What have you done with a PowerPC today?

[mac57mac57]

Can you list of those general signs of instability please? Perhaps this community can help with insights...

BTW, I would recommend Apple Service Diagnostics (ASD) 2.6.3 for your RAM testing; it has a very comprehensive, if excessively time consuming, set of RAM diagnostics.

 

[Doq]

Question for the thread again... I've got an Apple Mighty Mouse with scroll ball, but for the life of me I can't get it scrolling on 9.2.2. I've also tried with a generic Logi wired optical and that scroll wheel doesn't work either. Is there a driver I need to install to get scrolling working?

USB Overdrive? You probably won't get horizontal scrolling but vertical might work.

 

[JackAHyde]

Can you list of those general signs of instability please? Perhaps this community can help with insights...

BTW, I would recommend Apple Service Diagnostics (ASD) 2.6.3 for your RAM testing; it has a very comprehensive, if excessively time consuming, set of RAM diagnostics.

It seems to happen at complete random, but every now and then, audio won't play at all, although iTunes or a video player will show signs that it's trying to play. Adjusting the volume does absolutely nothing whenever this happens; not even the little on-screen prompt or sound effect will come up. The offending program will then start to hang and give me the spinning beach ball.

There were times where I got false hope after changing or deleting some software or old config files that I thought caused it. For the record, iit felt like all of my issues started a few days ago after I tried to install an old version of LaunchBar and went into the settings to "Hide dock icon." It gave me a big warning about problems that it might cause with system stability, but I ignored it and didn't even read all of them. After I thought the program was the cause, I tried disabling the option to hide the dock icon, but no dice. After that, I surgically removed it and deleted all of the old preference files, yet my system still acts unstable at random points.

I've been troubleshooting this whole thing for a few days, and I was so convinced that my RAM was the cause because Rember would start failing a few times depending on what sticks of RAM were inserted.

I didn't even know about ASD, but I've already spent a mountain of time testing RAM. I wanted to try a reinstall once my new SSD comes tomorrow from Amazon.

 

[mac57mac57]

The "no sound" problem is an old one @JackAHyde, and it plagues releases all the way from Leopard through Sonoma. I find that sound will suddenly stop, and no amount of tinkering with the Sound system preference (or any other) seems to solve it. I have never deduced any triggering event(s) that causes sound to stop.

A reboot always solves the problem however! ... for a time anyway!

One other thing that works most of the time, on Monterey at least, is to use the Sound Preference pane to change the sound output device to anything other than the actual intended value. Then exit System Preferences, restart it and use the Sound Preference pane again, this time to reset the output device to the intended value. This sequence of steps restores sound MOST of the time on my Monterey Mac Studio.

 

[JackAHyde]

It's funny you posted about this now of all times. I reinstalled Sorbet on my new 1TB SSD earlier today, and I still got the issues. However, I'm starting to think my sound problems might be tangentially related to what you described. I notice I only get these issues when playing audio, and I have USB speakers that might be a bit too modern for this Power Mac G5. I decided to order a male-to-male audio jack (they're compatible with these speakers) in case this was the issue. After relying on the internal speaker so far, I haven't had issues with some of the usual things that crash and freeze up like DVD playback. I'm copying my iTunes library right now, so I'll report on that once it finishes.

I'm surprised to know that you have such persistent issues with audio on the Mac. I never had these audio issues in general when I ran Mavericks on my first MacBook Air, my black MacBook on Lion and Mountain Lion, my M1 MacBook Air, or the Mac Mini on whatever it has installed. The Power Mac G5 is the first Apple system I've had that gave me these issues, although I still think having full USB-powered speakers is the smoking gun here.

 

[mac57mac57]

Well @JackAHyde, don't be too hopeful about the USB angle. I use hard wired speakers on my Mac Studio, but the problem persists.

In the final analysis, these are complex machines, and if they occasionally "hiccup" in a non-critical way, I tend to let it pass. "Perfection" is an impossible task master - I allow for glitches without having them make me crazy.

 

[JackAHyde]

I get that glitches can happen, @mac57mac57, but I'm talking how music would flat out stop playing if I dared to pause and unpause while drafting a novel, or simply trying to play an old DVD on my system.

I started to wonder if my system was being kneecapped with bad RAM as well, although the sticks in my system seem to be the confirmed "good" ones. I also had issues starting an actual test on Rember with them until I tried dusting out the RAM slots with a toothbrush and trying to use a dummy RAM stick with isopropyl alcohol on its contacts to insert and remove repeatedly in order to "clean" the slots. To an extent, this actually did work, although I'm not 100% sure if the RAM had something to do with it or if it was just a coincidence.

 

[mac57mac57]

Well @JackAHyde, you have one up on me... I have never cleaned the RAM slots on any machine before!

I'm not one to listen to music via iTunes directly from my Mac, so there is another one you have on me. The next time sound stops on a machine I am working with, I will fire up iTunes and see if it plays.

This feels like a software conflict to me, but I have never wanted to spend the time to go back to basics, start with Safe mode and then slowly add things back in until the problem occurrs.

The problem with this problem is that it is intermittent, and until I (and you) can isolate a repeatable trigger that causes it, any attempt to debug it will be fruitless.

So... I live with it for now... bigger fish to fry!

 

[JackAHyde]

Yeah, I thought it was a software conflict too. I kept troubleshooting, but it might have been a wild goose chase the entire time, especially considering I just did a clean install of Sorbet Leopard, so who knows at this point.

Anyway, the system is almost done copying over my iTunes library. I wouldn't have cared all that much except that I spent a good two or three days last week slowly trying to organize everything that was out of place (missing album art, misspelled song titles, incorrect artist names, etc.), so this iTunes collection in particular is my definitive music library right now at over 6,000 songs.