Frozen Aquarium
 

Twice today I have returned to my iBook (14":G3:600mhz:256mbRAM:30GBHD:OSX10.1.5) to find that when I 'wake' it the screen displays a frozen image of the screensaver. It then refuses to respond to any keystroke or Force Quit command.
The only way to recover from this is to hold the power switch down until it powers off.

I'm a bit reluctant to leave it with the screensaver if this keeps freezing up. Can anyone suggest what I might be doing wrong here?

Does the same problem occur if you select a different screen saver module, or is it only when MA is selected? Do you have Energy Saver set to put your iBook to sleep? If so, try disabling it and see if the problem still occurs. Alternatively, you can disable the screen saver with Energy Saver still enabled and see if the problem still occurs.

Michael,
The freezing didn't occur with any other saver running - I normally had Aqua Icons as the saver and never had a problem.
Yes I do have energy saver set to put my iBook to sleep. I have selected Aqua Icons again and will see what happens first then try your other suggestions.

Cheers
Bob

Bob,

Please give Jaguar a try. I'm pretty sure this isn't anything we're doing, so the best hope to get it fixed is to stay current with the OS.

Jim,
I may find it a bit hard to justify spending £100($150) to upgrade to 10.2 just to be able to make a screensaver run.

:(

Freezes
 

I just recently starting using Marine Aquarium for a screen saver on my G4 Quicksilver, and am having the same problem. I am using OS 10.2.4, and I have my Energy saver set to “Never”. I have never had this problem with any other screen savers. After the screen saver has been active for about an hour, my whole computer freezes, and the only way to escape, is to restart by holding the power button for 3 seconds.

BobL:

Thanks for the feedback. Please do let us know the results of any further testing, especially turning Energy Saver off (set to "Never" for all settings). Rest assured, 10.1.5 is a version we support.

Rusty and BobL:

Can you confirm that the version of MA you are using is 1.1.2 or 1.1.3?

BobL and Rusty,

_Theoretically_, there is nothing we can do to cause the symptom you see. The Apple supplied screen savers are pretty puny, so the fact that they work doesn't rule anything out other than gross corruption of the screen saver framework.

Do either of you have a partition you could install a fresh OS X onto and see how it goes running from there?

I'll see if I can repro on the hardware I have here.

Michael,
I have v1.1.2
I have selected "Never" on "Put system to sleep whenever it is inactive for" under Energy Saver settings.

Jim,
I don't have a partition on my iBook and to be honest I'm a bit of a Mac virgin, still getting to grips with it. My copy of "Mac OS X - The Missing Manual" never being far away!!

Thanks for the replies guys!!

I've noticed that when I try to run SSA with my display set to millions of colours it is very jerky. If I switch to thousands it runs a lot smoother.
Is there a recommended setting for using SSA?
I ask this as the display setting affects the quality of images viewed (digital photos).
Thanks
Bob

BobL

Millions of colors is a significantly higher work load for the video card. iBooks, until recently, didn't have the best of video cards. Not to feel bad, the first TiBooks had really weak video cards. What sort of frame rates do you see? If they are in the single digits then turn on the "economize video memory" setting. I doubt that is the case. It is likely that the bottle neck is the video cards throughput, not its memory, therefore there isn't any thing that will make a drastic difference. However, you are on the cusp -- any work load reduction for the card may be enough to get you smooth animation. Reducing the number of fish, turning off the bubbles, may help. Limiting the frame rate to 30 fps may help. Turning off the sound sometimes helps if the machien is CPU limited. Reducing the shimmer setting is purely CPU load reducing, but it may help and most people can't tell the difference between the various settings until it is pointed out to them.


On the other topic, I am unable to repro the freeze so far, but I will give it more time.


Jim O'Connor

Jim,
Thanks for such personal service!!
I have everything set to off that I can and have tried all variations of options both on and off.

On full screen I get following frame rates.
Frame rate at 30 = ±15fps (1024x768)
--------||------- 60 = ±15fps (1024x768)
--------||-------max=±16.5fps(1024x768)
All above with 7 fish, no sound, no bubbles, shimmer off, lights off, economise video memory on and at millions of colours.

Is this what you mean??

How do your "thousands" fps compare?

Jim,
Results for thousands!
All settings as per above.
Frame rate@30 = 30fps(1024x768)
Frame rate@50 = 50-60fps(1024x768)
Frame rate@max= ±59fps(1024x768)

The graphics card in my iBook is an ATI Rage Mobility 128 with 8mb video memory.

Bob

BobL,

Not anything we can do about your millions performance then.

I am sorry.

What! No miracle? ;)

So let me see if I got this right. Running SSMA with display set to "thousands" produces the right FPS and smooth motion, but when I crank it up to "millions" it chops the frame rate down to 15fps irrespective of the frame rate setting. So, basically my video card isn't up to it?

Well thats a disappoinment, but one I'll have to endure (or go for a G4 powerbook!!!)

Thanks for looking into it Jim.
Bob

The frame rate setting has no effect in this situation (millions of colors) because the max frame rate you can get for your iBook is 15 fps (according to the results you reported earlier from your tests). Setting the frame rate limit to 30 or 60 fps has no effect because, even running full out, MA can't achieve that frame rate on your computer. Limiting the frame rate to a setting less than the maximum fps possible on your machine only helps to reduce the CPU load. It does not reduce the memory (including VRAM) requirements or usage of the program.