Text displays slowly

[gtroyer]

I pulled my hard drive with OS 9.2.1 from a B&W G3 350 mhz machine that I had used for years and installed it in a G4 tower with 1 GB Ram. The G4 is waaay faster than my G3 that I used for 16 years! I can load up multiple programs and everything runs smoothly for the first 10 minutes or so and then I begin to get a lag in the display of text that is being typed. I am a 40 word per minute typist and dispay of text will not keep up. It is popping up on the screen at approx. 5 words per min. A restart will always fix the problem. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot?

[GaryN]

The clue may be here:

I can load up multiple programs and everything runs smoothly for the first 10 minutes or so

What programs? Check their memory allocations.  Try saving, quitting and restarting the app you're working in. Try eliminating others one at a time maybe. See if you find one that makes the problem happen. One could be doing something in the background that eventually starts hogging all of the available memory.

OR COME TO THINK OF IT…

First, test the memory. Maybe you've got a bad stick.

[DieHard]

Yes, I was also thinking memory or Logic board so please download diagnostics, boot to Diag CD and test
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,822.0.html

10 minutes is not a very long time, so if you have an Applications with a "Memory Leak" it should take longer than 10 minutes to affect the System; you can also run the "System Profiler" before and after the slow down issue and see if the memory allocated changes for the system or any apps (which indicates a memory leak)

[gtroyer]

I typically have Vectorworks 8.5.2, Excel 97 and MacSOHO running simutaneously. The strange thing is that nothing has changed except that the hard drive is now running in a G4 instead of a G3. (I ordered a low end G3 on ebay and received a much nicer G4 loaded with Ram    )

However, after I posted my original post I was browsing this website and came across some Diehard's  "Tweaks" suggestions. I followed most of those and my G4 is performing flawlessly for over 12 hr. I wonder if turning off the font smoothing is what sped it up???

Thanks for the tips guys! If the problem returns I will troubleshoot the memory sticks and run some diagnostics.