>ATI Rage 128 Pro w 16MB VRAM

16 MB of VRAM is not very much. In my search for 3D animation hardware support, 32 MB was almost always a minimum and 64 MB was a VERY common minimum.

Try running Apple's Hardware Test disk (available on MG) to see if you have a hardware problem with the video card.

Gary

576 MB SDRAM (256MB and 256MB of PC 133-333 (same type of chip) and 64MB (original RAM) of PC 100-222S)

Have you tried running without the 64/512 mismatching RAM? I know 133 RAM will run at 100 speed, but I wouldn't use different speed RAM all the same. Try without the original 64 MB and see if it makes any difference.

I remembered that even though Otto Matic was Carbonized, when it was on OS X, the graphics were really messed up on our iMac (just the sky, really). AMG's Alice was released around the time OS X started to come out (2001 IIRC?), so it was Carbonized too, and perhaps one of the OS X upgrades (10.4 certainly by then) broke it.

I don't know, just my thoughts.

So are you saying that everything runs fine with a base install of 10.4.? but fails under 10.4.11?

If you read the fine print Apple never guarantees that a machine will run an OS that was released way past the time the machine was manufactured. The original OS on that machine was 8.6. So it's quote possible that in 10.4.11 something got changed or left out that only causes problems on that machine with that graphics card. Apple certainly wouldn't have tested 10.4.11 on any machine that old. And they certainly wouldn't do any thing to fix the problem even if it was brought to their attention. Just because the machine can in theory run 10.4.11 doesn't mean you should.

Apples always run faster with matched size chips.
That's the way they are designed. Pick up another 256 for $3-4.
I consider 768MB to be a minimum RAM for Tiger. Above that I don't see a difference.
Below that I notice a definite drop in speed.

That's an awfully small hard drive to be running virtual memory on. And the ATA bus speed is very slow on the G4s. ATA-33 I believe. Is there some reason you are running Tiger rather than Jaguar or Panther? I just wonder if you're trying to do too much with too little.
How fragmented is the hard drive?
How often do you check for bad blocks or zero it out (which usually eliminates bad blocks).

You might consider adding a SonnetTech ATA-66 card.

I have some 80GB drives lying around if you want one and a 40 from out of an eMac.
You can install more than one drive on the ATA-0 bus. One as master, one as slave.

If you had an 80 you could partition it into a 9.2.2 plus 10.2 partition and a 10.4 partition (and also run OS 7 and OS 8 via Sheepshaver and Basilisk). That way you could find the optimum OS for each app. you want to run.

Bottom line you're running a modern OS with a lot of overhead and use of virtual memory without enough real RAM and a dog of a tiny ATA hard drive.

My G4 iMac with default 32MB NVIDIA GeForce4MX runs all the titles you mention. I did upgrade my RAM to 768MB tho. I also managed to squeeze a SATA DVD-RW in there (with an IDE adaptor card). I haven't plugged it in for over 6 months, so I think I better check on how the PRAM battery is doing

EDIT: Is your extra VRAM on an expansion DIMM? My old beige G3 had a VRAM expansion slot, as the default 4MB/8MB was not enough. I would think that at least one of those software titles would at least check for the correct amount of VRAM before running?!