Dual 1.25 G4 Mdd & Bad Crashes

[billmarks]

I recently purchased a Dual 1.25 G4 MDD, the model that can boot in OS9. I am presently running Tiger 10.4.2.

I was of the impression from things I had read that dual processor Macs almost never crash due to the way the operating system isolates itself from program crashes.

I find that I crash as much as I did with my 733 Quicksilver if not more so. The crashes are severe freezes that need the Mac to be powered down and up again to restart. Even on the first restart it will often sit on the grey OSX screen with the grey spinner going around forever, or until I shut the unit off and then the second restart will succeed.

I know this is a very general explanation, but it crashes this way often, whether it be with during iDVD encoding or trying to encode a disc or Toast encoding a disc or other applications doing whatever.

Any other MDD Dual G4 owners having bad crashes?

Dual 1.25 G4 MDD
Machine Name: Power Mac G4
Machine Model: PowerMac3,6
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (3.2)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 1.25 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per CPU): 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 167 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.4.8f2

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Dual processor machines are no more or less prone to crashing than single processor machines. The fact that there is an extra processor does nothing to isolate the operating system from anything else.

Crashes are usually due to one of two things: software or hardware. Have you added any 3rd-party RAM to the system? I would first try removing any hardware you've added to the machine and run that way for a while -- remove any RAM that didn't ship with the machine, any hard drives you've added, and any USB or FireWire devices (with the exception of keyboard/mouse, of course). If you experience more stability that way, I would first suspect a bad stick of RAM.