Minecraft 1.5.2 on Snow Leopard

The Trials of Old Kit

I've pretty much given up trying to get Minecraft running on my old PowerPC Mac Mini (and I don't think I'm alone in that), so I dug out my black Macbook from around 2009. My original problem had been that Apple and Oracle had given up on the PPC processor so OSX was stuck at Leopard and Java with Apples version of 1.5, so I assumed the Macbook with it's intel Core Duo CPU would be easy.

Seems I was wrong again!

Its all about the Java

After installing the Minecraft launcher I initially found it crashed after trying to start the game (just like before). I managed to find a Java update that had been recompiled to NOT stop when it found an old version of the OSX.

With this I was able to get Minecraft working, but only on version 1.6.1 or higher. But my server is 1.5.2 and upgrading wasn't an option. I have a friend who's kids play on an old PC that doesn't like any version later than this because of video driver issues.

Once again, after lots of googling I was unable to find a solution to the problem, it seems that the launcher was broken some time after v1.5.2 and thus later versions just won't work on Snow Leopard.

Shoot the Snow Leopard

I'd always held off upgrading to Lion because it meant losing Rosetta and I'd actually quite liked Snow Leopard. I saw it as a better, more 'sorted' version of Leopard, but as this laptop just wasn't being used anymore I didnt have anything to lose. The upgrade went smoothly and was followed by a 2Gb system update.

After this I started up Minecraft and it just worked (wow) albeit running slightly warm. I then spent a little time tinkering with the video settings in the game to get it running smoothly (turning on advanced OpenGL, setting the Graphics to 'Fancy' and turning off clouds). Everything was running great until I turned off full screen mode to see if it would run cooler. Then it crashed in disgust, refusing to restart.

It took a little trial and error to work out how to fix it, but here's all you need to do:-

• Set your launcher to use the latest version of the game.
• Launch the game and then go into the video settings.
• Switch back to fullscreen mode
• End the game
• Switch back to 1.5.2 and relaunch.

Simple enough to fix. I suspect there's some sort of backwards incompatibility with the video drivers and earlier versions of Minecraft. In my experience the world of Java is full of version issues and gotchas. But this is the price you pay for cross platform compatibility.

For a simple looking blocky game it sure does make my laptop run hot.

Restoring Java 1.6 on a PowerPC Mac

The Problem

The kid's old G4 Mac Mini was superceeded last year by a more modern intel version which has taken over the duties of Web Browsing, Minecraft and StarCraft.

My oldest son used to live and breath Minecraft, but it fell out of favour a few months back and although the new server still runs his creations, it tends to only get used by his old friends. I think he wanted it to be packed with people, but as it's a small private server using a domestic internet connection I argued this wasn't really fair on the rest of us. As time went on it became less about creating and more about minecraft based activities, although there's some pretty amazing creative stuff on there.

It concerned me though that my server investment was being wasted, so I decided to introduce my two younger sons (5 and 7) to a very much simpler version of Minecraft. I added another service on port 25566 using server version 1.5.2, but then I ran into a problem.

My plan was to hook the old PowerPC Mac Mini to my TV and use that as a second machine, so both boys can play at the same time. This should avoid the "waiting for their turn" issues that we frequently get and be more fun for them. But somewhere along the way an Apple update has removed Java 1.6 (for security reasons) and dumped it back to 1.5, and this version won't run later versions of Minecraft or the loader. Apples recommendation, get it from Oracle (we don't supply it anymore)

Between a rock and a hard place.

I'll admit the G4 Mac Mini is getting as little old; I think I bought it in 2006 so a friend could edit his holiday video. It went on to serve as a loan machine for a few years until we finally set it up for the kids. If I'd have waited another 6 months it would have been an Intel version (sighs), but nobody saw the switch to Intel coming.

So guess what, Oracle don't supply a PowerPC version of Java anymore (in fact I'm not sure they ever did, because Apple still supplied it up to 1.6) None of the Apple update links for Java work anymore (archived) and any updates I do find just install later versions of 1.5, and there's little hope of 1.7!

I did manage to find some v1.6 files after the JavaV8 Apple update, but curiously it didnt show up in Java Preferences. Then when I hacked it into use by altering the symbolic links in /system/library/Frameworks/javaVMs/versions it politely informed me that it was the wrong CPU type.

/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Commands/java -version
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Commands/java: Bad CPU type in executable

So I'm looking at scrapping this machine because it's CPU is not supported anymore, or find a creative way of getting around the problem.

Soylatte or Bust

After a lot more googling I found Soylatte, their site had binaries and after install I ran java -version is proudly reported version 1.7.

Add to your path to get it to run..

export PATH=/usr/local/soylatte16-amd64/bin:$PATH       
(or what ever you called your install dir)

I had high expectations, but this is a Beta Java Developer Kit (JDK), all we want is the Runtime or JRE. Something's not right though because I'm not able to get Minecraft to run and now Java Preferences fails to start.

I went back to googling for answers and ideas, but I didn't find anything new.

So what are my options now?

• Chuck it in the skip. (buy intel one)
• Install Linux MintPPC (more investigation required)
• Replace logic board with Core 2 duo version. (not even sure this will work)

OSX Time Machine kills old disks

Round 1

Earlier this year I decided to replace the disk in my Macbook Pro with an SSD. The HDD was only a year old but I was already having problems that required frequent fixing in DiskUtility. Also those odd clicking noises it was making were making me feel nervous.

I decided to backup asap (once I'd fixed the disk again) and set about manually copying my data to an external disk in the finder window. After is kept failing on a bad block I decided to try and update my Time Machine backup instead. It ran for a while and then the machine froze, forcing me to reboot the machine. I then found that the disk was corrupted and Diskutility could see it but refused to touch it.

I bought a copy of Stellar Phoenix Mac Recovery because the demo version showed all my files listed, but after recovering about 200Gb they all proved unusable. Other attempts have proved equally unsuccessful with days of processing not finding any files what-so-ever. My experience of buying recovery software has proven to be a huge waste of money! (I found similar trying to recover ReiserFS partitions)

So I ran fsck (details here) to see if it would fix it..

admin$ fsck /dev/disk1s2 -f

BAD SUPER BLOCK: MAGIC NUMBER WRONG

LOOK FOR ALTERNATIVE SUPERBLOCKS? [yn] y


CANNOT READ: BLK 16585216

CONTINUE? [yn] y

THE FOLLOWING DISK SECTORS COULD NOT BE READ: 16585216, 16585217, 16585218, 16585219, 16585220, 16585221, 16585222, 16585223,

CANNOT READ: BLK 567944160

CONTINUE? [yn] y

THE FOLLOWING DISK SECTORS COULD NOT BE READ: 567944168, 567944169, 567944170, 567944171, 567944172, 567944173, 567944174, 567944175,

SEARCH FOR ALTERNATE SUPER-BLOCK FAILED. YOU MUST USE THE
-b OPTION TO FSCK TO SPECIFY THE LOCATION OF AN ALTERNATE
SUPER-BLOCK TO SUPPLY NEEDED INFORMATION; SEE fsck(8).

So that didn't work then! (I haven't got a clue where I'd find an alternative super-block.)

Round 2

This last weekend I bought a new USB portable disk unit to use as a new Time Machine volume. My wife's Macbook hadn't been backed up since earlier this year so I decided that was the first machine to try it out on.

I hooked up the drive, kicked off Time Machine and left it running. I noticed after about an hour that it was stuck at 48% so I attempted to kill it and start again, but the Macbook refused to respond. In the end I rebooted the machine but wasn't able to get past a blank grey startup screen. I booted from a startup CD can ran DiskUtility but it refused to see the internal disk.

In the end I replaced the HDD (which was 4½ years old) and recovered from her old Time Machine backup. So that's another internal disk that Time Machine pushed over the edge, and this time it refused to show as a drive.

I'm definitely reaching the conclusion that you shouldn't use Time Machine if you have any doubts over the integrity of your hard disk. Make sure you backup regularly and you'll not lose much.

You do backup don't you?

Update (10th Oct)

I've found that Disk Warrior 4.4 can cope with a faulty disk and will mount this disk in read-only mode so that you can copy off your files. It wasn't without it's problems though, the failing disk causing disk copies to occasionally hang on certain files.