timk Posted February 26, 2001 Share Posted February 26, 2001 I am experiencing lockups; game will run for about 20 minutes; machine locks up solid, not even cursor movement. Happens consitenlty. Thanks in advance.. Mac OS 9.04 192 Megs physical ram 80+ allocated to CM Latest Game Sprockets Latest OpenGL 1.2.1 All of the CM updates applied 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ace Posted February 26, 2001 Share Posted February 26, 2001 Mac freezes are addressed in the troubleshooting section of the manual (p.163). They suggest disabling the backside cache using the G3/G4 Cache Pofiler from Powerlogix http://www.powerlogix.com I tried it and it seemed to keep crashes to a minimum, although they still do occur on the rare occasion 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ace Posted February 26, 2001 Share Posted February 26, 2001 I'm not really a techie, so I'm not exactly sure how turning off the backside cache affects the rest of your system. While CM runs more smoothly, saving and loading games seems to take longer. I also seem to be able to have less applications open at once. These aren't scientific observations, however Can anyone out there explain exactly how turning off the backside cache affects performance? Thanks [This message has been edited by Ace (edited 02-26-2001).] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pford Posted February 26, 2001 Share Posted February 26, 2001 Originally posted by Ace: - deleted- Can anyone out there explain exactly how turning off the backside cache affects performance? Thanks Disabling the backside cache slows the performance way down. The cache transfer rate is far faster than regular ram so the wait states are diminished. In other words, the CPU is not twiddling its thumbs waiting for the next instruction. You may not notice a performance hit in CM because the graphics card is so important, but if you use a stopwatch to time the calculation on how long the computer is "thinking", especially big games, you will see a big difference. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timk Posted March 5, 2001 Author Share Posted March 5, 2001 I found the issue with I had with CM; it turns out to be related to the Energy Saver control panel. Without the control panel enabled, the Mac would go into "sleep" mode; with it enabled, i was able to turn off hard drive sleeping etc. No more lockups experienced; on a related note, the cache disabling did not work. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pford Posted March 5, 2001 Share Posted March 5, 2001 Originally posted by timk: I found the issue with I had with CM; it turns out to be related to the Energy Saver control panel. Without the control panel enabled, the Mac would go into "sleep" mode; with it enabled, i was able to turn off hard drive sleeping etc. No more lockups experienced; on a related note, the cache disabling did not work. It may be that disabling the backside cache will work only on systems that are upgraded with ram-cache that is in-line. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pford Posted March 5, 2001 Share Posted March 5, 2001 Originally posted by timk: I found the issue with I had with CM; it turns out to be related to the Energy Saver control panel. Without the control panel enabled, the Mac would go into "sleep" mode; with it enabled, i was able to turn off hard drive sleeping etc. No more lockups experienced; on a related note, the cache disabling did not work. It may be that disabling the backside cache will work only on systems that are upgraded with ram-cache that is in-line. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Van_Gogh Posted March 11, 2001 Share Posted March 11, 2001 Originally posted by timk: I found the issue with I had with CM; it turns out to be related to the Energy Saver control panel. Without the control panel enabled, the Mac would go into "sleep" mode; with it enabled, i was able to turn off hard drive sleeping etc. No more lockups experienced; on a related note, the cache disabling did not work. So U mean that U don´t have to use the powerlogix cache disabler to prevent lockups after adjusting the energy saver panel??? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timk Posted March 11, 2001 Author Share Posted March 11, 2001 Disabling the cache did not work; I removed the cache disabler from my system; disabling your cache is the LAST thing you want to do; I tried it as a "last resort" measure. The speed/performance loss by disabling the cache is something to be avoided. In regards to the Energy Saver control panel, it's not so much the control panel, but the system software which does "sleep mode" handling. Since disabling the sleep mode effects, I have not experienced one lockup, neither in solo nor TCP/IP network games. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timk Posted March 11, 2001 Author Share Posted March 11, 2001 As far as cache performance is concerned, it basically boils down to memory access speed. Cache memory has better(faster) access speeds for reading and writing. For example(this is NOT ment to be realistic in scale or time), cache memory can be accessed 100 times a second, regular memory can be accessed once a second; therefore, in this example, cache memory would allow something to run 100 times faster. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Van_Gogh Posted March 11, 2001 Share Posted March 11, 2001 OK Timk, well I would love to get rid of that cache disabler from powerlogix, it doesn´t seem to be 100% stable on my computer anyway. In fact tech support at powerlogix recomends against using it on imacs. I use an imac DV SE (graphite), 400mhz G3 system 9.0.4 what about U? I tried playing the game with both the cache disabled and sleepmode deactivated. Double security I thought. Still got a couple of lockups in a 60 turn scenario, about the same as before deactivating sleepmode. I would really like to eliminate the lockupp problem for good. Even if i seldom happens it can happen at the most unsuitable times, ie in the middle of a film after U just destroyed that tank with a lucky shot. Then U have to reload the last turn autosave and u can have a competely diffrent outcome 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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