iMac Core Duo Problems?

[applekid]

1. There's a thing called "translated" in the Activity Monitor. I think it's related to Rosetta because the virtual memory it uses increases to nearly one gigabyte if I don't restart and after a few Halo gaming sessions. Anybody have any comments?

2. I woke my iMac from sleep today. The white light turned off. My computer screen wouldn't turn on though and my second display wouldn't either. I had to restart. Just a minor quirk? A little before that, I was waking my computer from sleep, but I got a color wheel and no password prompt. Just a minor quirk still?

3. My AirPort Extreme Card has been acting funny. My router and my iMac G4 is running without a problem for internet connections. But sometimes, my iMac Core Duo cannot find my router. I have Interference Robustness on. Maybe that's the problem. This problem has occurred a couple of times over the last day and it's after I had that option on.

 

[Josh396]

I can't really comment on the first two as I've never experienced either on my machine and I haven't heard anything about either before. However, the third one I've heard a few problems about. I've had a few problems connecting my wireless router and I've heard that people have been losing connections with their Duo or not being able to find their network when they have other computers in the same spot as it and find the network no problem. Since I started experiencing the problems I've started using a wired connection but I'm hoping it's just a bug we'll see fixed in a software update.

 

[XIII]

1. There's a thing called "translated" in the Activity Monitor. I think it's related to Rosetta because the virtual memory it uses increases to nearly one gigabyte if I don't restart and after a few Halo gaming sessions. Anybody have any comments?

2. I woke my iMac from sleep today. The white light turned off. My computer screen wouldn't turn on though and my second display wouldn't either. I had to restart. Just a minor quirk? A little before that, I was waking my computer from sleep, but I got a color wheel and no password prompt. Just a minor quirk still?

3. My AirPort Extreme Card has been acting funny. My router and my iMac G4 is running without a problem for internet connections. But sometimes, my iMac Core Duo cannot find my router. I have Interference Robustness on. Maybe that's the problem. This problem has occurred a couple of times over the last day and it's after I had that option on.

I've got 'em all. Don't know what to suggest.

 

[Kingsly]

Gee I hope my MBP (if it ever comes, that is) doesn't have wireless problems. That would kind of defeat the purpose.

 

[MRU]

1. Well we knew Rosetta was a memory hog, and there's bound to be emulated software which causes memory holes...

2. Not had sleep problem as yet

3. My biggest problem, the poor airport performance. I've done all the things suggested and there's even new threads starting up on the Apple Discussions board. My only way of solving it.... Sticking a Ralink USB 54g dongle into the back of my imac. Now my speed is perfect.

Hopefully all the problems will be sorted in a 10.4.5 update. After all the macbookpro contains the same hardware so I'd be very surprised if it doesn't suffer these teething problems too...

 

[mkrishnan]

1. Well we knew Rosetta was a memory hog, and there's bound to be emulated software which causes memory holes...

I think that Rosetta achieves its speed, in part, by caching previously used (and translated) sequences of instructions. So then when the sequence recurs, it can use the already translated version. It and OS X should basically manage how much VM it is safe for it to take up for you, and then when it's using too much disk space, it should try to hold back some. Unless you see a performance hit associated with this, I would try to not think about it too much.

 

[jacobj]

I get the sleep problem on my PB G4, so I think that maybe an OS issue and not just an iMac issue..

the Wireless issue concerns me as my base station is on a different floor in the house and my PB and router only get to say hi in person about twice a year..

are people losing internet connectivity all together? I understood that they were losing speed!

 

[jsw]

Anyone with a 17" Intellimac losing connectivity? My 17" works fine - no issues with wireless, better reception than my 12" PB. I've also seen memory hogging due to Rosetta (who hasn't...) but otherwise no issues whatsoever.

 

[jacobj]

Anyone with a 17" Intellimac losing connectivity? My 17" works fine - no issues with wireless, better reception than my 12" PB. I've also seen memory hogging due to Rosetta (who hasn't...) but otherwise no issues whatsoever.

talking of rosetta, has anyone seen what sort of RAM it generally uses?

 

[jsw]

talking of rosetta, has anyone seen what sort of RAM it generally uses?

I've heard stories of massive amounts of RAM being drafted into service by Rosetta, but my usage tends to show it taking maybe an extra 50MB or so. I'm not on the iMac now, but I'll try to report back later.

Of course, the number and type of PPC apps you run will significantly affect your Rosetta RAM usage.

 

[arcsbite]

Anyone with a 17" Intellimac losing connectivity? My 17" works fine - no issues with wireless, better reception than my 12" PB. I've also seen memory hogging due to Rosetta (who hasn't...) but otherwise no issues whatsoever.

I'm on a 17" intel iMac and the airport is buggered!
it connects to my network for about a minute, then loses it, then picks it back up...and loses it...driving me mad

I've had to go back to cables

hope it can be fixed with a download

 

[johnnybluejeans]

I have been having the sleep problem. It was being sporadic, happening once every 5-6 days or so. But it has happened twice today.

 

[tivoboy]

can't speak for 17"

but my 20" doesn't SEEM to have any wireless problems I am not connecting to an Airport, but a netgear AP. Regardless, the only problem is possibly shows is when I ping a site, I get some varied results. 30ms, 60ms, 600ms. but no drops. For normal use, I don't notice any dropouts or disconnects, except when it goes to sleep. It needs about 7 seconds to reconnect.

RAM hog that Rosetta is, is true. I had a program running the other day and it was using 450 of 512mb, and 1.3 GB of VM. That was whacked. Granted the application had not been optimized in any way, but still that was a bit much.

 

[jaw04005]

2. I woke my iMac from sleep today. The white light turned off. My computer screen wouldn't turn on though and my second display wouldn't either. I had to restart. Just a minor quirk? A little before that, I was waking my computer from sleep, but I got a color wheel and no password prompt. Just a minor quirk still?

I have the same problem with my Core Duo iMac. It seems to only happen during deep sleep, but I've had to reboot four or five times because of it. Must be a bug!

 

[johnnybluejeans]

I had a program running the other day and it was using 450 of 512mb, and 1.3 GB of VM. That was whacked. Granted the application had not been optimized in any way, but still that was a bit much.

Ugh, how can you live on 512Mb?!

 

[applekid]

Okay, it appears "translated" might not have to do with anything. Played some Halo last night, checked the Activity Monitor, and no significant change in RAM. It's just that there was a day where I let my iMac run without a shut down for a few days, and things started moving a little more sluggish. The only thing I can point my finger to was Rosetta because I was running a lot of PPC apps during that time frame.

The sleep problem probably is just a bug, so I won't look into it.

AirPort Extreme is still flaky. It just can't find the router sometimes, so I am stuck disconnected from the computers on the network as well as the Internet. Restarting a few times seems to help. When it's connected, I have full bars, so the quality of the connection is not a problem.

Maybe someone can explain to me why MacOS X uses so much Virtual Memory. Back in the OS 9 days, VM was supposed to dodge because it was slow and took up hard disk space. Now, we have apps taking up like 300 MB to over a GB of VM! Just doesn't sound efficient.

I still need to get around purchasing my 1 GB stick of memory sometime. Getting it pre-installed by Apple was sorta cheaper. Only $100. Consider $107 for the cheapest I found and another few bills to pay for shipping.

 

[mkrishnan]

Maybe someone can explain to me why MacOS X uses so much Virtual Memory. Back in the OS 9 days, VM was supposed to dodge because it was slow and took up hard disk space. Now, we have apps taking up like 300 MB to over a GB of VM! Just doesn't sound efficient.

I think the big differences are that, in the old days, hard drives were not as fast, and programs were not as large, and so people tried to avoid using VM altogether for performance reasons. It's still true that VM drags your system down. The difference is that now, everything is built around a model of using it. Also, as far as OS X is concerned, it comes from a Unix heritage, and Unix has used this model for a long time.

It *is* efficient, for the most part. It's faster to get stuff back out of VM than to re-do the original computations. The problem is that some programs do not do a great job of identifying data they are unlikely to need again, or they "forget" they have the data (this is a leak), and so the VM increases exponentially...

 

[bigfib]

talking of rosetta, has anyone seen what sort of RAM it generally uses?

My tests show that all rosetta apps use 30-55% more ram than they do on ppc...
Tiger is a bit of a hog anyway, but all in all it's not so bad as long as you're not trying to run photoshop on 512Mb.
Don't forget, people, just how incredible it is to be running powerpc apps seamlessly on an intel machine... I worked on 68000 emulators some years ago and I think it's an amazing job.

 

[applekid]

Man, the AirPort problem seems to be getting worse. I just hope there's a AirPort update on the way... I hope it's not a sign of the hardware degrading because I had no problems connecting to the router until this week.

 

[mkrishnan]

Man, the AirPort problem seems to be getting worse. I just hope there's a AirPort update on the way... I hope it's not a sign of the hardware degrading because I had no problems connecting to the router until this week.

It shouldn't be hardware degradation. I guess one possibility, though, is that you have a bad hardware connection.

I never had trouble with my iBook G4 (or my iMac G5, so far), in getting Airport signal at home, from my AEBS. But it used to be, that when I first got my iBook, circa 10.3.4 or 10.3.5, there were many places in my department building in which airport did not work. Then with one of the dot upgrades, this changed dramatically (also for a large number of other people). As far as I can tell, there was an actual change to the AE software made at that time that improved performance. So that might happen for you too. But you want to make sure there isn't a hardware problem. Especially if there are people without this issue.

 

[MRU]

It shouldn't be hardware degradation. I guess one possibility, though, is that you have a bad hardware connection.

I never had trouble with my iBook G4 (or my iMac G5, so far), in getting Airport signal at home, from my AEBS. But it used to be, that when I first got my iBook, circa 10.3.4 or 10.3.5, there were many places in my department building in which airport did not work. Then with one of the dot upgrades, this changed dramatically (also for a large number of other people). As far as I can tell, there was an actual change to the AE software made at that time that improved performance. So that might happen for you too. But you want to make sure there isn't a hardware problem. Especially if there are people without this issue.

The issue is only effecting the new Intel iMac's both 17" & 20". It's not the same Airport card used in all other mac's it's a new one and hence the problems. Its also the same as the one that will be used in the new macbookpro and hence it to will probably suffer the same problems with wireless. In fact it may suffer worse as it's a mobile device and hence it's location to a basestation changes more so than a desktop...

It's seems pretty much universal problem with the intel imacs and I'm sure it's a juvenile driver that's the cause. 10.4.5 for intel or a specific airport update will no doubt find it's way to us. It's just a case of make do with it at the moment.

 

[XIII]

Still haven't been able to get Apple to give me 10.4.4 Build 8G1165 as opposed to my 1171. They said it was so new (when I called on Thursday), I would have to wait 48 hours for them to get it onto the system. I'll call on Monday.

 

[mkrishnan]

So *no one* has an iMac Core Duo with satisfactory AE performance? I so would've returned mine if I had this issue. I am so not stringing a wire from my iMac to my AEBS.

 

[Artful Dodger]

mkrishnan
So *no one* has an iMac Core Duo with satisfactory AE performance? I so would've returned mine if I had this issue. I am so not stringing a wire from my iMac to my AEBS.

I do, after it got back from the Apple store (replaced SD) it has been working fine (faster that it first was) and I did a speed test with speakeasy. I'm not sure if they did anything at the store but I was able to do a custom install, after that is when I did my speed test
As a note though the tech said if the build # was 8G1170(1) some had Frontrow trouble and AE trouble along with BT trouble. I have my BT off so I wonder if there is a conflict with that and AE when both are on as well
Either way it's not good for those that can't use AE even if it's 4-6 ft away.

 

[Artful Dodger]

XIII
Still haven't been able to get Apple to give me 10.4.4 Build 8G1165 as opposed to my 1171. They said it was so new (when I called on Thursday), I would have to wait 48 hours for them to get it onto the system. I'll call on Monday.

At the Buffalo, NY store they had two or three in the back that had problems with Frontrow and AE. They ordered a new Logicboard for one of them, replaced it and it still did the same thing until they installed the 8G1165 build. That seems odd as it would be the first build and an older one that works where the newer build is giving people the grief.
Did they (Apple) say they would send the older dvd disc build to you or...never mind I re-read your post