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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Lemonty on August 17, 2006, 07:00:03 PM
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We all know the Amiga can be prone to crashes due to badly written programs, hacks, patches modified startup-sequences and the lot.
My sessions tend to be quite short (< 2hours) before crashing. Usually when surfing the web.
What's your record?
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Back in the days when it was my primary workstation, my 4000 with CSMK2 060 went a couple days without reboot on multiple occasions.
Back when my friend and I ran a BBS, we had an A500 with a HD and some FastRAM, and it would go for weeks before memory fragmentation (or a faulty administrator [me, usually]) would finally guru it. :lol:
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web surfing with the amiga = pain
I get some pretty good runs (when just rendering) I was rendering to 2 days recently. I think I have left the things on for week at a time.
On average 2 hours should right, when fiddeling with apps and settings....
On a slightly off topic note...I just realized I had my octane2 logged in for about 2 months solid now! (browsing the web, running maya and studio!) no issues.
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let me guess, your running ibrowse as webbrowser? for me, if ibrowse is running, expect a crash every 30 minutes, although i noticed, if images are disabled it stays up somewhot longer, maybe something around 2-3 hours. as soon as i run a freshly boot up amiga without ibrowse (or aweb, which is only slightly more stable than ibrowse) i usually switch my computer off (yeah, you have heared right ;-) ), no crashes at all. record there should be last xzentrix (maybe topped by next xzentrix in a few weeks http://www.xzentrix.de ) where it was running about 20 hours or so playing games with whdload. no reboots, just normal exit via whdload hotkey.
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Hi,
my private mainsystem is still my A3000T and it usually runs a couple of hours before I turn it off or need to reboot.
Web-browsing forces me from time to time to reboot the machine but with other software I have no problems. My main problem for reboots and crashes has been defective hardware (CPU-socket of the CSPPC :-().
Back in the days of my A1000 I left the system on for weeks playing Elite. I saved the games to the ram-disk and just turned on the monitor to continue playing. The A1000 case-fan is so silent the A1000 could run in my bedroom day and night and hasn't disturbed -- in fact the fan can't be heard under normal conditions.
Noster
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I used to keep my 1200 up for days on end doing all my usual activities: WHDLoad games, web, YAM, and MP3 playback (though it would crash occasionally). Now I usually shut down overnight in the interests of extending the lifespan of my hardware.
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yeah, I shutdown much more now also. tho I think is mainly to save the power suppy as I think it's actualy better for the hardware to stay on (if your gonna use it on and off).. is this true?
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@pierre:
I don't know if keeping a system running rather than switching it on and off regularly makes a difference, but I would have thought that powering up a computer regularly would cause it more mechanical stress (eg. having to spin up hard disks and fans.)
I tend to put my Mac to sleep if I'm going to be away for less than half an hour, any more than that and I switch it off to save electricity.
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it was someting about the current spiking whenyou turn it on puting stress on the chips and such.. don;t know if this bogus.. I do know that sometime i turn an old system off and then it never turns back on.... very sad...
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I did think of that (a bit like how lightbulbs are more likely to pop when you switch them on), but I would have thought there would be some sort of protection circuitry?
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@god64
Yes I'm running Ibrowse. It seems to me the most complete browser available currently. I guess the sheer volume of data flying around makes Amiga housekeeping (ie not crashing) a tall order. This is an observation from someone who knows totally nothing of the technical side of it mind you.
Anyway, I use so many pathes on my system (Afa OS being one) that it is difficult to isolate the baddie patches most of the time. I find a bare 3.9.2 system to be the most stable.
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Since you say that the crashes occur while browsing, perhaps the problem comes from the tcp/ip stack or the network driver and not necessarily from the browser. Try Aweb and see what will happen.
Anyway, if your record is 2 hours there is something seriously wrong with your system that you must isolate. I can operate my Amiga for 8 hours or so without a single crash.
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My old A1200T used to run for months before I would reset it and that was 24/7.
My A1 with OS4 update 4 runs about 10 hours a day being used constantly, including using IBrowse. I now turn it off at the end of the day, only due to the very high cost of electricity here now. It did run 24/7 for the first couple of weeks when I first got it.
Ciao,
Trev Daley.
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I have left my Amiga 4000 on for several days letting it render some annimations using lightwave and it has never crashed. It will crash more often if I play games or run other programs but the Toaster/Flyer runs solid even when using it for live switching that I have done.
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Depends on the ammount/size of memory you have installed, and the kind of applications you're running.
An unexpanded 16MB Fast A4000, won't last long surfing the internet and doing other stuff simultaneously.
With 152 MB, I go till some proggie halts the system (won't go out of memory with the usual apps running -expect large files/compression/compiling etc.-).
OS4 will resolve these problems, hopefully.
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NO amiga will last long surfing the web... even if the amiga last the user will SOONER or later give up.... We need firefox !..
My toaster flyer is rock slolid, as long as I don't mess with other things.
10 or 11 years ago, I used to to graphics for the local news station, I used a a3k(t) to switch the graphics live! (with scala!!!) It NEVER crashed EVER, just this one time during the brodcast I was palying with the key on the front...I learned that if you turn it to the left it resets the amiga... whoops... I claimed the machine crashed... those ppl where very uptight! I did get it back up and running pretty quick tho but I did miss some graphics.... It had not crashed I reset it! live and learn
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@Lemonty
I personally believe ( and I really really think this is it) that the reason your Amiga or any Amiga crashes with iBrowse (even an 060) is because the Web gfx or the data coming through.it too much for the Amiga to process and it goes crazy on overload and Crashes..........soething similar Happens to SCALA MM300 when I push it to the Limit by throwing and Switching Gfx too fast that take up all the chipRAM.
I really believe thats whats wrong..............I think the programmers should make the program (iBrowse) to adjust to whatever CPU the Amiga is using..and downgrade itself a little to not use the FULL CPU..like maybe %75 of it only...................yes it will take longer..............but will crash less I believe.
@pierre
Quote:
I used a a3k(t) to switch the graphics live! (with scala!!!)
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Way to go! SCALA is the software Video Toaster! :-)
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I used a a3k(t) to switch the graphics live! (with scala!!!)
heh... Yeah, we did that at the local cable studio, but not usually live. Only once do I recall ever genlocking a guru meditation over someone's head, instead of flipping a name banner in. :-)
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Somewhere in the US, I'd bet money, is a small cable network still running their schedule/information channel from an A500 with a genlock.
At one point in the '90s it seemed like everywhere you went you saw Amiga graphics on a cable network doing some task.
I always left my Amiga running (when they were new) when I was home...sometimes for days without problems. I'm sure the cable channels ran 24/7. Granted you did see your share of guru screens running in the middle of the night, or the ever popular insert Workbench screen! Add to that the number of folks who used Amiga's to render 3D graphics and you have tons of folks who regularly ran the heck out of their Amiga systems for extended periods.
If my Amiga couldn't run for more than two hours without a crash I'd be looking at my hardware and software. If iBrowse is the culprit, it might mean you need to add a bit of ram. iBrowse loves the ram!
Bob
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Since yet another cable system merger/buyout I have heard the nearby Amiga cable guy may be pushed out as the new home office has their own graphics/menu system. I plan to touch base and see if some stuff is now available for hobbyist prices.
I have seen the BSOD and the ordinary Windows desktop proudly displayed for all the motoring public when a local Citgo gas station's sign program crashes. They have a video sign on a tall roadside post for current fuel prices/soft drink specials/fast food.
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I've run my Amigas for days without reboots. The only time I ever found myself rebooting from instability of any sort was when I was downloading and unarchiving a lot of stuff, checking out random software or playing games/demos.
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Back in the day, when I was living on Residence at Uni., I had my A1200 running 24/7 for the entire semester: Organiser would start DeliTracker at 07:00 every morning to remind me to get-the-hell-up, you lazy...
Anyways, during most use (Wordworth, Pagestream, PPaint, C4D, OctaMED SS, DOpus, etc.) it suffered no crashes. Occasionally, I would have to reboot; most crashes were from me installing things and trying to get them to cooperate with other things (VisualPrefs + MultiCX + etc. = KABOOM!).
Or playing demos I'd just downloaded, but I was prepared for such eventualities by rebooting to my 'run games and demos' partition.
I did have a program that told you how long the machine had been on for, one time I checked it, it had been up for 34 days.
== iBrowse aside ===
Although I didn't go nuts with web-surfing (comp. labs were a hundred metres away and I had an AF sub.) I did some Yahooing (I knew not Google, 1998) and found that setting iBrowse' stack to a ridiculously large amount generally prevented crashes. I can only guess this would work with other browsers as the size and complexity of web pages is increasing, so the size of your initial stack should be proportionate.
I generally didn't hang around browsing too long, though: I had pictures to draw and assignments to avoid. ;-)
benJamin
"We are GIGGING tomorrow in Brisneyland! Check Kamikaze Perverts (http://www.kamikazeperverts.com/)' web site if you're in the area!"
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The other night I unpacked 1.25GB of zip files (2.5GB unpacked size) from a DVD to the hard drive of my A1200... I set it off at mid-day, only 9 hours later and it was finished.
My PC could have done it in 3 minutes :-D