iMac CD operation slow, DMA not enabled?

J

jrun

Registered
When using the CD-Rom on my iMac (burning CDs or copying files to the harddrive) there is a massive lack of response. Starting/closing apps does not work, and the dock often freezes ´scaled´mode. iTunes may even start to stutter when copying MP3 files from CD to harddrive.

This is a low-end iMac with only 128MB RAM, but to me it seems like DMA is not enabled for the CD-Rom.

Any suggestions (other than chucking in a gigabyte of RAM as seem to be a common solution to speed issues)?
 
Adding 128 MB would probably do wonders here. Burning CDs (at least the preparing to burn part) and Itunes are both big memory/processor users. Adding more memory would be an immediate help. You don't have to 'chuck in a Gigabyte'. although memory is cheap. My opinion, fwiw, minimum RAM for OSX is 512MB.:)
 
Originally posted by slur
Just in case you might want to get a CD lens-cleaning kit.
Click to expand...

The machine is only 4 days old, and the burning/reading is as fast as one can expect (16x I think). The problem is that doing anything else with the machine while it is burning is virtually impossible.

A Unix system should be a lot more responsive during disk operations. I have seen similar problems on other *nixes, but enabling DMA (Direct Memory Access) for the CD-Rom/Harddrives usually solves the problems. Thats why I wondered if DMA perhaps was turned off as default on an iMac.

Have any of you upgraded from an G4/700-128 to 512MB and seen any difference in multitasking?
 
You'll see a major improvement by adding more memory. Put in as much as you can afford.
 
512 meg would probably be best as Delta Mac said, but even adding a 256 meg DIMM would improve your performance tremendously. 256 meg DIMMs are CHEAP!

Apple should NEVER have shipped desktop OSX systems with only a meg.

Doug
 
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