TenFourFox Super Slow on 17" PBG4

[M3Stang]

Hello everyone,

Pulled one of the PBG4s out of the closet to go on a nostalgia trip today and forgot how slow it is to use TenFourFox. Just typing this is lagging sentences behind on it, and it took nearly 10 minutes to get to actually post this. I tried noscript and even used one of my RPis for pi hole and it is still bad. Every couple of words this thing beach balls for seconds. Crazy stuff. Any other suggestions?

17" PBG4 1.67GHz
2GB DDR RAM

 

[Amethyst1]

Tried this?

foxPEP and TenFourFoxPEP - For A Faster Firefox / TenFourFox

The Firefox Partitioned Engine Patch, officially abbreviated as foxPEP, is a finely tuned all-in-one preferences patch designed exclusively for Firefox-based browsers that automatically applies a number of advanced under-the-hood configurations to achieve a superior Web browsing experience on...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[M3Stang]

Actually yes I checked it just before posting this. I said it required 10.6.8, perhaps I missed the part where it works on PPC? I was reading it on that Mac so it took 15 minutes to be able to actually scroll. And Darn that thing gets hot!

 

[Dronecatcher]

@M3Stang I'd suggest there's something amiss with your OS install - I'm writing this from my 15" DLSD in TFF and there's no delay or problems at all.

 

[wicknix]

I can't view this forum on leopard in a timely manner without using a hosts file to block ads and the use of noscript. The same 15" PB 1.67ghz booted to Linux or MorphOS fairs much better on the web. I don't keep tiger/leopard around for internet tasks. I keep it around for its games and music production software. I dual or triple or quad boot to other OS's for most internet related tasks on my powerpc machines.

Cheers

 

[minicm]

Hello everyone,

Pulled one of the PBG4s out of the closet to go on a nostalgia trip today and forgot how slow it is to use TenFourFox. Just typing this is lagging sentences behind on it, and it took nearly 10 minutes to get to actually post this. I tried noscript and even used one of my RPis for pi hole and it is still bad. Every couple of words this thing beach balls for seconds. Crazy stuff. Any other suggestions?

17" PBG4 1.67GHz
2GB DDR RAM

Are you serious? My iBook G4 with a single 1gb of ram is very fast on Ten Four Fox, but my Powerbook was a lot slower.

Have you ever out a new thermal paste to the cpu? My pb gets very hot in the past (AND SLOWER), i replaced it and its flying now, even more with foxpep and leopard tweaks for perfomance.

 

[M3Stang]

Interesting this is a clean install of leopard. I did not replace the paste, and should, but probably won’t. I recently bought this particular machine to collect, and recently broke a PowerMac G5 quad by replacing the thermal paste. It’s funny because I built PCs several times a year but somehow that power mac never worked again. Don’t want to brick this one as it’s part of my PowerBook collection that all functions.

 

[CJRhoades]

Macrumors runs just fine on my 1.5GHz AlBook using Tenfourfox with FoxPEP. Scrolling is a little laggy but theres no lag typing this comment. Without FoxPEP it's a disaster.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Interesting this is a clean install of leopard.

I've had at least two fresh installs of Leopard that were somehow corrupt - nothing in particular seemed broken but everything was slow - one Powerbook benchmarked at 25% of what it should.
Also worth noting, TFF has adblock built in, on top of this I use a custom hosts file and I'm using my own prefs file I've been using for years.
TFF allows you to change the general user agent too and alter it on a site by site basis - as does ArcticFox and IceweasalPPC.

 

[eyoungren]

Interesting this is a clean install of leopard. I did not replace the paste, and should, but probably won’t. I recently bought this particular machine to collect, and recently broke a PowerMac G5 quad by replacing the thermal paste. It’s funny because I built PCs several times a year but somehow that power mac never worked again. Don’t want to brick this one as it’s part of my PowerBook collection that all functions.

The issue with heat is because the processor is getting hammered. When it's pegged at 100% CPU for a length of time it get's hot. That does not necessarily mean it needs new paste - just that it is undergoing heavy processing.

I will mention again, that slowness on MacRumors can often be attributed to the rich text editor feature of the post system. If you press the three dots (on the far right by the preview button) in the message entry box you'll see two brackets. Click on that so that all the other icons gray out. That shuts off the rich text editor.

That editor runs on javascript and when it's active your system is always processing it because it doesn't turn off - which causes the processor to go under load, which causes heat.

 

[Dronecatcher]

That editor runs on javascript and when it's active your system is always processing it because it doesn't turn off - which causes the processor to go under load, which causes heat.

That always used to be the case and lag was terrible but it seems to be fine now?

 

[eyoungren]

That always used to be the case and lag was terrible but it seems to be fine now?

I'll be honest and say I haven't noticed. Mainly I've been accessing MR using my Intel Macs since I got my Mac Pro last May. I'll have to try it on my PowerBook and see what happens.

That said, I'm so used to typing in formatting tags that I've not turned the editor on even though I'm mainly on Intel now.

 

[Cox Orange]

(...) forgot how slow it is to use TenFourFox. (...) Any other suggestions?

17" PBG4 1.67GHz
2GB DDR RAM

Hi,

is it only ten four fox? Try a h.264 video encoded with 16 reference frames and play it for 30min in iTunes,... if you have such a video at hand.
Why? I am thinking of defective RAM. The video test is a first hint. To really be sure and test the RAM use memtest 4.2.2 for OS X.
Usually I would come up with a link and step by step guide how to use it in single user mode, but I am running out of time.

 

[charlieT]

If this is the first time it's been run for a while, could be Spotlight is still indexing? Worth looking at or turning off.

I just finished bringing up a couple of TI books, 867 and 1GHz and TFF 29 was dog slow at the beginning, as you described. They're on Tiger, so the process may be slightly different, but I did the .prefs mods suggested above, used Aquatrim to tweak the OS, have uMatrix and Bluhell installed, and went to a DNS adblocker. Performance is now "adequate", wouldn't say "perky", but very usable for the lighter websites. I did this in stages and it got better as the tweaks were added. I really think you need all the tweaks, but think you might be happy with the result. And it'll run a bunch cooler, just ask my poor 1G TI, which is a lap burner...

Running 10.5 might be part of your issue, it's really unusably slow on my TIs, but these are limited to 1GB ram which is probably a big part of it, yours should have plenty.

 

[B S Magnet]

That always used to be the case and lag was terrible but it seems to be fine now?

The response lag typing with MR’s rich text editor on my DLSD 17" is typically about 0.1–0.2 seconds, depending on whether there are other active tabs open. On platforms like Twitter or GNU Social, it’s much, much worse.

The MR response lag on my clamshell G3/466 running TFF, however, is absurd — sometimes in the realm of a 1–4 second delay, and that’s with no other tabs open. I think I’ve posted from there a total of once.

(In all my PPC and Intel settings, I use uMatrix, uBlock Origin, the TFF built-in ad-block, and the prefs.js curated by @eyoungren.)

This reply is being typed from the DLSD, which right now with two static-page tabs and an MR tab open, is on the better side (0.1sec) of lag.

Generally, any test editor which features on-the-fly formatting before your eyes and/or pops up a menu for usernames and/or emojis is all Javascript, and that significantly bogs down legacy hardware like few other elements can.