kichat: How do I get iChat 3 working ? Upgrade hints, FAQ

How do I get iChat 3 working ? Upgrade hints:FAQ

Trouble Shooting Revisited

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 10.4.3 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 3.1

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:

TCP -5190
UDP -5060, 5190, 5678, 16384-16403

There are more ports for Bonjour 5297, 5298, 5353 UDP and 5298 TCP and Jabber, 5220, 5222, 5223 on TCP)
( Table View see 7th Sept)

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). See Apple Doc 301641 Dated 9th November 2005.

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

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 My web pages: page4 at the SIP Text in a Box section.

Also for the above try some housekeeping particularly if you do not keep your Computer on 24/7 Gulliver, " kmosx3: Mac OS X 10.3/10.4: System maintenance"

Ralph