- Joined
- Feb 19, 2008
- Messages
- 546
- Reaction score
- 18
- Points
- 18
- Location
- Kent, UK
- Your Mac's Specs
- 11" MacBook Air / Unibody MacBook / iMac i3 21.5" / iPhone SE
Thought I'd share my experiences here - I bought a 14" iBook G4 (1.2 ghz, 1.25 gb RAM) and carried out a fresh install of 10.4, now fully updated to 10.4.11
Things seemed to be going fine, but every time I put any stress on it, such as playing Youtube video the whole laptop froze completely and needed turning off via the power button and restarting.
Anyway, reasoning that it might be video related I reduced the strain on the GPU by going down to 16 bit (thousands rather than millions) colour display.
That reduced the number of times the iBook locked up but it still happened sometimes.
Also I noticed that the GPU temp was showing a couple of degrees C hotter in full colour than in 16 bit.
Despite the extremely warm feeling of the laptop the fan never seemed to cut in when I thought it should.
A search on the forums revealed a thread about a fan control app specific to the G4 - 'G4FanControl' - Andrea Fabrizi (Roland) - G4FanControl but being a cheapskate and not wanting to pay $8 I found the previous version still available as freeware on MacUpdate at Download G4FanControl for Mac - Enables manual fan control on Powerbook, iBook G4. MacUpdate Mac System Software Downloads
It actually works! No more lockups so far.
I set the fan sensor temps all down to 45 degrees C and the GPU will now not go above 47 whatever I am doing. I've only been trying it for a couple of days so the settings might be tinkered with later.
Sometimes the fan gets a bit noisy but only cuts in when playing using video intensive apps / games - and then cuts out happily when I stop playing - I can put up with this for the sake of no freezing.
There is probably an underlying problem with this laptop that causes it to lock up, but so far being able to control the fan has seemed to cure it.
Hope this will help others in the same position, if anything changes or gets worse I'll post back.
Cheers
Hugh
Things seemed to be going fine, but every time I put any stress on it, such as playing Youtube video the whole laptop froze completely and needed turning off via the power button and restarting.
Anyway, reasoning that it might be video related I reduced the strain on the GPU by going down to 16 bit (thousands rather than millions) colour display.
That reduced the number of times the iBook locked up but it still happened sometimes.
Also I noticed that the GPU temp was showing a couple of degrees C hotter in full colour than in 16 bit.
Despite the extremely warm feeling of the laptop the fan never seemed to cut in when I thought it should.
A search on the forums revealed a thread about a fan control app specific to the G4 - 'G4FanControl' - Andrea Fabrizi (Roland) - G4FanControl but being a cheapskate and not wanting to pay $8 I found the previous version still available as freeware on MacUpdate at Download G4FanControl for Mac - Enables manual fan control on Powerbook, iBook G4. MacUpdate Mac System Software Downloads
It actually works! No more lockups so far.
I set the fan sensor temps all down to 45 degrees C and the GPU will now not go above 47 whatever I am doing. I've only been trying it for a couple of days so the settings might be tinkered with later.
Sometimes the fan gets a bit noisy but only cuts in when playing using video intensive apps / games - and then cuts out happily when I stop playing - I can put up with this for the sake of no freezing.
There is probably an underlying problem with this laptop that causes it to lock up, but so far being able to control the fan has seemed to cure it.
Hope this will help others in the same position, if anything changes or gets worse I'll post back.
Cheers
Hugh
