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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > Rev. A and gaming - help needed please

Rev. A and gaming - help needed please
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Junior Member
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Nebraska
Status: Offline
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Dec 21, 2003, 09:59 PM
 
Hello everyone.

I'm trying to get Metal of Honor Allied Assult to run on my aging Bondi Rev. A iMac. The specs of my mac you can view in my sig.

When launching the game in OS9 and X, I get two error messages. One is "aglChoosePixelFormat failed" followed by "Couldn't start openGL"

From the searching I've been doing on the net, I think it sounds like a problem with my whimpy video AGI card.

The min. system requirements for MOHAA call for a 16MB 3D acc. card, which I don't have.

I'm wondering if there is a solution to the problem - short of purchasing a new system. Would a voodoo 2 card work with this game under OS9?

Is there are better video card that is available for this iMac - like maybe one with 16MB of RAM?

Thanks all. Happy Holidays!
iMac Bondi
512MB RAM, 6MB VRAM, 40GB Hard Drive, iForce G4 500 CPU.
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Does anyone else in here feel the way I do?
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Status: Offline
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Dec 22, 2003, 01:11 AM
 
Sorry, you need a new computer. The Bondi iMac is just too old, with graphics and a processor too slow (even after the upgrade). Running Medal Of Honor on it is an exercise in futility. Even if you do get the application to start running, it'll go too slow to actually play. You can't upgrade the graphics (except to use the now-rare 8MB Voodoo2 Game Wizard), but even that is too slow to work.

To put things in perspective, even my 1 GHz eMac choked slightly on that game. And that eMac was probably at least three times faster than your iMac.

If you really want to run Medal Of Honor, though, you could buy a GameCube and get Medal Of Honor for that. GameCubes are cheap ($100 new, $70 used), and all the games run smoothly on them and are really fun. The older Medal Of Honor game is $15-$20 now, and the newer one (Rising Sun, located in the Pacific instead of Europe) is $50 because it's brand new.

EDIT: Changed the wording slightly to reflect the fact that you have a G4 upgrade. It still doesn't change the message though - the upgrade helps a little, but the Rage IIc in the Rev. A iMac will never be able to run modern 3D games well. Even the Rage Pro on the Rev. B, C and D iMacs will not be able to run it. The minimum to even start the game would be a 600 MHz iMac with a 16 MB Rage 128, but that would still run slowly. If you want good performance, you're looking at a new eMac or iMac, or a G4 tower 733 MHz or faster. Anything less will not run the game well enough to be worth playing.

"That's Mama Luigi to you, Mario!" *wheeze*
     
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: Cambridge
Status: Offline
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Dec 22, 2003, 03:16 PM
 
Luca is right. Aside from not having the needed requirements, Apple didn't build in OpenGL support for your video card in OS X. They have added 2D support for the Rage Pro (not sure if you have that or the Rage IIc), but not 3D. That's the reason for the error messages.
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