Hello guys,
I have a lot of times my Powerbook freezing when I use the wireless connection. It has an A1027, which connects just fine on my WiFi, but it freezes when I download something or after a few minutes of surfing. I tried both Odyssey 1.26 and IBrowse 2.5.1 and this happens a lot of times. If I use a wired connection, then there are no issues at all.

If I am not wrong I didn't have those issues with MOS 2.9, that's why I downloaded again the ISO to try it and see if this works just fine, as I remember.

Does anyone have the same issue? Is there a way to find system logs why this might happen? Is there any specific configuration that would make it more stable?

I will be back with more info after MOS 2.9 installation.

Thank you for your help.

[ Edited by walkero 17.11.2019 - 12:02 ]

I have the same problem wtih my PowerBook G4, sometimes the mac doesn't connect to my movilphone per wifi, and I have only this way to have Internet connection.

I have some more findings for this issue.
The problem is pretty producable on my system, and it happens on MOS 3.9 as well. The computer is a powebook 5.3 with 1.5GB Ram.

My test done on new installations of MOS 3.9 and 3.12, by using OWB and IBrowse to download the latest SDK package into Ram:, so to be sure that the problem doesn't occure because of the hard disks or IDE.

The download starts just fine, with a spedd of 900kb/s to 1Mb/s, and always in between. The CPU usage is around 30% and 35%.

Around 26% to 28% of the download, the speed drops around 95Kb/s and then it gets up again. At this point the CPU usage goes more than 70% and drops to 10% and the freeze happens.

When I was running MOS 3.9, one time the completed just fine, but this drop of the speed happened on 26%, 45%, 65% of the download size of the file, and then continued. When the download completed, tried to redownload it again, and then on 26% of the download, the system freezed.

This happenes only when I use the wireless network and never with the wired one.

Does that behaviour ring any bell to anyone?

Tested today again the wifi connection with my mobile this time, and not with my home wifi. It seems much more stable, without freezing at all. Maybe because the connection is much slower. It might be an issue with the router. I will try to use an other router and see if this problem still exists.

Some more findings. I set a different router as a bridge to my main router. I connected using Powerbook's wifi to the second router for the last couple of hours, and the system is rock solid. No freezes, no problems at all. I even downloaded multiple files, while I was listening online music.

It seems there is a serious conflict of Powerbook's wifi card with my main router. The next days I will try to find what the issue is, but I guess is a driver ruther than hardware problem.

Are there any log solutions to record what is happening on the machine while there is a crash?

If the machine is freezing, the only way is to log via Firewire to another MorphOS machine.

Also, I think you've just answered yourself on reasons for us not immediately jumping to fixing your issue. Without a hardware setup that can trigger the crash we can't really do much.

@jacadcaps
Thank you for your reply. Of 'course, without having access to my setup I do not expect you to do anything. It seems that this is an edge situation. I wrote the above findings so that this thread is complete and in case someone has the same issues, he might be able to find it interesting.

I will try to find as more info as I can to provide you, in case this is fixable.

on my setup powermac g5 quad and atheros wifi card (on a pci to minipci adapter) it's all ok

You can setup a vnc server. One on PowerBook, 2nd one on some other machine, so it can serve as a bridge, though you would still be needed to reboot pb in case of hard crashes.

I kept an old Linksys WRT54G router around in case I wanted the wifi stuff on the G4/G5 mac or even older gaming consoles like the Wii. Keeping the old legacy stuff off the newer router and having them connect on up to the linksys instead.

If you can source an older Wireless G router, you can specify a different IP address to the old router (whether you put it in a different subnet like 192.168.2.1 or piggyback on the same network with a 192.168.1.x where x is your number besides 1 and not an IP given to a different device on your existing network) If you go with a different subnet, you can plug a cat 5 into the "internet" side of the old router onto your main router...

If you all want to co-exist on the same network, just be sure to assign a different IP to the old router following the same IP subnet such as 192.168.1.x where x is your ip of choice, and then Shutting off DHCP of the old router. Plug an ethernet to one of the switchports and NOT the internet one.

Flashing DD-WRT or Tomato to your old router will let you disable the WAN and use it as a standard port to the LAN.

Just a suggestion as a possibility that new routers don't like playing with old wireless technology.