I Really Hate ATI!

    It took four days but I finally got my copy of Tiger 10.4 from Amazon. I heard installation might run twenty minutes to an hour, but, as usual, things did not go quite so smoothly for me. I started at 9:54 PM and didn’t finish till around midnight. It took me around two hours just to diagnose the kernel panics I had every time I tried to run the installer. At first I thought I had a problem with my DVD. The DVD drive started accessing the disc like crazy right before each crash. I tried cleaning the disc but that didn’t help. I was able to load the installer without a problem on my laptop however. The DVD got wildly accessed again, but then the first setup screen appeared and I got my first look at its installer (but, I was only testing the DVD, I refrained from going through with the installation). This suggested it might, as much as I hated to think so, be a problem with Power Mac hardware.
    While trying more reboots I was able to simultaneously use my laptop to search the Web. It appears the ATI X800 XT graphics card is causing problems with Tiger, specifically its latest 107 ROM. So…I had gone out of my way to buy a new graphics card to get the most out of Tiger’s graphics only to not be able to load Tiger using it. And I’d downloaded the latest firmware and drivers in preparation of Tiger…in order that I could be prevented from installing Tiger.
    Thanks ATI.
    It appears the latest firmware allows me to “downgrade” to the previous 104 ROM, which reportedly works with Tiger. I read this information on several sites and forums, but no one thought to specify that to downgrade I needed to do a Custom Install. I reflashed the firmware thinking the ability to downgrade would magically show up on its own. But, at around midnight, I finally figured out to revert back to 104 and was, at last, able to actually run the Tiger installer.


This “Use English as the main language” screen was too much for my $500 ATI graphics card.
    It took twenty minutes to a half hour to load everything. Then it took about twenty more minutes for the new Spotlight search feature to index all my files (I was able to do stuff then, but chose not to). I was caught off guard by how bizarrely the icons were displayed. There were huge spaces between the columns of icons. I had my font size at 13, I found, and when I changed this to 12 or even 14 the columns moved together more presentably. But if I switched that back to 13 or 16, the icons jumped apart and the columns practically spanned the width of my screen. I had to reimport my mail into the new Mail 2 app, which only took a few seconds. iTunes is the same. I was pleased to see my desktop TV works, as does Backlight 2 (the program that adds a screen saver effect as my desktop picture).
    I can’t say I noticed much of a speed difference; in fact there seems to be a slight hesitation every time I try something. Other disappointments are that although iPhoto retained all my pictures I now can no longer import photos from my Canon G3. iPhoto recognize the camera, listing it by name, but it hangs when I try to import. The Graphic Converter program that came bundled with my Power Mac no longer works under Tiger. And to get downright niggling, I don’t like how everything has “.app” after it now (but I assume this can be corrected) and I wouldn’t’ve minded some new, Tigerish desktop wallpapers.