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DakotaGuy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jan 14, 2002
4,226
3,791
South Dakota, USA
Okay this happened just a few mins ago. But this was the first time that OSX went down on me since I went to it in December and boy did it go down hard! I was typing on a message board with my iMac...not this one...in IE and just when I was about done...All of the sudden...LOCK and then weird things start scrolling right over top of the IE window and the entire desktop and then stopped. I wish I would have written some of them down. It was like a black background and "early 80's style" font. It mentioned a Kernal Error and then said it was trying to resolve, but it never resolved. I can't remember all the details, but if it ever happens again I am going to take some notes and share with you. I don't know a lot about computers on the deep programming side, but would like to learn what some of that stuff means. Has anyone else seen OSX crash...and does it crash like this? The old MacOS just locked. It never wrote a narrative about the crash over the screen in the final moment of life!
 

astronun

macrumors newbie
Dec 9, 2001
12
0
It's justa kernel panic. No problem unless it comes back. This is just how OS X crashes
 

GeeYouEye

macrumors 68000
Dec 9, 2001
1,669
10
State of Denial
Welcome to the Club

Hi. Welcome to Club Panic. Now that you've had your first kernal panic, you can enjoy all the features of the club for free. These include:
Free scrolling text accross your monitor, available in one color!
Free freezes at random intervals!
Free crashes whenever you feel like it!
See the Unix guts of Mac OS X fail!
You now have a lifetime membership, cancellable at any time*!

*subject to a cancellation fee of between $1000 and $3500, payable to Apple Computer, Inc. Or better yet, send the money to me. I want a new DPG4.

[/humor][/sarcasm]

Ok basically the Unix part of OSX failed. No big deal. Think of it as an OS 9 system error (you know, the white box with the bomb). Restart and move on. BTW, had you recently downloaded OmniWeb 4.1b. That's when I got my first one.
 

Gelfin

macrumors 68020
Sep 18, 2001
2,165
5
Denver, CO
Although I hate to put it this way, that's the OS X version of a BSOD. Just take comfort in the fact that you'll see many fewer of the OS X variety.
 

DakotaGuy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jan 14, 2002
4,226
3,791
South Dakota, USA
So basically this weird happening is sorta like the "blue screen of death" on a PC? It was kinda cool...to see it go bonkers for the first time (as long as it is the only time for a long time!)...but common Steve...PC's give you a pretty blue...this was kinda ugly! It did look "Unixie" (is that a word? hehe) from my little experience around such systems. I take it this is pretty rare.

Yeah it was a panic for sure. Hell I think that is as fast as I ever saw anything in OSX emerge from the screen! I finally had to search for that little reset button on the side of my iMac... It's been so long since I used it. Guess probably a good thing or else it might get sticky!
 

krossfyter

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2002
4,297
0
secret city
dude youre running os x on an imac 400! wow!

could this be a problem? or does this happen to anyone using OSX on any mac regardless of power and speed?

anyways I hope you dont have that problem much. take care.
 

mac15

macrumors 68040
Dec 29, 2001
3,099
0
it runs fine on an imac 400

don't panic just deep breathes in and out
 

groov'

macrumors regular
Dec 12, 2001
125
0
Netherlands
how to crash OSX

You want to crash OSX?

OK...


1. fire up apache (share/webserver in system-extensions)
2. fire up Explorer X and connect to webserver at localhost: http://127.0.0.1 (now you are greeted by apache that the webserver works fine and is waiting for serving your sites)
3. fire up classic
4. fire up a classic browser and connect to the same 127.0.0.1

there you are....(no more)
 

grouse

macrumors regular
Jan 3, 2002
187
5
london
as I've posted elsehwere on macrumors

Yup. it's happened to me.

About three times!

And I don't us OS X much at the moment, still waiting for Quark to get their and Photoshop and so on.

But it has happened and I reckon since I've used the system only about 50 times or so at most, that's about 6%, which isn't what I was led to expect.

It also hung once, totally, when I tried to install a canon printer driver.

:mad:
 

britboy

macrumors 68030
Nov 4, 2001
2,655
0
Argentina
the only time OSX has reverted to white text on a black screen was when a Win2K box i'd mapped over the network at uni crashed whilst i was using some of the files.

Caused a kernel panic.

Can't really blame OSX for that one though; i put it down to micro$oft.
 

mischief

macrumors 68030
Aug 1, 2001
2,921
1
Santa Cruz Ca
kernel panics and hardware.

The only kernel panics I've seen were immediately after installing OS X, before I could add any updates or on machines that couldn't handle it. I think OS X on anything less than a G3 500Mhz with 512Mb of RAM is risky at best. Add a few PCI it doesn't know and the risk goes up exponentially. The most reliable Kernel Panic I've seen is on the Blue and Whites: The ATA controller on those Motherboards sux: Any HD over 10Gb won't be fully mapped and will have continual Fatal Adressing errors.
 

4409723

Suspended
Jun 22, 2001
2,221
0
Lower than you

ibook 300 mhz
of course i have 2x processors
(one online the other beside playing the music)
 

DakotaGuy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jan 14, 2002
4,226
3,791
South Dakota, USA
Actually...that was the only time I ever had that happen...I am running on a 400MHz with a paltry 128MB RAM. Now many would say...how in the world? Well first off...I have opened Classic maybe once in the past month. Everything I use is OSX and I have found if you only have 128MB RAM you get by just fine...as long as you ARE NOT running Classic on top of OSX. Now my iBook does have 256MB RAM and a 600MHz processor and the additional RAM and MHz does make a world of difference on the OS being "snappy" but as far as stability...they are both stable. One crash on the iMac and none on the iBook...but I use the desktop quite a bit more at this time.

As far as how low can you go? I thought as long as it was anykind of iMac from Bondi on up to the new flat panel or B&W G3 up to the new Quicksilver you can run OSX with no problems. I am not sure about the Powerbooks before the TiBook, but I also thought that all iBooks ever made will run it fine as well. Yeah I would like more RAM in my iMac. I think I can max it at 512MB...and I know that would help a lot...but how much would that cost? I have two 64MB's in it right now and I would have to take them out and buy two 256MB and put in. Would this make the system faster and more stable...even though I can't complain about stability with only one crash in two months.
 

Catfish_Man

macrumors 68030
Sep 13, 2001
2,579
2
Portland, OR
I'm running x.1.2...

...on a beige G3 233MHz with 384 MBs of RAM and a 30GB 7200rpm HD and it runs just fine. It's not exactly a speed demon (obviously), but quite useable.
All of these bouncemarks are on the second/third launch of the program.
About 2.5 bounces before IE stops bouncing
About 6.5 bounces before iMovie is up and running
3 bounces for mail to stop bouncing
3 bounces for AIM to stop bouncing
at most one bounce for iTunes to stop bouncing
how do these compare?
 

DakotaGuy

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jan 14, 2002
4,226
3,791
South Dakota, USA
Catfish...It runs about the same on my machines as well. Looks to me then as long as you have any kind of G3 or better you can run OSX reasonably well. Just understand (speed wise) a G3 233-400 is not going to run it like a DP 1GHz...but we all knew that!!!!lol
 

Geert

macrumors 6502a
May 28, 2001
513
0
.be
OS X on iMac 450 DV+

I'm running OS X on a iMac DV+ with only 128 Mb RAM, and it works just fine, OK I have to admit, it slows down when I have a few apps open (IE, mail,iTunes, iPhoto, imovie, classic, powerpoint, photoshop,...) The way OSX handles the virtual memory is great, I have to admit, when I have all these, or most of these open, it sometimes takes a couple of microseconds before the dock reacts, or switches to another app, but when you have a couple of apps open, but are only working in 1, I do not feel that the system is slowed down. I only had on 'crash' so far. I would not exactly call it a crash, since I downloaded so many stuff, my osX partition got full, and I had a couple of programs open, so actually I was overwriting the apps OSX had put in the virtual, so Then he kind of freezed, only remedy was to push the restart button, I guess he would have recovered after a while, because I had that spinning rainbow thing, and I could still use the dock and menubar, but I couldn't activate anything anymore. So after a couple of minutes I restarted, changed my download folder to another partition, delete/moved a couple from the previous location, and OSX is running fine since then.

Only one thing comes to mind OSX is just great!

I do like a couple of extra RAM's though, that way osX has more space to breath and it would certainly shine even more.:p
 

Geert

macrumors 6502a
May 28, 2001
513
0
.be
one more thing

I do feel that mail is a really heavy app though.
He surely quit a number of times without any reason, and to me this is the only app that can use some improvement. And I don't want to switch to entourage, I'm just not such a microsoft fan so.
Some tweaking of the mail app, and it's better then entourage!
 
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