Okay so I got rid of my clamshell and bought a used ibook G3 14" 800mhz but it only has 384mb ram. SOOO I'm wondering, what's the highest I can go with this guy? I'd like to upgrade it a bunch (it's worht spending the upgrade money, I got it for $392 including s&h!), like put in a bigger HD, upgrade teh ram (everymac says only up to 640), and bring the processor speed up. And I LOVE the sims 2 and play it on my "other" non-apple computer (eek!) and my boyfriend just bought me an early xmas gift of the sims 2 for mac BUT you need to have a G4 with 1mhx and a lot more ram. i forget how much. I feel bad because he opened it andinstalled it before I got home from work (and was sooo sad it didn't work awwww), so I'd like to be able to use it. But I have a feeling I need to sell the game on ebay.
Any suggestions??? :blink:

Put in a faster hard drive 1st. Then max the ram out (640mb). I would think it would run the game if you run low settings. Get an airport card for sure.
-maestro

Even with low settings it won't run right. The 800MHz models only have 16MB vram. That isn't even close enough for what Sims2 needs. Heck Sims2 runs a bit on the slow side on my roommate's PC and his syetm is 3times faster then that iBook.

Actually they had 32mb vid ram. the ibook should be able to run it.

maestro wrote:


Yeah it does have the 32mb vram but it seriously just won't happen. I just bought a new harddrive on ebay, so I'm waiting for that to get here. But after I installed it with this harddrive (30gb) the icon just bounces in the dock once and dosen't open when I click on it. Gahh

Try opening the game again, note the time, then check the system log and see if you can work out why its not starting. It might tell you whether or not its checking for a 1GHz (and/or a G4) CPU and quitting when it doesn't find it. Or it might indicate that its just trying and failing.

When you install the new drive, it might be worth trying out the old swapfile partition trick. Might compensate for the lack of RAM a bit. A clean install might also help. Depends how used the current one is.

I wonder whether its worth trying to overclock the graphics chip. I would be careful doing this with that iBook, its likely within the serial number bracket for a potentially ropey logic board. The recall program was due to faulty video chips, so it may be unwise to antagonise it. Unless its under three years old.....

PM me the serial number if you want me to check on that. Might also be able to tell you if its had a new board already. Not that that makes OC'ing the GPU any safer.

I would definitely max out the RAM too.

Im guessing the game is looking for certain specs. to load. It can be worked around, but I dont know
how to do it, and Im not sure if it will be worth it. Hopefully someone with knowledge on this will
chime in.
-maestro

Waragainstsleep wrote:


I just quit my job, so I wont be able to get any ram or a bigger drive till after the new year I guess.

I JUST had the logic board fixed. It was one of those scfrewed up ones, and apple fixed it for me like two weeks ago. And I did a fresh install like two weeks before that. I'll reinstall and try checking the system log. I'm pretty sure it's just not going to happen. LAME. But maybe I can get it going. Or trick it.

Must of been a crappy job to quit this time of year. Glad to see you got the mb fixed. Good
luck getting the game running.
-maestro

maestro wrote:


A horrible boss, a great job. Couldn't deal anymore. Horrible person. EWWWW
Anyway, I reinstalled just on a whim and now it runs! YAY! But BOOO the image is all messedup. It's like splitered and then arranged oddly on the screen.I can't see anything. Any ideas?