Help my ailing iBook!

October 20, 2007 6:35 AM

MacTechFilter: Is this strange activity in my console log the reason my iBook is freezing up?

I posted a few weeks ago about my iBook G4 freezing at seemingly random moments and not responding to anything but a hard restart.

Original question here: http://ask.metafilter.com/72204/How-to-get-iBook-G4-to-stop-freezing-up
(There's no option to hyperlink or format in this text field for some reason)

As advised in the responses, I checked my console.log and system.log files right after it froze this morning and found in my system log:

Oct 20 08:48:23 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **

followed by about 1000 lines that look like this:

Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x01005c63 4f000217 00000007 00000003
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x02007c43 c0001c04 00000002 00000008
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x00004443 01e1f8b7 00003b3b 80010140
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x4000ffff 001e0000 51b3a220 72001005
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x080a0f00 00000000 040100f8 80000003
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x0008bbbb 00000002
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0:0x0021e110
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 1:0x80000000
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 2:0x000101ce
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 3:0x10264600

The numbers before the colon go up to 1023 each time.

These are the final lines before the time at which I restart the computer:


Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: 1023:0xffffffff
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: 0x5d56f250
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log End **
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ATIRadeon::submit_buffer: Overflowed block waiting for FIFO space. Have 5, need 6. RBBM_STATUS 0x80010140. VAP_CNTL_STATUS 0x00000002
Oct 20 08:49:26 localhost kernel[0]: standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us

Entering ** ASIC Hang Log Start ** and ** ASIC Hang Log End ** in Google give me only people who had this problem with eMacs, mostly several years ago.

Can anyone help?

posted by annabellee to computers & internet (2 answers total)

Hmmm... This is coming from the driver for the graphics card. It could be a hardware problem, but this google search for "asic hang log" + ibook turned up somebody who had that problem appear when they updated to 10.4.7; for them it was software.
posted by wyzewoman at 7:27 AM on October 20, 2007

Update: I found a whole thread on the Apple boards about this problem existing in new MacBook Pros. It's mostly a mess of complaints and one person who solved the problem by replacing RAM, one who "turns nap off" everytime he starts the computer, but most for whom these and other suggested fixes don't work.

I'd be in heaven if someone could tell me the cause/solution, but it would be great anyone could even decode what the system log messages mean.

Now I can link to my old post.
posted by annabellee at 7:45 AM on October 20, 2007