be pretty complex), it launches and runs just fine. In fact, it's running in the background as I'm typing this.

02-26-2005, 12:01 AM

I did too, it runs fine. nice app.

02-26-2005, 02:51 AM

Same thing on my Mini, locked it up good. I copied to the aps folder first though. Looks like it doesn't like the Mini for some reason. Probably the video drivers. Kinda have to expect that for new hardware.

Ran Xbench just for fun and only scored a 117.35. neye: Sure wish my memory would get here.

02-26-2005, 03:34 AM

It must be something with the Video Chipset in the Mini. Tried it on mine and same lockup. Never had a total lockup under osx and I do so much with my computers. I tried it on my G4 Sawtooth and it worked fine. Same exact OS with same updates. Will have to check into it and see if anyone can figure out what exactly the program is doing.

02-26-2005, 03:38 AM

it locked up on my MDD G4. same thing you mentioned. total lockup, cursor disappears. that sucks that it does that. oh well, doesn't matter to me much anyway. i have starry night backyard.

02-26-2005, 03:44 AM

Originally Posted by Wapa18

it locked up on my MDD G4. same thing you mentioned. total lockup, cursor disappears. that sucks that it does that. oh well, doesn't matter to me much anyway. i have starry night backyard.

Seems to run on Older G4's and lock on newer G4's. I wonder what it does not like? Still seems like some video issue.

02-26-2005, 03:57 AM

Originally Posted by Wapa18

it locked up on my MDD G4. same thing you mentioned. total lockup, cursor disappears. that sucks that it does that. oh well, doesn't matter to me much anyway. i have starry night backyard.

My cursor was still active, but that was the only thing. Clock stopped ticking, and nothing would focus when the cursor was on it and the mouse clicked. Odd, huh?

02-26-2005, 05:28 AM

Originally Posted by dtravis7

Seems to run on Older G4's and lock on newer G4's. I wonder what it does not like? Still seems like some video issue.

Probably doesn't like ATI graphics cards.

I have the same problem on my PC games, when I switched from my Nvidia MX4 card to an ATI 9200 SE card some of my games just stopped working and entailed a trawl around the web looking for patches.

Amen-Moses

02-26-2005, 09:32 AM

Originally Posted by Amen-Moses

Probably doesn't like ATI graphics cards.

My iBook has an ATI chip set though, and it runs fine on my machine.

02-26-2005, 03:16 PM

Originally Posted by Amen-Moses

Probably doesn't like ATI graphics cards.

I have the same problem on my PC games, when I switched from my Nvidia MX4 card to an ATI 9200 SE card some of my games just stopped working and entailed a trawl around the web looking for patches.

Amen-Moses

Well, I have an ATI X800 in my PC and the windows version of this program runs fine. I realize that the chipsets between the X800 and the 9200 in the Mini are quite a bit different, but the X800 was the first ATI card I've owned and I'm having pretty much zero problems with it. Was the 9200 particularly known for compatibility problems?

02-26-2005, 03:38 PM

Originally Posted by dan828

Well, I have an ATI X800 in my PC and the windows version of this program runs fine. I realize that the chipsets between the X800 and the 9200 in the Mini are quite a bit different, but the X800 was the first ATI card I've owned and I'm having pretty much zero problems with it. Was the 9200 particularly known for compatibility problems?

I have used ATI for years in my Pc's and now in my Macs and have never had any problems at all.

If you noticed most of the Mac users that reported it worked fine use older Macs. The only Non MINI user that reported a Lock here had a MDD which is very close in CPU to the Mini. So maybe it's the newer G4's that the program does not like. Just a thought.

02-27-2005, 11:49 AM

Well I'm glad mine wasn't the only one. Definitely a problem with the mini, or at least new G4's with the radeon 9200 chipset.

The program just uses OpenGL though.. so it seems this would be a bug in the 9200's drivers.


*edit*
There are a few threads on this over on the celestia forums. Many G4 users are affected. It's a Radeon 9x00 driver issue that affects recent versions of OSX. There's a workaround posted in this thread... and it's also in the "Mac OSX" readme file included in the disk image, sorta buried down near the bottom. Basically you need to edit 1 line in the CFG file until Apple fixes the driver bug.

http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6613

02-27-2005, 11:59 AM

Originally Posted by witeshark

Run repair permissions After every software update, and about every 2 weeks

Whatever happened to "it just works?"