Comments on: iBook and ATI video

By: peksalli

peksalli — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 12:54:51 +0000

My guess is that that Apple has some kind of a manufacturing problem related with iBooks or ATI graphics chips, which only shows up with new more efficient ATI drivers (Tiger) and when using more complicated graphics features. Most of the iBooks are OK, but there is a minority that simply doesn’t work.

By: peksalli

peksalli — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 12:49:33 +0000

Visited a local Apple Service Provider and they agreed to replace the logic board, even though any diagnostics programs they have didn’t show any problems. Warranty covers it of course, as the computer is only 2 months old and has had this problem right from the beginning.

The technician I talked with said that as their diagnostic tools seem to be unusable with this problem they have no way to know if the replacement board is also malfunctioning or not.

– pekka

By: stany

stany — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 19:13:35 +0000

Based on my experience, this is an OpenGL issue if it happens with a single specific application, and a logic board issue if it happens with different applications or operating system in general.

In your situation, I’d consider getting in touch either with the local certified Apple serivice provider, or directly with Apple, and seeing if they will replace the logic board for you.

You mention that you have 512 megs of RAM on board, so you have a newer revision of iBook then I do, but I don’t know what kinds of warranty Apple offers in Finland. If your system is recently (a month or so) out of warranty, you can attempt to call Apple, and see if they will sell you an AppleCare backdated a month. In North America, Apple will do that, if you call them and talk to them. Also in Canada cost of AppleCare is significantly less then the costs of out of warranty logic board replacement.

Good luck.

By: peksalli

peksalli — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 15:35:53 +0000

I have the same problem with a brand new iBook 1.42 GHz. It crashes at least once a day more or less randomly, usually when doing something graphical (has crashed a couple of times when switching to Dashboard). Error message in system.log is indicating some problem with ATIRadeon9700; today there was even a ASIC Hang Log, or at least part of it. Usually there is just the kernel message for ATI Radeon.

Service center put a new hard disk in, but the problem persisted. Hardware diagnostics show nothign, memtest tells everything is OK. Apple phone support can’t say anything about the problem. I have 1GB of RAM, 512M on-board and a 512M Kingston chip approved by Apple.

I’ll take it back to the service center in a couple of days, hope they can find a solution. But it seems this problem has been around for a while; I found a WWW page from May 2004 reporting just the same error message & crashing while playing American Army.