Ralph Johns

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Ralph's Blog

Wednesday, September 28, 2005
 
New Error Message and solution
This one came to me by email 28/09/2005

** -Invalid parameter not satisfying: (index >= 0) && (index < (_itemArray ? CFArrayGetCount((CFArrayRef)_itemArray) : 0))


This one appears to be associated with cocoaAspell, See this link at MacOSXHints. Searching for any bits that might be active with Spotlight is useful.. It appears the SpellCatcher was the original Utility that was deactivated in this case. Thanks to Susan F. Epstein who alerted me to this problem and Ryan Mathus for the link to MacOSXHints. Susan worked through looking for active files and deleted them from the Home/Library/Services.



Ralph

Wednesday, September 07, 2005
 
Upgrading to Tiger/iChat3
Ok We will start with loading Tiger and iChat version 3.0

From Panther

There are or were serveral Add-ons and applications avaiblable to Panther users of iChat that are not compatible with iChat 3.

These following need to be deleted.

iCAR - An Add-on that posts an Auto response Away message (produces a 1 fps result in a Video chat)

Virex for Panther - An Anti Virus app avialable to @mac account users (Produces the 1 fsp problem)


iChatUSBCam for Panther/iChat2.x - A Add-on utility for using iSight or USB cam with iChat2.x (Incompatible with Tiger/iChat 3)

iProfile - An Add-on for producing a profile on the AIM server that ichat 2.x could not do (not proven to be a problem but now not needed).

A clean install of Tiger (not Archive and Install) produces the best results.

But any install should also check these Tiger settings.

First, UPGRADE to 10.4.2 as this gets past many Connection issues that became apparent with the basic Tiger (10.4) and iChat 3.0 It updates iChat to version 3.0.1

Check Settings


Don't be complacent that you have not set anything different.

There are several new things in Tiger that may trip you up.

These are worth looking at:

Mac Firewall. Now includes the ability to Block all UDP traffic in the Advanced button (System Preferences > Sharing >Firewall tab then the Advanced Button).

Also can now open UDP protocol for ports where as the Panther one only did TCP (Check any old Panther settings you Added to the presets).

The ports should be:

Tiger TCP and UDP Ports For Mac Firewall
MethodTCP PortsUDP Ports
iChat over AIM51905060, 5190, 5678, 16384-16403
Bonjour52985297, 5298, 5353
Jabber5220, 5222, 5223
All Ports5190, 5220, 5222, 5223, 52985060, 5297, 5298, 5298, 5353, 5678, 16384-16403


QuickTime. This has a change in the name of the Connection Speed tab to Streaming (System Preferences > QuickTime) Check this is set to be equal to your connection speed (the download one if this is faster).

Date & Time. Not conclusively involved but worth eliminating. Set a Network Server and the correct Time Zone.

Apple Remote Desktop. If this is active in System Preferences > Sharing > Services tab it causes problems for iChat.

Next, test the actual speed you are getting from your ISP.


http://www.dslreports.com/stest

There is a table here of the speeds you need:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301050

The one you get linked to in the Help menu is wrong.

Other Known Problems

There are several other applications that iChat 3 does not seem to like.

folding@home This is a application that uses spare processor time to help find protein chains for a University.


PostgreSQL This is a data base application that can be reset to allow more processor time for iChat. See here http://www.murraywilliams.com/blog/archives/000046.html

Lotus Notes Some people have reported problems with this.

Make sure any Add-on Video cards or input PCI cards have up to date Firmware

Thread on Miglia.

IF you are still having problems I would do Routine Maintenance Tasks as laid out here.

Lastly, some routers/modems are SIP aware and give different results in iChat 3 compared to iChat 2.


This is due to the Operating System changing (like a new computer connecting to the modem) rather than iChat.

See www.ralphjohnsuk.dsl.pipex.com/page4

Ralph

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Copyright © Ralph Johns. Jan 2005
Updated September 2006

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This site is about iChat from Version 1 through to iChat 4.x.x

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A set of info about iChat, the Apple Instant Messenger.

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