Just purchased a used iMac to test the switching water. Will my iMac be fast enough?

[bryanc]

I've been involved with almost a dozen upgrades to OS X over the past year, and all but one of them resulted in machines that *never* crashed anymore.

The one exception was an old 350 MHz G4 that crashed all the time under 9, and, much to my surprise and dissapointmet, continued to crash (somewhat less frequently) under X. I ran hardware diagnostics and everything else I could think of to try to isolate the problem, but never found anything wrong with it. Finally, I removed the original RAM that the machine came with (I'd added 512, so I removed the 128 that it came with), and that seems to have solved the problem.

Note that the problems that manifested on this machine were not always complete system crashes, but also lots of spinning beachballs and general applications flakyness as well.

Hopefully the hardware diag. will help you out, but failing that, try using a diferent mouse or keyboard for a few days if you can arrange it.

I'm not surprised your system is slow, but I am surprised it's not stable. Every mac I've used runing OS X has been bulletproof (except for the one with the flaky RAM), so I really think you've got a hardware issue.

Good luck and let us know if you figure out what the problem was.

Cheers

[lsutiger]

I pulled out one of the Dimms and got lucky. Ran the test again and no errors. It was a simpletech dimm (cheap memory I think).

Now the whole system seems to be running faster!!!!!!!!

Thanks everyone. Now I'll have to find another memory chip to replace this one. Any suggestions?

[patrick0brien]

Originally posted by lsutiger
I pulled out one of the Dimms and got lucky. Ran the test again and no errors. It was a simpletech dimm (cheap memory I think).

Now the whole system seems to be running faster!!!!!!!!

Thanks everyone. Now I'll have to find another memory chip to replace this one. Any suggestions?

-lsutiger

Well, naturally, hold off on a purchase until you are comfortable that that was the problem.

But when you do wish to take the leap RamJet has always served me well.

[lsutiger]

Originally posted by patrick0brien
-lsutiger

Well, naturally, hold off on a purchase until you are comfortable that that was the problem.

But when you do wish to take the leap RamJet has always served me well.

Ok. Thanks. One more question. I'll probably replace the 256MB chip with a 512MB one to give my 668MB. The 512 chips aren't that much more than the 256 ones. I assume that would be fine.

[kylos]

More RAM is always better and highly advised. You may have a harder time finding 512 MB at a lower price though, if you're looking not to repeat this problem.

[rueyeet]

It's not surprising that the source of the trouble seems to have been a RAM problem. OS X is pretty strict about memory quality--many people have reported that OS X wouldn't deal with memory chips that had worked just fine in System 9. Crucial.com is a good quality source for memory, if not the cheapest--and they make no bones about what isn't compatible with your system.

Other than that, as another switcher who uses Win 2K Pro at work daily, I can say that you're probably going to see a little less of a snappy response in the GUI. But the biggest relief for me was that Apple's system doesn't seem to regard every inch of the desktop as potential ad space for corporate partners, or constantly make wrong assumptions that it knows what I'm trying to do, as Windows (and Microsoft in general) does. And of course, a G4 will make the system more snappy--a G5 should by all rights make it tapdance.

Partitioning is a matter of personal preference. Some swear by it, and some will say just as solemnly that it's not necessary under OS X. I -have- noticed that many who advocate partitions are either experienced users of older Mac OS's, or Linux/Unix.

As to web-browsing and crashes: Browsing speed will depend on the browser you use. Internet Explorer is a dog on the Mac. Everything else has compatibility issues--trying to send an email from AOL Webmail will crash Mozilla AND Camino on me every time. That's more AOL's fault than Mozilla's though, I'm willing to bet. I gotta give Safari a try one of these days...

Other than that, best wishes for a stable system from here on out! I know at least one used Mac source that doesn't bother to do a fresh install from the previous owner's system before sending the Mac to you, just deletes their personal data; so you inherit any software flakiness that owner may have had.

[Freg3000]

I am happy everything seems to have worked out.

Let this be a lesson to everyone about ram. I went through hell will some faulty ram on my new Power mac almost a year ago. A simple thing like memory can screw up a mac badly. If you don't have enough, OS X crawls, if you have bad ram, no matter how much, your machine goes crazy.

Good Luck.

[lsutiger]

Originally posted by Freg3000
I am happy everything seems to have worked out.

Let this be a lesson to everyone about ram. I went through hell will some faulty ram on my new Power mac almost a year ago. A simple thing like memory can screw up a mac badly. If you don't have enough, OS X crawls, if you have bad ram, no matter how much, your machine goes crazy.

Good Luck.

I had the same problem with a windows pc that I built a couple years ago. Since I built it I had no idea what was causing spontaneous reboots and several other problems. I replaced the power supply before I finally isolated the problem to a bad memory chip. At least the Apple software identified the memory error. I had run several memory checks on the PC and they all came back normal.

Everything is running much smoother and faster now (despite having half as much ram).

Thanks.

[lewdvig]

Originally posted by plinkoman
if you have the $$ for a G5, go for it, but a G4 really does make a difference. i have both a 2.2GHz P4 and a 700 imac G4 and in everyday tasks(music, internet, mail...) i see very little speed difference, and sometimes the imac can even be faster because of windows doing something screwy like it always manages to do

The benefit with a Mac is workflow. Saving a few minutes of our time thinking is a bigger deal than saving a second of CPU time - or even a bunch of them - here or there.

In raw terms my P4 humiliates my Mac. Seriously, no benchmark that I have tried is even close.

BUT

If you try to time yourself using these computers to perform unscripted tasks - BINGO! Suddenly the Mac wins every time.

That is my experience.

The PC is for games - and the really cool Heart Rate Monitor tools I need to keep track of my exercise. Polar don't support Mac.

[Dont Hurt Me]

i know this of no help but the new machine would have been the choice, here is why , memory,cpu,bus, videochip ,gets improved, making it hard to upgrade componets in older machines and keep up because everything is getting better & faster. still good luck and mac osx loves lots of good clean memory.

[SpyHunter]

Originally Posted by lsutiger

Good News/Bad News

I ran the system check and I'm geting Error Code mem_/2/4.

My system has 2 256K Dimms installed. Is there any way to tell by the error code which one has the problem? If not then I'll just remove one at a time and see if it fixes it.

I have a question. I have a friend that has a Mac, using OS 10.3 or 10.4. She has been having problems with her computer resetting on its own. I had her run the the diag, and it came back with a "Mem_/2/5" error. Is that the same as a /2/4?

Any suggestions as to what i should have her do?

[someguy]

SpyHunter, this is a really old thread. You'd be better off starting a new one if you need assistance.