X Stable??

S

SYiTHE

Registered
Hey guys- I need some help!
1st of all Im a seasoned PC user- and a new Mac user, so please bear with me =)

I bought a 2nd hand iMac 350MHz recently- (fantastic condition) and also bought a copy of OSX 10.2 – however my machine has become incredibly slow-- but this is expected being a UNIX based OS. (not to mention OSX has a fair amount of eye candy)
The problem is not so much the performance but the stability.
My iMac has become unstable running OSX…..?.... This is very confusing- as from most of the articles I read prior to purchasing OSX- there was a general consensus that OSX was incredibly stable. And from my own small experience with Linux- UNIX based OS’s are rock solid…. And even after installing 10.2.3 the problems still occur on OSX.
The 2 problems in brief detail are

1) IE and Safari both unexpectedly quit regularly- giving me no warning- they just disappear and give me the prompt “The application has unexpectedly quit” )

2) If I use the number keypad on the keyboard- the whole system freezes!? just one button stroke and OSX locks up. Everything bar my mouse movement…? no matter what application I’m running….

I’ve tried removing various newly installed app’s – I’ve tried doing some research of this number pad freeze thing- and Ive even attempted things like trying new peripherals and even erasing the hdd, and doing a clean install of OSX 10.2 (without classic)
However- nothing! I do seems to fix these stability issues.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I am keen to hear from anyone of you Mac Masters! =) thx in advance.

/sy
 
Sorry, I'm not much of a help, but.... Oh wow..... apparently I'm not the only one with the #2 problem... I plug in the external USB pro keyboard into my PowerBook, and the keypad makes it lock up. Go fig. I thought this was rare, or just me.
 
Sorry to hear that adambyte… it is a real pain in the ass as I’m sure you know. I hope someone can shed some light on this prob.

There is another small issue I forgot to post (I knew I was forgetting something =P)

If there are any Photoshop users here, perhaps you may know a fix to the following bug: When using Photoshop7 –if I create some text, and need to move the text around, I must click on an exact line or curve of text in order to move it? -this is close to impossable.
I also use Photoshop7 for Windows, and Doing the very same procedure, I only need to click on the canvas in order to move the text.
Not a real stability issue- but a real pain. As you can imagine its very time consuming and even downright frustrating trying to move text around the canvas using OSX.

Hope some1 can Help!!

/Sy
 
Firstly, how much RAM do you have? Mac OS X really needs 128mb minimum, and running it with less than that will cause applications to shut down due to insufficient memory. The other common cause of crashes is faulty RAM, which is awkward to diagnose but easily fixed.

You might try checking the console after any crash or freeze. Make a note of any error messages that seem to correlate with the freezes.

?if I create some text, and need to move the text around, I must click on an exact line or curve of text in order to move it? -this is close to impossable.
Click to expand...

If you're using the Move tool, make sure you have deselected "Auto Select Layer" in the tool options.
 
I'm using an iMac 350 (I'm the original owner), running 10.2 and Photoshop/Image Ready 7, Acrobat 5, and Safari (which I'm using to type this). My last crash of any type was 1/10/2003, my System Preferences crashed... though I don't remember why. For a complete system wide crash I would say we're talking about long before I installed 10.2.

My current uptime is 4 days 16:32 (thats last time I booted into classic to play Warbirds :D ). I have been playing the demo of Ghost Recon everyday (more than I should considering the amount of work I have to do) without any problem even though my system is under the recommended requirements.

I would say that your problems sound like hardware. The system you have came with (originally) a hardware test CD, that would be the first place I would start. Second, you may have some bad RAM. If you still have the RAM that originally came with the system from Apple, I would consider removing all other RAM (even if you drop down to 64 MB) and then see if you still have the same problems with crashing of apps and keyboard problems.
 
symphonix, thankfully I did read up on the RAM issue b4 getting the iMac- and I whacked in a 128mb stick prior to installing OSX.
You are right in thinking it could be the ram- as this is common. I have had faulty Ram experiences many times with PC’s, but I can say with confidence its not the Ram.
The iMac works fine with 128mb ram -Not to fast- but it runs; nonetheless I can’t rule out the ram…

Thx for the ps7 tip. I haven’t had a chance to try that as I just installed the 7.0.1 update which seems to have fixed the txt issue! but I will still take note of the Auto select layer option! --cheers =)

Mac-blog; you play Ghost Recon on a 350Mhz iMac?? LOL! well done. That must be some sort of record. I must try and see how many fps Q3A gets on this my lil beast! :D

yah- as I said, I don’t think it is the ram- imho I don’t think ram would cause the keypad to freeze the system- although it is possible. I must try your suggestion of trying a new ram stick, & see what the results are.
 
btw- Ive been posting on my PC as IE or Safari wont stay open long enough for me to post :(
this crashing of browsers started roughly after I installed Safari... but after deleting the Safari folder- the problem still occured in IE. (and keypad still freezes sytem) is there a way to uninstall Safari completly? -similar to PC uninstall?
These minor bugs are small anyoances; OSX is by far the best OS Ive had the pleasure of using, just needs some polishing:)
 
SyiTHE, try looking in '~Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Safari.crash.log'. This is the crash log for Safari (obviously), and if you double click on it, it should open in the Console. This might help you diagnose the problem.
I also wanted to clarify some points that were posted here:
First, regarding mac-blog's post: I don't believe the iMacs and iMac DVs came with hardware test CDs. At least my families didn't. Trust me, I looked long and hard for one, but to no avail.
Second, regarding SYiTHE's last post, That is the beauty of Macintosh programs, unless you ran an installer, the only things that have been installed are the thing you dragged to your Hard Drive, and any Preference Files that is might have created. (Please correct me if I am really wrong here, but that was my understanding.)
 
Originally posted by dlloyd
First, regarding mac-blog's post: I don't believe the iMacs and iMac DVs came with hardware test CDs. At least my families didn't. Trust me, I looked long and hard for one, but to no avail.
Click to expand...

Apple supplied hardware test CDs for all iMacs from at least the slot-loading series on (1999-present). These are hardware specific CDs that only work on the model they are shipped with.

Now unless I was visited by the Hardware Test CD Fairy, this CD was included in the original set of CDs. Why would Apple give me this CD and not give it to other people? That seems pretty strange if you ask me. (Note that I have friends with the same type of iMac that I have and the DV version and all of them were given this CD in the original packaging... I should know, I helped set up their systems)

So, if this CD didn't come with the original equipment... where do you get them? They must come from some place, right? This CD didn't just pop up out of thin air. How do you believe I got mine then?

Also if you want to find the crash logs even faster... check under the Logs tab in the Apple System Profiler. It should have all the logs of all the crashes by application (ie. Safari.crash.log). This is how I knew the date of my last crash and which app it was. It is a lot easier than hunting through a ton of directories.
 

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That's right, Dlloyd. You don't need to "Uninstall" software on a Mac. If you don't want it, just delete it. There might be some preference files but these are just XML and don't take up much space, so it's not really worth worrying about them. They are kept in /Library/Preferences, and in ~/Library/Preferences.

Mac-Blog, since you know the time of your last crash, try looking at the console error logs. Open /Applications/Utilities/Console and have a look for any error messages at that time.
 
Originally posted by symphonix
Mac-Blog, since you know the time of your last crash, try looking at the console error logs. Open /Applications/Utilities/Console and have a look for any error messages at that time.
Click to expand...

Actually I have the Console set to come up when ever a crash occurs (saves time, you know).

What am I looking for? It was a single crash over a month ago... is there something special about it that you want to know about?
 
Kind of off-topic, but Macs started shipping with the AHT (Apple Hardware Test) disks in Summer 2000. I was working for an AASP/Apple Specialist at the time and we were part of the pilot program that Apple had to see if the disks did what they were supposed to do before they started putting them in every box.

SYiTHE- As crazy as it sounds, faulty RAM could very likely be the culprit. Does the same thing with the keypad happen while booted in 9? I think booting into 9 and trying that will determine rather quickly if this is a hardware failure or not. Mac OS X is very finnicky about the type/quality of RAM used and if the RAM isn't quite up to par, things start happening that one wouldn't normally attribute to RAM. Give it a shot and post back with your findings.
 
My old imac has experienced some trouble as well. I believe Apple came out with an update before you are supposed to install Mac OSX.2, I believe on the slot loading iMacs. I am currently researching that now.
In other words, before installing the newest OS, a firm ware update was needed. I neglected to do that, and I am getting similar freezes.
 
I agree, Safari alone could crash without hardware being faulty. But as IE crashes too, it is very likely there is no software source to you problem but a hardware one.

PS: I get Q3A at full speed under Mac OS 9.22, real pleasure to play ! All options (detail etc.) are at their maximum :D
 
ok, i would say that ram is the number one issue - not compatibility, but amount. and it probably wouldn't be an issue if you weren't using photoshop. photoshop is a memory hog. it completely takes over and everything else suffers. i have 512 ram and still get issues with it. there's no way 128 or 192 is going to handle it efficeintly. your best best is to invest in a pair of identical 256 chips. i believe that will max that model out, not sure. if not, more is better. i also believe that model only has a 10 gb drive. so you're going to need lots of free space for your system swap files and photoshop scratch disks. anything less than 2 gb is going to be trouble. especially with so little ram. whatever is needed that can't be found in ram is going to be accounted for in virtual memory. having an external drive with lots of space on which to place these swap files will help. make sure it's a firewire drive, preferably a 7200 rpm model.

other work arounds include not using any other apps while using photoshop and quitting PS when you are done. a restart or cache clear may be necessary to reclaim your memory. never leave PS up and running in the background. an app called Maintain that is available at www.versiontracker.com will help with this.

i also agree with dlloyd that firmware should be checked. in fact everything should be brought up to the current version.

since you did a clean install, it's probably not a matter of repairing right now, but i would also suggest investing in a good diskrepair and defragmenting app at some point. this is still a mac with a mac file system. i assume you are using hfs+ formatting as ufs will cause all sorts of problems of its own. it's also wise to make sure your permissions are repaired.

lastly, don't expect too much out of a model that is at the very low end of supporting os x. however you should be able to run stable.
 
Thx for all your replies guys.

Well most people have pointed to the Ram as being the culprit.
Im not completely sure about Apple Hardware disks- but I do know I do not have one. I bought this iMac 2nd hand from a Queensland police dept, and it only cam with the iMac, k/b and hockey puck mouse- hot loaded with OS9 (no OS9 CDs) and no Apple Hardware disks.

That’s good to hear I have been uninstalling app’s the correct way- by just deleting them! This is just another thing I like about Apple software- its intuitive and efficient.
edX, thx for sharing some PS7 info. I am quite aware of PS tendency to hog the system recources. I am a Graphic Designer by trade- but a PC graphic designer, I’m slowly making the ‘switch’ by having a trial run with this iMac / OSX. My intention is not going to create print quality images for clients on my iMac- more to get myself comfortable with Mac’s b4 looking at purchasing a PowerMac in the future.
And thx for the link to the memory monitor app- I will download it and give it a thrash.- cheers :D

Im doing a search atm for some iMac specific ram- can anyone recommend iMac ram? btw I am an Australian- so no need to recommend retail outlets- but brand names sure would be a huge help:)

/Sy
 
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