@K-L

Quote:

I've found that if I hit AMIGA LEFT + ALT LEFT, it make the mouse come to life again.

Now if only Alzheimer's Disease would cease for a while, I might remeber using that solution! Many thanks.

OldFart

Last edited by OldFart on 08-Jan-2012 at 06:34 PM.

_________________
More then three levels of indigestion and you're scroomed!

@Spectre660

Quote:

For me the most freezes have been caused during Screenblanker activity or with dockies running from Amidock.

Screenblanker once was a sure way to lock up the system, so I cut it out. There is no use for such a program anymore anyway. It was once devised as a solution to prevent CRT's from 'burning in' an image, when being idle for a long time.
Would make sense again when the system would detect me leaving from or a entering the monitor, in the meantime displaying an 'absence image'. This could (would be better even) be a nice little film or filmfragment.

Never had problems with AmiDock, though.

OldFart

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More then three levels of indigestion and you're scroomed!

@number6

Quote:

That's probably the nicest way anyone has stated that.

Thanks. I have made it my intention to be nice this year. Now just see what my mileage will turn out to be.

Oldfart

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More then three levels of indigestion and you're scroomed!

@OldFart

Quote:

I've found that if I hit AMIGA LEFT + ALT LEFT, it make the mouse come to life again. Now if only Alzheimer's Disease would cease for a while...

AD did not even get a chance to cut in this time: the system just froze and no amount of hammering keys, whichever combination, brought it back to life. This leaves me to 'free' your solution in a controlled way even before the 'garbage collector' gets a chance.

OldFart

_________________
More then three levels of indigestion and you're scroomed!

@Cass Quote:

Right, I thought it`s a common problem.

It is NOT a common problem that the system becomes unresponsive & then after a while becomes responsive again. It can happen very *occasionally*, but it can normally be pinned down to a particular program is heavily pushing the system.

For example, something is using all your Video Ram, so OS4 has to move some of it to Normal Ram to make space. Or (very unlikely) you have exhausted all of Normal Ram due to a memory leak, and so OS4 has to move some of the Normal Ram to the Swap Partition to make space.

If this is happening on a regular basis then you have a serious problem (probably a buggy program) that needs dealing with.


On the other hand, if you have DMA disabled (so that it is using the CPU to do harddisk data transfer), then the system would often be sluggish (since HD access would be maybe 1MB/sec & no CPU time available during HD access). Or you might have a dying harddisk.

Last edited by ChrisH on 08-Jan-2012 at 08:04 PM.

_________________
Author of the PortablE programming language.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

System freeze is normal thing :) at least here

@Kicko, Oldfart et al

Thanks for the enlightening info. My impression had been that OS4.1.x was pretty stable, at least on the SAM boards.
I've read some detailed threads about problems from individual users, but mainly put this down to either particular setups, or the (well-discussed) hardware issues of the various A1 models (-SE, -XE and u-). Thought OS4.1.x on the SAMs was supposed to be pretty rock-solid though.

I'm looking forward to the chance to try out OS4.x myself with the upcoming netbook, so will get a more experienced perspective then I suppose, but I'm actually quite surprised by the acceptance of this being a 'normal' part of the experience.

_________________
Troll - n., A disenfranchised former potential customer who remains interested enough to stay informed and express critical opinions.
opp., the vast majority who voted silently with their feet.

AmigaOS4 is almost stable on my SamFlex (with the exception of the old Update 3), however it's stable enough using native software, if you start old 68k apps the situation can change radically in certain case ...

Also frequent freeze can happen stressing heavily the operating system and this isn't rare at all when you use your OS for such complicated operations

I think what we really miss (apart a real memory protection in general) is an accurate beta testing of the system when it is in certain critical situations ..

_________________
BACK FOR THE FUTURE

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Sam440ep Flex 800 Mhz 1 GB Ram + AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6
AmigaOne XE G3 800 Mhz - 640 MB Ram - Radeon 9200 SE + AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6

I have an A1-XE, two Sam 440s (an EP and a Flex), a Sam 460 and an X-1000 all running here. I don't get "freezes". Period. That is probably because I have only clean OS4 systems running for test purposes. I don't use screen blankers because I don't have CRTs any more. I don't have third-party add-ons because I'm testing and developing OS4, not third-party programs.

OTOH, I have seen freezes that recover after 30 seconds - due to HD read failures. They are usually followed by USB "failure". In every case the problem has been the HD dying. It's happened about three times over the years. Very occasionally I have wanted something from one of the old disks and reconnected it. The lockups come back immediately.

I hear (but have not observed) that OWB-MUI suffers from crashes and has memory leaks. Maybe Cass has been running OWB-MUI for so long that it has eaten up his RAM?

In short: No, OS4 does not crash. Only bad add-on programs crash. Turn off the add-ons one by one and you might find which one (or ones) is/are causing the problem.

Better still: Get a serial cable and connect the crashing machine to something that can capture any debug output. It should help isolate the problem. You could then post it on the OS4 forum, where you will get help.

Last edited by tonyw on 08-Jan-2012 at 10:47 PM.

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cheers
tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

@tonyw

Quote:

I hear (but have not observed) that OWB-MUI suffers from crashes and has memory leaks. Maybe Cass has been running OWB-MUI for so long that it has eaten up his RAM?

WebKit (as well as Gecko for that matter) has memory leak issues, but that doesn't explain at all crashes, especially not on OS4 where swap memory should in theory save the day.

@tonyw
Quote:

I don't use screen blankers because I don't have CRTs any more.

Hmmm, well I'd suggest caution here, my Sony LCD is around five years old and has horrendous screenburn!
Quote:

I hear (but have not observed) that OWB-MUI suffers from crashes and has memory leaks.

It's a big culprit here. Though my XE is much more freeze prone since the update to u4, maybe two or three times a day. The only way to be sure is to do a fresh install from scratch, but I don't have the inclination for that at the moment.
Quote:

Get a serial cable and connect the crashing machine to something that can capture any debug output.

A good idea. I might try that.

Last edited by raumfahre on 08-Jan-2012 at 11:27 PM.

@raumfahre

Quote:

raumfahre wrote: Hmmm, well I'd suggest caution here, my Sony LCD is around five years old and has horrendous screenburn!

Eh, you sure it's not a Sony plasma screen you have instead of an LCD? LCDs simply don't get screenburn, but plasma panels can (which is a shame, since they tend to give a much nicer image than LCD).

Quote:

Quote: I hear (but have not observed) that OWB-MUI suffers from crashes and has memory leaks. It's a big culprit here. Though my XE is much more freeze prone since the update to u4, maybe two or three times a day. The only way to be sure is to do a fresh install from scratch, but I don't have the inclination for that at the moment.

Maybe I'm just very lucky, but I rarely get freezes with my A1-XE. OWB-MUI occasionally does it, but I don't do all that much browsing on my A1. It's never frozen on me that I remember, simply by sitting there or running the screen blanker. It's always been due to some program, or some coding I was doing...

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@Daedalus

Quote:

Daedalus wrote: @raumfahre Quote: raumfahre wrote: Hmmm, well I'd suggest caution here, my Sony LCD is around five years old and has horrendous screenburn! Eh, you sure it's not a Sony plasma screen you have instead of an LCD? LCDs simply don't get screenburn, but plasma panels can (which is a shame, since they tend to give a much nicer image than LCD).

Although they can and do suffer from image persistence.

@Fab

Thanks for the tip. My mountscripts currently direct to null console (I dislike spawning unnecessary cons), but I may have to change this habit . /OT

EDIT: Changed link to Wikipedia

Last edited by Boot_WB on 09-Jan-2012 at 01:38 AM.
Last edited by Boot_WB on 09-Jan-2012 at 01:30 AM.

_________________
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opp., the vast majority who voted silently with their feet.

@Boot_WB
Quote:

Enlighten me: are you saying that in your experience such system freezes as described by the OP are a normal part of using OS4.1.4?

There have been times (earlier OS releases and updates) when I got freezes on a daily basis. Since Update4, I've had several per week but I wouldn't necessarily say all of them were a normal part of operation. Like kas1e, I get more freezes and crashes while programming. Minor programming mistakes can easily freeze the system. I recently discovered that some of the system freezes were actually USB freezes. On a SAM a USB freeze means no input, which makes it seem like the whole system locked up. Currently, I wouldn't call system freezes a big problem during normal operation but they do happen from time to time. I do think it is inaccurate to say that OS4 never freezes for most people.

_________________
X1000 with 2GB memory & OS4.1FE

@Xenic

With a USB freeze if you are running something like Limpidclock you can see that it is still working. Also for saving important work if you run the amiga VNC server, AMiVnc, at startup,it may be possible use a VNC client from another computer to save work before reseting that Amiga machine .

Quote:

Xenic wrote: @Boot_WB Quote: Enlighten me: are you saying that in your experience such system freezes as described by the OP are a normal part of using OS4.1.4? There have been times (earlier OS releases and updates) when I got freezes on a daily basis. Since Update4, I've had several per week but I wouldn't necessarily say all of them were a normal part of operation. Like kas1e, I get more freezes and crashes while programming. Minor programming mistakes can easily freeze the system. I recently discovered that some of the system freezes were actually USB freezes. On a SAM a USB freeze means no input, which makes it seem like the whole system locked up. Currently, I wouldn't call system freezes a big problem during normal operation but they do happen from time to time. I do think it is inaccurate to say that OS4 never freezes for most people.

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@Cass

I've had a few lock ups too. Some times it's out of memory and the USB system shuts down, I typically check the laser on the Mouse to see if that's what's up. The other times it's just a hard lock. I've recently turn off the CPUtemp docky and flipclock to see if they happy less.

What tools are you running on your workbench?

Cheers,
Tekmage

@Boot_WB
Quote:

Although they can and do suffer from image persistence.

Thanks for the link, that was an interesting read. The latest LCD TV I bought (Samsung) has warnings to not leave a steady image on display.

The Sony LCD has permanent image retention at the top, where the wide blue window titlebar is. Using the MonitorTest utility http://aminet.net/util/misc/MonitorTest.lha it's possible to place various colours over the whole screen - the image of the window frame can be seen very clearly on a dark grey shade!

@raumfahre

Wow... I know LCDs can display image persistence as Boot_WB pointed out, but I've never seen or heard of a permanent case until now. And I work in a factory where LCDs show the same image for months on end without a screensaver. All it normally takes is to turn them off overnight, and they don't show any signs of burn.

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@tonyw

Quote:

I don't have third-party add-ons because I'm testing and developing OS4, not third-party programs.

I wonder, how do you know it is OK if you don't run any 3rd party programs? The software is always buggy. But is it always 3rd party software only?

_________________
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Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

@Daedalus

I have seen LCDs in factories with our logo permanently burned to display. At home I would use at least power saving options to turn monitor off when away from keyboard.

_________________
Amiga Developer
Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook