Mac OS 9 Lives
Mac OS 9 Discussion => Hardware => Topic started by: part12studios on October 16, 2016, 08:39:46 AM
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Hi there,
So I've been using OS9 for a bit now and I've just noticed that the system seems to just kinda pause when i open things and such.. like say i double click an icon.. the whole system seems to be non responsive till it completes the action.
Using Digital Performer 3 requires that i turn off virtual memory.. so that's one system change I did make and maybe this is it.
But yea it just seems like double clicking.. say.. digital performer 3.. would pretty much fire off an immediate hard disk access to start loading but instead there is this i dunno 4-5 delay at times.. like the computer is really doing some heaving processing when nothing else is even running on the computer.
To clarify, it's not like the computer freezes up in the middling of using.. mouse is always movable.. and say i was playing a song in DP3.. it's not like that locks up ever.. it seems fairly isolate to the opening of apps.
I have a sawtooth G4 450mhz with 768mb ram
Thanks,
Caleb
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do u have experience with any slower cpu machines for historical perspective ?:)
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yea i mean i've had old pcs and it just seems like there is usually more hard drive chatter right as i double click on something.. i realize it's old but i'm using software from that time on hardware of that time so it's not like i'm running OSX El Capitan and Ableton 9 on it.. or whatever version they are up too ;) Not that they would but you get my point.
Though I must say I seem to remember programs being kinda "system dedicated" like the version of Toast I had back in the day pretty much locked up the computer till the burning was done. Still, I guess I can make a video some time of the behavior to see if other people know what I'm talking about.
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best thing u can do is avoid using crappy slow low-performing hard drives from 2004 or earlier
use modern hard drives, hard drive function + Speed is one of the most improved things technically to do with computers since then..
along with CPU speed..... just dont use old hard drives.. they SUCK very badly.. theres no point in using them because they suck.
u would be better off even using COMPACT FLASH or SD card as a hard drive then a old hard drive thats ATA.
hard drives are technically superior in this day + age to their 10-15 yo counterpart forefathers.
even the modern mechanical SATA drives can be used with a SATA-ATA adapter for great performance..
just ditch the junk drives + use proper up-to-date modern hard drives, be they SSD or mechanical..
a 2016 manufactuered mechanical drive will be vastly superior to one made in 2004 or before
and YES the cpu in the old macs are not able to do more than one thing at a time..
thats why people used to actually switch between two computers back then, if they were power users they would be using 2,3,4 different computers, not touching the mouse at all untill the computer was done what it had been told to do... most computers were like that until recently hyper threading + dual core changed that.
its also why they made attempts at dual core machines int he late 90s + Early 2000s... even tho neither the OS or the apps properly supported it yet at the time.
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ah ok yea that's a good point.. i could see that being a serious bottleneck.. and yes i am using two drives including the original 20gb HDD as the system OS disk.
At this point i'll stick with it, but that at least explains things. I had to replace the clock battery recently as the one it had was long dead, but thank god it hadn't leaked..
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and YES the cpu in the old macs are not able to do more than one thing at a time..
thats why people used to actually switch between two computers back then, if they were power users they would be using 2,3,4 different computers, not touching the mouse at all untill the computer was done what it had been told to do... most computers were like that until recently hyper threading + dual core changed that.
Thats not true. Don´t belive every statement easily. Even with my PowerMac 6100 @ 60 MHz I was able in 1999 to use 12 or more programs like Word, Photoshop, Quicktime at the same time. The computer could surf the web, while it was uploading stuff at an FTP, replaying some music, and scanning a huge paper with the SCSI scanner. All at the same time, and without any "pausing" at any time, even not when switching between one of these 12 opened programs. At this time I used Mac OS 7.5.5 and two displays hooked up to the small 6100 (one onboard, one PDS card).
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yea i just never used OS9 that heavily back in the day.. not enough to have any really solid memories of performance and such.. IIRC back then I did splurge for a 7200rpm HDD.. and yes i know the mac could manage multiple programs.. i was flipping between programs on this machine fine.
The only known experience I've had first hand was with a version of toast, probably an older version.. but yes it totally locked up the computer until the burning was done.. certainly more about software design than an OS limit, this I'm sure of.
I just think there is some kind of surprising lag I experience when booting up where it seems like an app icon just seems to have a kind of "lock up" time where it seems like the computer is just thinking.. next time i'm on the system again, I'll take some videos of it in action. That should help everyone see if it's normal or unusual behavior.
Thanks for the great feedback so far.
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dont listen to mat he just likes to try to argue because he doenst get out much
seriously search on the forums here and everytime he responds to me its to point out how incorrect i am, which seems to be his only goal to the point of losing the original point of why u had even asked the question u did in the first place
anyways when compared to the capabilities of a modern core 2 duo intel powered machine (2006 + later) the old macs have very limited multi tasking abilities using any real processing power or built in devices.. (the above example put forward by mat are very limited small tiny apps like a shell terminal, textedit etc things that use next to no cpu power will work but not anything that does any heavy lifting)
i always alWAYS would lleave my computer ALONE while burning cds back before 2006... or making a cd/dvd disc image, thoes types of tasks could + would always screw up unless u left the computer alone u would have a coaster or u would have to read the image again... multi tasking was possible with small low memory apps, but thats what it was, task switching, one app would go dormant while the os freed up the resources to the next app, u couldnt process something with photoshop while saving a word document etc
the point is.. yes. these computers are old and they could not accomplish nearly as much as modern systems can in the way of multitasking - small minds can nitpick all they want about the correctness of my statement but the point ive made remains... its simply not as capable as far as multitasking capabilities go with other systems built since late 2006.
lots of powermac macs can lock up and require a hard boot
anyways hope my comments helped
cheers caleb
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yea i think you're both right in a sense.. like you said, i to remember leaving systems alone for cd/dvd burning back in the day.. it was intensive and yes any hiccup meant you made yourself another coaster..
having multiple programs open at once isn't the same is serious multi core processors do these days.
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dont listen to mat he just likes to try to argue because he doenst get out much
seriously search on the forums here and everytime he responds to me its to point out how incorrect i am, which seems to be his only goal to the point of losing the original point of why u had even asked the question u did in the first place
Perhaps you could stop that paranoia somehow. There is no goal from my side, and I am just arguing agains things you write when they are crap, so that new users do not get confused. So if you didn´t collect serious knowledge about cooperative multitasking, please do not state about it. Also it makes no sense to argue against Mac OS 9 or older PPCs permanentely in a Mac OS 9 forum. Be it as banned chrisnova, supernova or geforceg4 or whatever.
Such an absolute nonsense is this statement for example:
like a shell terminal,
There are no shells or terminals for Mac OS 9 like you know them from Unix Operating Systems. If you talk about an Telnet program or similar, FTP at Mac OS 9 was always done graphically as well by end users. I bought "Anarchy" long before it was renamed to "Interarchy", and later often used "Transmit". No text commands used anywhere.
Now back on topic:
part12studios you are right. Early Toast versions locked the complete computer. That was necessary, as the buffers have been small, and another program that took too much CPU time could interrupt the data stream to the burner. That changed with later G4s and new Toast versions. For example the first version of Toast 5 which came out 2001 also was ready for "background burning".
About your initialy question, I would be interrested, if you have this problem with all programs? Your machine is not the fastest one, but there should not be such problems, except some huge programs that are starting up. Ususally smaller programs should open immediatly. A video might be a good idea, so we can tell you if it is "normal".
The idea with the new massstorage is ok. It really might speed up the machine a lot. Especially if you use some SSDs (which are cheap enough now, as DieHard pointed out) to be used in our older Macs as well.
But it might be that you got some simple software issue as well. Are there any background programs running? Some network tasks like crazy AppleTalk rights for the entire disk or similar. Perhaps there are other things slowing down your machine? We will see.
In every case working with the Mac OS´ Finder and getting a "quite fasst" feeling should be possible with your G4. Turning off the virtual memory usually speeds up the computer, as this memory is at the mass storage (in your case a slow HD). So that cannot be the point.
But; opening a huge program really can feel like a beginning freeze. Opening Photoshop 7 for example, takes even at the fastest G4 some seconds, and you cannot really do anything else in this time (except some background tasks that are already running, like decoding some MP3 or similar).
If you do such a video, please open some smaller simple programs like simple Text and move around in the finder as well, so that we can see if it feels like at our machines.