Why do classic Mac OS's crash/freeze so much?

[IIO]

eventually yes. as for faulty RAM for example, OSX would be far more affected by this and might eventually not even boot properly, (where the same faulty RAM in OS9 will only cause 17 black pixels in some photoshop images.)

but there might be counterexamples, too.

[Syntho]

I wonder if we'll ever get to the point that the source codes are released for the classic Mac OS's so that someone can program all of this protection into the OS.

[Bolkonskij]

The classic approach is to install MacsBug. It'll allow you to recover from a crash in many of the cases and it may give you a good idea as to what causes the crashes (e.g. it showed me that iCab 2.9.x has a memory leak that can take the system down when closing the browser).

Ever since I started using MacsBug, it hardly ever run into hard freezes that require a reboot. I cannot comprehend why Apple wouldn't build it into the System by default as it allowed me so many times to return to the finder, save open documents and safely reboot.

I really need to write a tutorial up for System 7 Today. Or maybe I can get Knezzen to do it. It just makes using Mac OS (9) so much better.

[damo-blak]

Very good question Syntho,
this is why we get protected memory in Os's now as was said earlier,
I find that The newest Os's are very stable but there is a payback,
its a fine balance between latencies,and stability.

Once setup well the old Os's work great but will definitely get more
crashes than newer systems,also a more real time experience tho I would
think with software that is coded to more directly accesses the hardware.
It doesn't help when the Hardware that we run Os9 on is so old:-)

I worked for a small business that used to build and sell PC's with windows 98,95,Msdos etc.
maan It used to be hard to chase up faults,like random crashing etc.
In those days-plug and pray and also all sorts of conflicts to
sort out software/hardware wise.

The old systems seemed to just crash out of nowhere!.Now I have
a windows 10 LTSC system,that is really stable,but Is it great for
my main DAW music system?,its good for recording and soft synths
but only mediocre for MIDI timing etc.

I think that the main reason I use these old machines is nostalgia tho!,
that's why we put up with the idiosyncrasies.
 

 

[IIO]

The old systems seemed to just crash out of nowhere!

chrashes always have a reason, and these reasons are usually releated to hardware drivers or applications.

it is not that there would be a dozen of bugs in OS9 or finder which randomly chrash the OS.

prootools, photoshop or unreal tournament can run for weeks without a chrash and if someone says audio on OS9 would be buggy he probably has not yet seen the first generation of audio on OSX PPC, where the spinning wheel of death is your regular alternative cursor.

the main issue in old MacOS is that you have to reboot after chrashes, while in unix or windows 10 you can mostly just force quit the app, open it again, and all is good. this sucks a lot if you are not used to it.