I have a Mac Mini G4 1.25ghz, 1gb ram, video resolution is set to 1920x1080 and Pack Chrysalis is installed.

I've been getting random crashes. Usually it's either OWB, or the RadioScript and Mplayer. If it's RadioScript, then Mplayer won't open and I need a reboot, but if it's OWB I get random effects...once Grunch stopped working, another time the ambient top bar only had partial workability (I could right click and the menus would show up but not operate or go away), and another time it was the clock on the ambient bar. I'm At a loss since I'm a new user.

Am I pushing the system too hard by having several things open and 4 browsing tabs (usually eBay, Facebook, Craigslist, and morph.zone)? Is there a way other than ikill in the terminal or the task manager to kill offending processes? It really seems to be ambient dying most of the time. The system hardware checks as working, although I could do a battery swap on the internal "watch battery".

Is 1920x1080 pushing the system to far? It maybe unrelated but I get a graphical glitch on the icon for the SYS: drive every reboot but selecting and deselecting the icon clears the glitch.

Any help is much appreciated.

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MPlayer has been very stable here and never got any problems with it. OWB can crash sometimes, but not that regularly usually. RadioScript I haven't heard or used.

What I'd advice you to do is that enable Debug sbar module (RMB click on screen depth gadget (top/rightmost button on your screen) and you'll get small bug looking button on screenbar). Click that Debug button and select "Show Log". If it's ghosted and you can't select it, everything is OK. If there's only few lines which sound quite harmless debug output, then it's still OK. But if there's hundreds of cryptic lines, then something has done something nasty, which can cause actual or other programs to crash.

Check that Debug log periodically and especially after you've started a new program. That way you can find if you have some unstable program in your system. If you can reproduce it regularly with certain program, try removing that program from use and see if it was causing the problems. You can also think if you should make a bug report to program's author or MorphOS team. In that case save the log(s) and attach it to bug report.

You can also see the log after the crash and check if you could see some program names mentioned and see which program has actually crashed.

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Shouldn't be a problem, unless you run out of memory. Have an eye on available memory (on screenbar for example) and restart OWB before running out of it. If free mem is close to 100MB it starts to be a good time to do it.


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Scout can also remove programs and their resources, but in any case, it's better to reboot. It's unlikely that system will be stable after you've had to kill programs.

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That trashed icon is some weird but harmless bug on non enhanced screenmodes. It isn't related to pushing the system.

1920x1080 with only 32MB vmem isn't enough for enhanced screen modes (3D layers), but it should be OK with non enhanced screens which it automatically forces on that kind of setup no matter what you have selected in prefs. But you can enable graphics memory screenbar module and see how much you have free gfx memory too, just in case.


[ Edited by jPV 12.01.2015 - 10:10 ]

Thanks for your detailed response. I was unaware of the enhanced screen mode...I've lowered the resolution to 1280x1024 and turned off that setting and I have much more video ram free. I have also turned off javascript in OWB as I've seen in another thread it can cause memory leaks.

I'll keep a look out for more crashes and I'll dump the debug log. Thanks!

Having flash plugin (plugins overall) disabled may be a good idea too. I think it's been causing more crashes than javascript (js leaks, but it's detected by OWB and leaks are free'ed when you quit OWB). You can have flash plugin (swfdec_plugin.library) in Plugins directory, but disable it from OWB's settings (uncheck Content->Allow plugins) and only enable it if needed (Settings->Plugins->Enable & reload in OWB).

One thing about that icon glitch. If it annoys you, try to disable or change icon text rendering effects in Ambient settings. IIRC it came usually with Alpha Shadow effect or so.

How to disable js? And is there a way to temporarily enable it when needed, such as a keyboard combination? (Similar to the "temporarily allow popup") ? Also does OWB have a popup blocker?

I have other questions but I will post them later, perhaps in that OWB Bugs thread.

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Same way like you disable flash: uncheck "JavaScript support" from OWB Settings -> Content. Same setting page also has option if javascript allows to open new windows, which may help with popups too.

You can enable it temporarily from Settings menu without going to actual settings window.

You can also automatically enable it per site from URL Settings window. It means it stays usually disabled, but is enabled for the sites you need it to be enabled.

Don't forget to enable RAM viewer in the menu bar. It makes you immediately check how many memory is consumed.

I think enhanced display was the culprit (I had the same problem a long time ago before I knew about it myself). I have used js with 1 GB RAM for a long time without any problems. However, if you keep using OWB it will eventually runt out of RAM due to how memory is allocated in MorphOS. My experience is that 1.5 GB is what you need in order to use OWB for a longer session. So if you can upgrade your Mac Mini to 1.5+ GB RAM, I recommend you to do so.

When using my G5 (with it's 1 GB RAM limitation) I have a habit of checking how much RAM I got, enable saved web pages after close and regularly restart OWB. Works just fine.

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I thought that was a limitation of MorphOS...can it see more than 1 Gb on a system that isn't G5?

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MorphOS can use 1.5GB on G4 systems which can have that much RAM installed, but Mac mini has physical limit of 1GB anyway, you can't upgrade it more.

@jPV

Oh, I thought the RAM limit was 1.5 GB RAM on a Mac Mini. My bad.

Does that limit also include the 1.5 GHz silent upgrade version?

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yes. 1 GB is maximum for the mini.

@geit

I'm stand humbly corrected

> 1920x1080 with only 32MB vmem isn't enough for enhanced screen modes (3D layers)

I think it's way enough, too much even ;-)

@Anderas_Wolf

Not in my experience. VRAM quickly runs out with big screen resolutions.

>>> 1920x1080 with only 32MB vmem isn't enough for enhanced screen modes (3D layers)

>> I think it's way enough, too much even ;-)

> Not in my experience. VRAM quickly runs out with big screen resolutions.

Exactly what I said. 1920x1080 with only 32 MiB VRAM is too much for Enhanced Display :-)

@Andreas_Wolf

Ah, an misunderstanding