Is Your Firmware Up to Date? And Other 10.2 Tips

[jc658]

After upgrading to 10.2 I was having the most terrible problems with my computer. The UI would crash several times a day for no apparent reason. Crashes seemed to occur a lot when dragging windows so I suspected the graphics card. But I checked the RAM and the graphics card and both were fine. I tried a clean install and removing all 3rd party software but it still froze regularly. I waited patiently for 10.2.1 to arrive but after installing that the problems were still there.

Finally I used FileMerge to compare the Apple System Profiler output for my computer and a similar G4 in the office that didn't seem to be having any problems. I immediately noticed that my "Boot ROM info" was very different from the other computer. This is the firmware which for some reason had never been updated. I think Apple warns you to update your computer's firmware before installing 10.0 but I had never had any problems with 10.0 or 10.1 so I figured I was updated. The various installers never actually check your firmware for you.

Apple still hasn't (and maybe never will) release firmware updaters that run in OSX. I didn't even have OS9 installed on my computer and the installer wouldn't let me install it over my 10.2 installation. After a bunch of frustration I was able to scavenge a hard drive from a PC in the office and use it to install OS9. Once I updated the firmware using the installer on apple's website everything worked great.

On another note, I use the jEdit text editor all day at work. jEdit is a MRJ app. I noticed that after upgrading to 10.2 UI speed slowed to a crawl any time anything transparent went over the jEdit window. I believe the performance difference between 10.1 and 10.2 was due to the changes apple made to accomodate quartz extreme. On my non-QE enabled graphics card, though, the changes made jEdit practically unusable.

So I got my employer to break for a RAM upgrade (to 1GB) and a new Radeon 8500. The $300 upgrade has made my admittedly antique computer 50-100% faster under 10.2. With two monitors and decent UI responsiveness my computer has become a pleasure to use. The point is you don't need a new dual GHz machine to get decent performance out of OSX ... a little RAM and particularly a QE-enabled graphics card under 10.2 will go a long way.

The old firmware:
<pre>
Hardware Overview:
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| Machine speed : 450 MHz |
| Bus speed : 100 MHz |
| Number of processors : 1 |
| L2 cache size : 1MB |
| Machine model : Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics) (version = 2.8) |
| Boot ROM info : 1.3f1 |
| Customer serial number : XB9514GV-HP0-ffff |
| Sales order number : M7825LL/B |
| |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
</pre>

and the new firmware:
<pre>
Hardware Overview:
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| Machine speed : 450 MHz |
| Bus speed : 100 MHz |
| Number of processors : 1 |
| L2 cache size : 1MB |
| Machine model : Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics) (version = 2.8) |
| Boot ROM info : 4.2.8f1 |
| Customer serial number : XB9514GV-HP0-ffff |
| Sales order number : M7825LL/B |
| |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
</pre>

[Captain Code]

The OS 9 Software update found the new firmware for me(a long time ago when it was released), and installed it for me.

I'm surprised Apple hasn't built it into the OS X installer that the computer requires the latest firmware to install.

[DMCrimson]

or iclude the latest firmwares on the installer image...