I notice the system freezes quite often. Freezing as in completely freezing - nothing works anymore, mouse cursor not movable etc.
I run MorphOS on a Mac mini G4 1.5 which I bought used on ebay, upgraded by myself with 1GB of RAM. Is this behaviour relatively normal for a system without memory protection or could there be something wrong with the hardware? The builtin memory check didn't reveal any abnormalities.

It's quite usual if you run badly behaving programs, but if you check little what programs you run, you can get pretty stable system.

Check out the debug log frequently for hits when running (new) programs to see which ones should be avoided. If you have hits there (hundreds of dumped lines), something has done something nasty and system won't probably be stable anymore.

Most likely your hw is just fine, but you've just run some broken programs.

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Hello jPV, thank you for the quick answer! Strangely, I hit on instability when
- running the installer from the live cd
- loading some website in OWB
- changing screen settings
If you tell me this problems spread over a variety of applications are something that simply can happen on MorphOS, then that's fine by me.
I just want to rule out faulty hardware, that's all. And I'll just check the log from now, thanks for the hint

Sounds like a HW problem (faulty RAM ?).

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Are you sure about that? I checked the ram several times with the builtin memtest. Might not be enough though...

I've had screen/system freezes with MUI ScreenMode changes in the past, and I use the same hardware, MacMini 1.5GHz 1GB RAM

Some websites, gobble up RAM, with JavaScript, etc., and then you run out of RAM for OWB, and then anything can happen.

So, I'd think it's something running amok/affecting the stability of your system, rather than the hardware itself, but at this stage, from the details you've given it could be other problems, though I still consider the most likely issue will be that some software is affecting your system's stability.

If you didn't when you bought the system, clean out the heatsink & fan, then I'd do that now, and every so often, as it's quite easy to do so, and keep it out of dusty/fluff gathering zones as clogging up/overheating the CPU can lead to premature death of the CPU, from the information I have acquired over the years.

I agree with Kronos. Running the installer clean from a live CD shouldn't freeze the computer.

Also you cannot check memory inside a computer using a tool. That is impossible.

You can only use these test tools to find out if the memory stick is broken for sure. If the test reports the stick is 100% ok, it may not be the case.

It could also be the use media, the drive or just dust inside causing the system to overheat.

However dust (non working fans) and/or broken memory are in most of the cases the reason for such behaviour.

I suggest you to setting up Ambient screenbars, which displays RAM and VRAM filling level. It's may be depends from your using pattern, if you usually open some tabs in browser with heavy sites, all your RAMs can be gone very easy and quick. Badly, 1G is not enough for some modern heavy web sites.

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That's quite unusual, maybe you shouldn't rule out fautly memory or so yet either.


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That can happen, because OWB (mainly its engine/javascript engine/videoplayer) isn't completely bug free and depending the pages you visit (or their bloatness) you may see hits in the debug log by OWB. In those situations I think it's better to reboot before it messes memory that bad that it's going to hang the system.

Also keep an eye on memory consumption to avoid possible crashes. Webkit's javascript engine leaks memory and the heavier js pages you visit the faster you run out of memory. Although OWB should handle the out-of-memory situation pretty cleanly, it's still much better to close OWB manually before running out of memory. OWB tracks the js engine leaks and frees the memory cleanly when you quit it, and you can then just relaunch it (no need to reboot the whole machine).


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TBH I think there could be some unstability within the OS itself in this area. It's been somehow hit or miss to change some settings which need to reopen the Ambient screen (like enhanced mode settings or screen font settings). At least on some systems like my quite customly configured Mac mini... maybe you have found the same issue. When I need to change such settings I save settings and if it happens to hang, the setting is usually changed after a reboot. If not, the second try brings the wanted result :) It probably isn't that common issue that it'd happen for everyone, or most people aren't changing those settings that often, or it's depending the system... I haven't figured out any exact way to reproduce it or don't know what exactly should be blamed... but I've reported it forward. Let's see if it's any better with the next update, or if you found a specific way to reproduce it, make a bug report too.


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It definitely can happen on a system without memory protection, but if it gets too frequent and you can't isolate it to any specific programs/situations, it of course can be hardware fault too. But I just wouldn't point directly to hw especially if hw tests look fine etc. I guess it would be relatively easy to clean the fan etc or switch the ram module for a test too...

[ Edited by jPV 29.01.2017 - 10:25 ]

@jPV

Changing system's screen fonts whereas redrawing Ambient windows results to system crash (freeze) in about 2 out of 3 times, each time that I attempt it as well. Otherwise, I would say that my stem is 99% rock steady, perhaps due to the fact that fine tune almost every application that I use.

Thank you all so much for your input so far! I highly appreciate it
This i what I tried in the meantime:
1. I removed dust from inside the device. There was quite a bit, though nothing too bad.
2. Freezes still occured.
3. No I just reset PRAM/NVRAM. Let's see if this will do anything about the issue.
4. TODO: Put in old 512MB RAM stick to see if that's the source of the problem as suggested by various users here.
I'll keep you posted

After my MacMini was collecting a lot of dust in the last year I was starting to play with MorphOS again for the last week.
I installed MOS 3.9 and Chrysalis pack 3.9.4 and still had a lot of freezes with MOS.

So I decided to look more deeper into HW and SW from my user point of view.

Starting with HW:
-----------------
1.) Apple Hardware Test running with extensive test of RAM and checking other HW.
-> all test OK
2.) Using memtest of MOS to check RAM with extensive test (with loop of 30)
-> all test OK
3.) Using memtest of MOS to check Video-RAM with extensive test(with loop of 30)
-> all test OK
4.) Open Up MacMini and remove all dust, even if there was not much.

=> Maybe there is still a HW issue(?), but for the next steps I assumeed HW is OK and all issues are from SW.

Play with System and Software:
-----------------------------
1.) In the system option: "Enhanced Display Engine"
-> "double buffer", "tripple buffer" and "balance" was all three active
-> I disable all three options step by step.
-> This makes my system hell more stable (!) and faster (!). No more crashes when switching screens or using OWB.
(I allways enabling this options after fresh install in the past wrongly assuming this will show better grafic. But it only needs too much of my 64MG grafic memory. Maybe there is a bug in the ATI driver then memory is too full? With disabling the options my system use less grafic memory and runs more stable now.)

2.) I activate System Error Log in the Screenbar to track errors better.
-> I found a couble of errors in the system log right after a fresh boot, comming from "AHI/c.audio", "AudioModes/ENVY24HT" and "Classes/Screenbar/Mousemeter.sbar"
-> I disable them by moving them to SYS:Storage and reboot.
-> Now my system boots allways with a clean system log (Sound still works, ENVY24HT was not needed).

3.) Only one applications still tent to freeze my system very often after running it and causing errors in the sytem log too.
-> Hurrican 1.0.0.4_rc2
-> One of my favorite games. While playing it ther is no problem, but after closing it the system log is full of errors
and when using system with other programs this leads very often to freeze the system. When I not use the game there are no freezes.

4.) A few more programs show strange errors in system log, but none of them causes system freezes so far.

After those steps my system runs more stable now even with multible screens, a lot of SW open(e.g. Mplayer showing a movie from my NAS) and surfing with OWB. It runs now over hours stable untill I decide to make a shutdown.

I will have a look into system logs in future for all programs I running to see if they are causing system logs and maybe also an system freeze. Using MOS without freezes makes more fun while using it. Hopfully at one day MOS will have an memory protection to have a rock solid system and finding all the buggy SW.


[ Edited by Waitsnake 07.05.2017 - 16:11 ]

> 1.) In the system option: "Enhanced Display Engine"
> -> "double buffer", "tripple buffer" and "balance" was all three active
> -> I disable all three options step by step.
> -> [...] No more crashes when [...] using OWB.

Using OWB on a separate, non-enhanced screen may be faster than using it on enhanced Ambient screen anyway.

> wrongly assuming this will show better grafic

It should when using Ambient, but not when using OWB, though.

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Good idea. Never thought about unsing one enhanced and one not enhanced screen at the same time.

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This will definitely help, I run Odyssey on a separate screen with enhanced display turned off and it's much more stable.