Self crashing apps. Re: Most Stable OS
Netscape's favorite tactic is scribbling over itself in memory, at least on Windows. How do I tell if a Mac app crash is due to the app overwriting part of its main executable in RAM? At any rate, especially after 20+ years, _I_ find it amazing that programmers still haven't come up with a 99.999% perfect way of keeping applications from doing this, no matter what OS or platform. :P How hard can it be for the app to look around and see that its current memory location starts at _this_ address and ends at _that_ one, then create a temporary file saying Thou shall NOT write ANYTHING upon thyself.??? I'm sick of seeing NETSCAPE.EXE caused a (pick an error) in NETSCAPE.EXE. Bleagh. I suppose I'd need a debugger loaded to catch Mac apps blowing their own bits out? All systems can do with these bad app-les is to quarrantine them and sweep up the debris. Win NT/2K, OSX, Linux etc can do that. Mac System/OS 9.1 and older and WinMe/9x/3.xx can't. Its still best to reboot after an app crashes, no telling what little nuggets its left behind just waiting to cause some normally stable app to blow up. --- James S Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Part of the problem with Netscape 2.0 to 4.7x is that it was designed to be internally multithreaded, using a Netscape thread manager, rather than a system one*. The root of this came from Mac System 7 and 16-bit Windows. Those systems didn't have thread managers. The result is a monstrously monolithic and huge application, which uses so many resources that it can block the system I/O queues, even on multithreaded, pre-emptive multitasking systems like OS/2 or Win9x (although perhaps not NT). The system has to be rebooted because you can't get back to the Finder/WorkPlace Shell/Explorer to kill it when it hangs. To their credit, this design provided some real benefits on a 68k Mac. I can be downloading something while sending an email or reading a web page, etc. *I think NS 4.x actually uses a system thread manager extension for OS 7.5.5 and earlier. = The earth swarms with inhabitants. Why then should nature, which is fruitful to an excess here, be so very barren in the rest of the planets? Bernard de Fontenelle, 1686 [EMAIL PROTECTED] My ICQ# 16024947 __ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/ -- Vintage Macs is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Small Dog Electronicshttp://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | - Epson Stylus Color 740 Printers refurbished $79 | CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac, sign up for PayPal, possible $5 bonus. http://lowendmac.com/ad/paypal.html Star Trek Collection: Movies 1-7 on VideoCD, $38.88 from CoolVCD http://lowendmac.com/ad/coolvcd.html - - - - - Vintage Macs list info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml The FAQ:http://macfaq.binhost.com/ Send list messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/vintage.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/ Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
Re: Self crashing apps. Re: Most Stable OS
This is one of the advantages of Netscape on the classic Mac OS. Any application creates it's own memory partition and only the most remarkably buggy apps will overwrite another app's partition (maybe something not 32-bit clean?). Netscape and some others go one step further. Once it has a partition, it never releases it back to the system*. If you quit NS and restart it, it will use exactly the same space it previously occupied. I suspect that one reason NS will freeze the system if you restart it after it crashes is that it tries to reclaim that space, but the system sees as a new app trying to overwrite another's partition and it traps the protection violation. I don't necessarily reboot immediately after all apps abend, but I would never try to run some, like NS, without rebooting. *So, if you've allocated 24 MB of your 128 MB to Netscape and then close it, you will not get that memory back for other applications without rebooting. Gregg Eshelman wrote: All systems can do with these bad app-les is to quarrantine them and sweep up the debris. Win NT/2K, OSX, Linux etc can do that. Mac System/OS 9.1 and older and WinMe/9x/3.xx can't. Its still best to reboot after an app crashes, no telling what little nuggets its left behind just waiting to cause some normally stable app to blow up. -- /\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign \ / No HTML/RTF in email X No Word docs in email / \ Respect for open standards -- Vintage Macs is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Small Dog Electronicshttp://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | - Epson Stylus Color 740 Printers refurbished $79 | CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac, sign up for PayPal, possible $5 bonus. http://lowendmac.com/ad/paypal.html Star Trek Collection: Movies 1-7 on VideoCD, $38.88 from CoolVCD http://lowendmac.com/ad/coolvcd.html - - - - - Vintage Macs list info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml The FAQ:http://macfaq.binhost.com/ Send list messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/vintage.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/ Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
Re: Self crashing apps. Re: Most Stable OS
--- James S Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is one of the advantages of Netscape on the classic Mac OS. Any application creates it's own memory partition and only the most remarkably buggy apps will overwrite another app's partition (maybe something not 32-bit clean?). Netscape and some others go one step further. Once it has a partition, it never releases it back to the system*. If you quit NS and restart it, it will use exactly the same space it previously occupied. I suspect that one reason NS will freeze the system if you restart it after it crashes is that it tries to reclaim that space, but the system sees as a new app trying to overwrite another's partition and it traps the protection violation. I don't necessarily reboot immediately after all apps abend, but I would never try to run some, like NS, without rebooting. *So, if you've allocated 24 MB of your 128 MB to Netscape and then close it, you will not get that memory back for other applications without rebooting. No wonder Jump Development said you shouldn't even think about thinking about using RAM Charger on Netscape. :P (Another nasty bit with Netscape is it's not fully Smart Scroll Aware, the thumbs are fixed at the default size.) At Netscape, we read the programming manuals for the OS, then do what they say NOT to do! = The earth swarms with inhabitants. Why then should nature, which is fruitful to an excess here, be so very barren in the rest of the planets? Bernard de Fontenelle, 1686 [EMAIL PROTECTED] My ICQ# 16024947 __ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/ -- Vintage Macs is sponsored by http://lowendmac.com/ and... Small Dog Electronicshttp://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | - Epson Stylus Color 740 Printers refurbished $79 | CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac, sign up for PayPal, possible $5 bonus. http://lowendmac.com/ad/paypal.html Star Trek Collection: Movies 1-7 on VideoCD, $38.88 from CoolVCD http://lowendmac.com/ad/coolvcd.html - - - - - Vintage Macs list info: http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml The FAQ:http://macfaq.binhost.com/ Send list messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For digest mode, email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscription questions: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/vintage.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/ Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
