Help Needed: Getting D2 (Diablo II) to run on an older Mac (8500)
Chris Riker
I've got an older Mac 8500 with a Newer MaxPwr G3/300 card installed.
128mb RAM. According to the Diablo II box, the minimum requirements are
75mb (or thereabouts) RAM, and a G3 processor. This machine, technically,
meets these requirements. I have an ATI 128 card (16mb RAM) for graphics.
I am running OS 9.1
When I launch D2, I end up with a message saying that it can't run on this
machine. I thought, for a while, that it was because it was an older
machine and Diablo2 was not finding the G3 processor. (Which doesn't make
a LOT of sense.) I found, however, on newsgroup searches that plenty of
people are running D2 on their 9500, 8500 and 7500's.
Any ideas of what to try to make it work?
Please direct any e-mails to both the group and to chrisr .com
@ns-design
(forgive the e-mail formatting, but it's been a handy way of avoiding SPAM).
Thanks!
- Chris
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Hound of Cullen
<misterX-1001...@192.168.1.214>:
> Hi-
>
> I've got an older Mac 8500 with a Newer MaxPwr G3/300 card installed.
> 128mb RAM. According to the Diablo II box, the minimum requirements are
> 75mb (or thereabouts) RAM, and a G3 processor. This machine,
> technically, meets these requirements. I have an ATI 128 card (16mb
> RAM) for graphics. I am running OS 9.1
>
> When I launch D2, I end up with a message saying that it can't run on
> this machine. I thought, for a while, that it was because it was an
> older machine and Diablo2 was not finding the G3 processor. (Which
> doesn't make a LOT of sense.) I found, however, on newsgroup searches
> that plenty of people are running D2 on their 9500, 8500 and 7500's.
You shouldn't have any problems. I run it on a 7500 with an XLR8 zif
carrier card/voodoo 5, 9.1 and it goes like snot.
I'd start by making sure you've got the latest drivers for your video card.
D2 has never liked the ATi cards, and if you're running an older set of
drivers that could be the problem.
Also, check the amount of free RAM you have. You might have to do the
extension dance in order to free up enough RAM to run it. Turn on Virtual
Memory if you don't have it on, too.
Finally, hold down the "Option" key when starting up D2, this will bring up
the options dialog box. Set the video to "Software rendering" (you don't
lose much over the 3d rendering, just some light effects). If you're still
having problems, check the "quit other applications/quit finder also box"
and uncheck the "share processor time" box.
Personally, I think it is RAM related. I've never had a problem running D2,
but I've got 256 mb RAM in my box. If you've got a lot of extensions
running, you might not have the free RAM you need to run the game.
Hound
Geoffrey
> I've got an older Mac 8500 with a Newer MaxPwr G3/300 card ... an ATI 128
> [and] OS 9.1
>
> When I launch D2, I end up with a message saying that it can't run on this
> machine.
Now that is truly strange - I was able to run Diablo II on a PowerCenter
Pro that still had its original 180 MHz PowerPC card in, and it ran
quite happily (until you got more than a dozen greeblies all hurling
missiles at you at once, then it chugged a bit).
> Any ideas of what to try to make it work?
Did you try grabbing the updates (available as standalone downloads from
blizzard.com as well as in-program updates over battle.net)? These might
help a lot - I know it did with me! Check with VersionTracker, install
the most recent patch, try again, and get back to us with how you got
on.
> (forgive the e-mail formatting, but it's been a handy way of avoiding
> SPAM).
Very clever :)
Geoffrey
(remove excess baggage to reply via mail)
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MisterX
it for just software - no luck past the options screen. I do have the
latest ATI drivers and I have my old VooDoo2 card still installed (but
not in-line) on the machine. I've got D2 up to 1.09c...since I haven't
got it going for online games, I skipped on 1.09d for the time being.
Its good to hear verification that it DOES work - at least there's a
light at the end of the diagnostic tunnel ;-)
The onlly other outside possibility is that the MaxPwr chip is somehow
causing the problem. It certainly shouldn't, Newer had done lots of
"extra" stuff to ensure their G3 chips had more compatibility than
Sonnet or XLR8 - that's why I bought it.
Onward then.
Any other comments, observations? Please send them to:
chrisr .com
@ns-design
Please don't use "reply via e-mail" and forgive the hassles, but it's
all in the effort of reducing SPAM!
- Chris
Rob Jenness
design.com>:
>Thanks for the tips. I'll try the RAM. I have tried the options and set
>it for just software - no luck past the options screen. I do have the
>latest ATI drivers and I have my old VooDoo2 card still installed (but
>not in-line) on the machine. I've got D2 up to 1.09c...since I haven't
>got it going for online games, I skipped on 1.09d for the time being.
>
>Its good to hear verification that it DOES work - at least there's a
>light at the end of the diagnostic tunnel ;-)
>
Hi,
I'll add a bit more verification.
I have an 8500/150 that I've just upgraded to a Sonnet G3/450. I also use
the ATI Rage 128 card. My RAM which was at 128 is now 320 since I bought
some additional memory when I got the Sonnet card.
Diablo II runs but not as well as I expected (I am at 1.09D). It is
playable though. It seems odd to me that it isn't better because I have run
demos of Deus Ex, UT, ONI, and others that tax the 3D graphics and they are
smooth as silk. It may be, as somebody else stated, that Diablo II simply
doesn't like the ATI drivers very much. StarCraft/Broodwar run great! BTW,
I am using Rave settings rather than software because it seems to run
better. I am also using the display set to millions rather than thousands
because I think the Rage 128 is better at millions. I also set the memory
partition up to 100M but mostly because I have the luxury of doing so. (I
think the minimum is about 76M which could be tight on a 128M system
depending on how your OS is configured (I'm on 9.1 with a healthy
smattering of extensions.)
I'm surprised you are having such problems. I installed and was able to run
D2 on my 8500 before the CPU upgrade but the performance was terrible. You
should be able to get it going in your environment.
Final thought... I think Diablo 1 (or Classic) is a better game (although
with less eye candy) and it will run beautifully on your system with or
without the 3D card. If you go to the Diablo Stategy Forum on Battlenet you
will find a group of dedicated players who hold the same view.
Cheers,
Rob (RooBlade when I'm on B'net)
Avelino Santa Ana Jr.
rjen...@noSPAMrtelnetworks.com (Rob Jenness) wrote:
You shouldn't have to change the default memory partition. It won't
help any, and in some causes, it decrease performance. The initial
memory partition is used when the game is launched, but any dynamic
memory allocation uses the available system memory, so if you don't have
enough free memory available after the game launches, the game may
perform poorly or simply crash.
Also, Diablo II isn't a 3D game. It's a 2D game that uses the 3d
hardware for enhanced lighting affects. Most 3D games will load all of
the textures required for a specific level during level load up.
However, Diablo II (and other 2D games that use 3D hardware like
Baldur's Gate II) have to load new textures from the harddrive a lot
more frequently than 3D games. Some drivers aren't optimized for that.
Instead, they're optimized for games like Quake 3 so we can have better
benchmarks...
Keep in mind that Diablo II's graphical effects were designed with Glide
(read: 3dfx cards) in mind. So they perform very well even with
Voodoo2s. I've read about PC users with GeForce2s and 3s that were
scouring the net for Voodoo2s just so they could get better Diablo II
performance! I picked up a cheap Voodoo2 for my brother's G4 w/ a
GeForce2MX because he kept bitching about how badly Diablo II ran.
Some performance tips from my experience (ignore some of the babble if
you just want the tips):
-Keep the default memory partion, and buy more memory. 256 MB of RAM
should do just fine.
-Turn off the Music! Unlike PCs, we don't have the luxury of having a
sound card which can unload most of the sound processing from the CPU,
so the Diablo II music will eat a chunk of the CPU time, thus slowing
the computer. (don't get me started on the Sound Blaster for Mac!...
Which I still use, BTW. Maybe John or Rob could answer this question.
Were you guys able to get Diablo II running with OpenAL w/ just the
standard stereo sound? ...no need for 3d sound in Diablo II. Wouldn't
that take some of the CPU usage off? EAX is cool, and that works great,
but I really like the Diablo II music. However, even with a G4 867 I
prefer playing with the music off due to performance issues)
-Turn off Perspective! This is a HUGE CPU hit. And it doesn't add a
whole lot to the game. It's a cool effect, but sometimes, I get motion
sickness from it (and I almost NEVER get motion sickness from FPS
games... Descent being the only exception).
-Turn off the Shadow option. Heck, turn off all the Video options. The
game still looks pretty good!
-Turn on Virtual Memory (!) Diablo II is constantly loading and
unloading things into and from memory. With VM on, the Mac OS memory
manager provides much more efficient memory er, management (heh).
There's less of a chance of running out of a contiguous memory block of
free memory (I won't go into further details... it would get boring)
-Play at thousands of colors. This actually does affect performance
from what I've seen. And, IMO, there isn't much of a quality increase
between thousands and millions in Diablo II.
-If at all possible, get at least a Voodoo II 12 MB card to play Diablo
II in Glide mode. A Voodoo 3 would be better. A Voodoo5 absolutely
cooks! That's what I use with my G4 867. Framerates hover around 100
fps, max out at 120 (due to my monitor refresh rate), and almost never
drop below 40 fps.
-If you can't get a 3dfx card, and you have a Rage 128 or Radeon, try to
stick with 9.1. Maybe even have a separate partition with 9.1
installed. Of course, machines shipping since July 2001 have a minimum
of 9.2, so get the 9.2.2 update. It resolves some issues that were
introduced in 9.2(9.2.1 for users with older machines) that seemed to
affect Diablo II and ATI cards.
-If you have an NVIDIA card, get the 9.2.2 update. It's fixes a bunch
of the issues. Even RAVE performance (which was absolute crap in older
versions of the driver) is greatly improved. But, if you have an NVIDIA
driver, a Voodoo2 card would work even better! Otherwise, you may have
to stick with Software.
-This one is would be totally unsupported by Blizzard. Download the Lag
Reduce Mod.
http://www.planetdiablo.com/theforge/lagreduce/
This is an awesome mod. It disables a ton of the extra 'graphical'
things that aren't really essential to game play, such as Mob (monster)
shadows and some of the spell effects and other lighting effects. I
really wish Blizzard gave us the options to turn off some of those other
graphical effects. That would help out Diablo II performance on some of
the older machines and even the current ones.
Yikes! Too long!
John B
----------
In article <a2dajNOSPAM-154B...@news.attbi.com>, "Avelino
SNIP
I think there's a Diablo II Ram hack that lets you play DII with 64 meg of
ram or less?
check versiontracker.com or macgamefiles.com
It might be helpful
JB