Today is the only time i have had it on auto or in case of my board use spd.
Although we both have kingston DDR 400 mine are 1 gig modules and quite frankly there are loads of manufacturers that the actual chips could have been made by, I think samsung is a favourite of kingston but certainly not the only one they use. You could only say we have the same memory if we compared numbers printed on actual chips.

I have set the memory slower than the spd setting but it never occured to me before that it might have something to do with firmware, I maybe totally barking up the wrong tree, I don't even know if osx does read memory firmware or if this is done purely by efi. But hell this seems to be the best "stablest" yet so who knows.

Man, you know a ton about RAM, I'll give you that! :) All I know is: makes shit run, and the more you have, the better the shit will perform, haha. Good to know, though. Thing is, I've only ever changed my memory settings ONCE and that was when you told me to do it. Since then, I've changed back...soooo...I dunno...:\

Hmmm, strange. Mind you I must say I still have HT link at 4x rather than 5x

This is confusing I think other than through trial and error as we are doing at the moment it would take someone like netkas or who ever wrote the efi patches for hacks to tell us the full story, but anyway so far so good my system is certainly behaving better than it did.
As for knowing about memory, you could say hardware is my obsession lol. I've been building PCs for about 13 years.

Hmmm that made me think - I wonder what would happen if I ran Leo without EFI? The last time I did this was with 10.5.1 rev1 and I can't recall whether or not I had any performance problems. If I can clear a spare drive, maybe I can give it a try with a standard MBR Leo 10.5.2 rev1 install. I think I'd have to take out my 8800GT, though, since it needs the graphics update to run properly (and updates are out of the question without EFI, right?). I can always swap it out for my old card, I guess. Does this sound like it would do any good as a test for our problems, or just a waste of time?

I wouldn't bother I ran 10.5.1 with efi and can't remember having this issue.
Though i must admit I ran tiger without efi and its the stablest thing I've ever used. Just used to piss me off cos reboot wouldn't work and there seems to be no chance of updating it to 10.4.11 everyone whos doing anything is doing it with leopard.

I must say though for all the shit we've been having we're running something on hardware it wasn't meant to be run on and its still better than vista. Always good to keep perspective.

I don't think my system is cured. No crashes but that roughness of the mouse movement is back and I've only been online one and a half hours. Boll*cks

Think I'm gonna build an intel rig next week.

You're definitely right on perspective.
So, I'm on hour 21-22 now and I just got done running some really stressful processes in Photoshop and Illustrator as a test. I took a look at my Console after a while, and to my dismay, I saw my first mDNSresponder "ticks" message. Ugh! I know now that it's all going down from here. This is the thing that I never want to see because as soon as it happens, the mouse gets rough. It's the same way you describe it Ian - not exactly jerky yet, but rough - though, if I leave it this way long enough it will eventually get jerky. So can you do me a favor? Can you look in your Console, make sure "All Messages" is clicked over on the left, and then do a a string search for "ticks" and see if anything comes up? I really hope we can at least find a common ground with that message if nothing else. That's my last hope of finding any explanation, though I don't even know what the "ticks" message means in terms of what's actually causing it other than system overload.

EDIT: I was thinking of building an Intel also, once I get some more cash. Thinking about using a GA-P35-DS3L for the board. What about you?

Similar but I was thinking of going for a cheaper version GA-31-S3G
its a lot cheaper but also uses the ICH7 controller I think that it will probably be more compatible with vanilla, but I could be wrong. Its only downside that I can see is max 4 gig ram. But hell I aint gonna buy more than that anyway probably wont use more than 2. On top of that I've been thinking about processors and quite frankly I think Im gonna use a e2160 on 1333 bus that would give me 3 gig processor for £44. Im not sure I can justify spending a hundred quid for 3 mb of cache.

As for console 32 clearing cs_valid messages but nothing else

Just a quickie: 28 hours uptime, still good. Only ran one tiny torrent and then I closed Transmission immediately. Didn't seed. I thought I was doomed when I saw a couple of "tick" messages, but they stopped happening all together, and my mouse is still fine. No crashes, except for one Safari crash that probably happened because of the site I was on. It started right back up, though. So no 10810s, nothing else to speak of. Either I got some stability from Netkas' AppleSMBIOS or the security update, or this is just one loooonnnggg 28-hour stream of good luck. Whatever it is, it's nice, and I won't complain. I'll also avoid torrents like the plague :)

Do you want me to push the RED button now Agra? It lasted long enough don't you think?

;) good news though bro, I'm happy for you cause I know you were about to change pets.

Take care

"change pets" ... i like that one, it's almost better than "change girlfriends" ... almost ;)

please, no red button. i'm on 33 hours! this might be a record for me.

Glad to see your up and running agrafuese 33 hours cool.
I seem to have found a solution for myself too.
I now have my processor overclocked, the timings on my memory are a lot faster than they should be, seem to be able to alter anything and system remains stable. Been uploading downloading torrents & encoding videos, running as many apps as I can watching two movies at the same time. Every thing is still smooth as it should be.
The answer for me was my memory is now running at 398 mhz as apposed to 400mhz.
Weird but it seems to work 100% so far.

Red bull anyone? Go to you local store and pick up a few energy drinks to consume, lol. =)

Haha...more like we need to buy red bull for our computers :) No more slowdown issues right? Or maybe it would be too fast then ;)

Well I've been up for days now...I THINK. I am faced with a very strange issue now. I left my computer on since Saturday morning, left for the weekend and came back now (it is now Monday afternoon where I am). Before I left, I had nothing running except for Transmission downloading 4 large torrents. When I woke my display up just now, I was presented with the Login window. So I thought my computer had restarted itself. I logged in and went to Console to see if I had any error messages. The odd thing is, there was no report of any kind of rebooting! So at first, I thought that Leopard had some kind of built-in auto-logout security feature if there was no user activity for two days. But then, I opened up Transmission and found that my torrents had stopped. So why would Leopard log me out if torrents were still running?? Does anyone know anything about this? When I look at my Console messages over the past couple of days, there are only two messages worth noting:

Another strange thing is, I cleared my console before I left on Saturday, and there is nothing before those two lines of code. Also, even if I were logged out by Leopard, wouldn't Transmission still be sitting there when I log back in? Am I wrong about that? I am so confused right now :\

That is very strange, but is this mouse-related? Looks like an entirely different issue.

Yeah, you're right, sorry. I kind of went off on a tangent there. I should post this in another thread. I've grown too comfortable blabbing on in this one, hehe.

hey
didnt read all 9 sites of this thread - weird i dontknow if the mouse problem is still active...
anyway i had the same prob and i enter following kernel flag to my boot.plist:

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>idlehalt=0</string>

thats all
never had any bad mouse issue again

______________________________________________


is it possible that only amd dual cores have this problem?
would be an explanation for that, coz win xp needs the amd dual core optimitzer for running fine.
and coz there is certainly no mac verison of the optimizer the second core should or should not interact in idle.
hmm sounds logically, anyway the kernel flag works for me ;)


cheers

This can work, definitely. I can't believe it works, lol. =) - Cheers indeed.

what exactly is that string meant to do (aside from it fixing your mouse) ?

im think its preventing the second core for stopping in idle mode

hmmm. sounds promising :)

hehe sorry im not sure about the exact function, but it works for me and i thought i have to let u all know about that
if u find more infos about that i would really appreciate sharing them with us ;)
although im not as interested in it as i would google around for it hrhr

Hmm interesting, this is what the osx86 wiki says:

"[use it]..."if you experience stutter like (shutter) syndrome; usualy on dual core processors"

Who knows...worth a try, I guess...

A general site that talked about unix kernels said that this flag is also found in other kernels, and is used to disable energy saving features...?

Gonna give this a go too, i had 24hrs problem free rebooted and then it came back again :-(

Unrelated, but a follow-up to that strange issue that I posted an hour ago here. I found out that my log wasn't showing anything before because it had "turned over". Anyway, I looked into my archived system logs and guess what I found as the culprit for the mystery:

In case you don't know, I've been trying to link this error message with the jerky mouse movement and the -10810 errors. So just to re-iterate, I was running torrents when this happened. This is also what I am doing when I get the mouse problems. I'm a little unsure about the 10810s though, however, I haven't seen them since the time I was experimenting with my memory timings. So I guess I'm not 100% cool with Leopard anymore. I thought running it for over 33 hours meant I was in the clear, but apparently not. There's also nothing I can do to prevent this except stop running torrents, and well, why should I have to do that? Bullshit.

I've found with transmission the higher the download speed the quicker this problem will come on.
also i have that error

Ugh. That makes sense since I was downloading 4 torrents at once. It's gotta be partially torrent related too because I've downloaded many many large files via web browser (FF and Saf) and it never happens when my speed goes high. For example, I've downloaded Ubuntu at my max ISP speed (700kB/s) as a test, and it was fine. Did this numerous times actually. This is really discouraging. I don't think it's limited to Transmission either because I had weird issues with BitRocket and TomatoTorrent in the past. I find it hard to believe that thousands of real mac users and/or the hundreds of Intel hackintosh users out there have problems with torrents like we do. What else could this be???

I did a google search and did see that a couple of real mac users seem to be having the problem but wether it was a different problem with same symptoms who knows.
For the moment I'm trying this

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>idlehalt=0</string>

and as the memory thing seems to make some difference this makes sense.
Anyway let you know more tomorrow keeping my fingers crossed.

I'll give it a try too right now. I'll re-start the torrents after I reboot. That'll be the ultimate test for me to see if the system stays up despite torrents downloading.

disabling energy saving features of the cpu sounds pretty clear...
i bet if i try without that but disable the second core the mouse problem will be gone...
but i wont try coz i dont have the time to test that, more have another problem

btw...anyone knows how to fix the boot with inserted dvd only problem?
since i copied around my boot partitions (leo only for main and for tests) its occuring all the time
think the mbr or efi is damaged in any way... actually messing up with that at the moment,
would be cool if someone knows an open thread here for that

yeah, look around. i don't know your exact situation, but there are many many many threads about booting issues. i'll be happy to join in on another thread that's more on topic :)

Well so far after three and a half hours "downloading torrents" this is looking very promising, except my cpu temp is about the same as running prime95. Oh well suppose you can't have everything.

Ian, how are you monitoring CPU temp in Leo? I couldn't find a good app back when I was looking for one. Any suggestions?

I have been running with idlehalt=0 and torrents for 5.5 hours now and it's looking good for me too! i wonder if we have any decline in performance though? i don't notice anything, but i haven't run any benchmarks yet...let's keep updating here and hopefully we've (finally) found our fix!

Hi guys,

Seems a lot has been discussed since yesterday. I will also try this idlehalt setting. I've heard of it before but didn't think it would do any good anymore with the new kernels etc...

I need a new install too but I don't know which of the releases to try, Zeph's latest or Leo4all latest, hmmm.

Okay system on overnight no crashes no funny mouse so this is looking really good, final test system overclocked -> that also is looking very good.
agrafuese my temperature monitor is hardware I have a thermometer wired to the underside of my thermalright xp120 heatsink, and believe me when I say this is running hotter than it has ever reached even running benchmarking software, so I would be careful anyone who doesn't have a temperature monitor.
I would say also definately no decrease in performance, possibly a slight increase.
So the only downside is temperature which I can live with I live in a cold house lol.

Hey there,

i*ve tried the same and for me it's getting even more worse than before. Mouse starts to jump around after an hour uptime +/- a few moments.

While typing this text Firefox crashed at least 2 times =(

I don't know about the temperature since i don't have a thermometer for my CPU, nontheless i'm pretty sure it can't be high since my CPU-fan runs slow (speed of my fan is controlled by CPU-temp).

Apps running right now:
NetnewsWire
Firefox
Thunderbird

Transmission crashed while i was sleeping so i had to restart my machine around an hour ago.

Update:
My machine crashed completely this time. The loading circle appeared and that's it .... another restart.

I really hope someone is able to find a solution.

Cheers,
Tom

Just to update the temperature thing my processor usually runs around 35degrees maxing out at around 50 under full load.
With this in place its nearer 60degrees

So I'm guessing this is the final straw for me I'm going to invest in an Intel processor something I haven't done for nearly ten years

Was just about to aks you on the temp numbers. From 50 to 60 under load. What's idle like? If idle also ups by 10 then it's not worth it but if it's only on load I can live with it.

Sad to hear we're going to loose another AMD user who contributed a lot to this board, hmm, can't say that for myself.

But on the other hand, I do encourage you to jump the Intel bandwagon, so good luck!

I don't have a temp monitor like you do but I'll try the idlehalt tweak anyway. Thx for the info lad.

Ahhh shit! I was worried about that. I don't have a CPU thermometer either and so I have no clue what's going on in there. I wonder if I can quickly restart my computer and look at my temps in BIOS really fast before the temp goes down? Anyone know if that works? Upside is, I too have been stable with torrents for over 18 hours now! I don't overclock anymore, so maybe my temps will be lower than yours Ian?

@subsonic: It's really strange that you have more problems with this setting than before. Are you doing any overclocking or memory tweaks in BIOS? And what are your specs?

Your BIOS would be a great place to start. Try that first.

Hi guys.
I had this issue (mouse jumping and reboots after hours of bittorrent and heavy download overnight) a while ago (10.5.1) and after reinstalling Leopard many times, replacing kext and hardware components like usb2 and network i found It could probably be related to APIC implementation in BIOS. What led me to this was the fact that my crash happens overnight or after waking up from the screensaver. So I tought about ACPI problems. All of this only happened when running both CPUS. With cpus=1 all worked well. Searching around I found that some users had issues even in windows with heavy overclock and dual core AMDs related to APIC Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller that in dual core processors could led to some stability issues. The solution for me was to select the 1.1 version in Bios and not the 1.4 (default). Also I set the IRQ manually. I have a NF4 DFI Ultra-D motherboard. Hope this helps.

@ agrafuesinski

Open up case and remove the heatsink from the CPU while it's running. Then read temp on the side of the heatsink that makes contact with the CPU. It's hard to explain how the process works but it really works so try it, now!

@Snow: Huh? Wha? I don't know what you mean. Don't I need a thermometer for that? I don't have one...shoot me a message over at insanely mac :)

So here's my report for now: After 22 hours straight of running torrents, I restarted my system and went into BIOS to read my temperatures. At first, CPU was 51. I let it sit in BIOS for about a half hour and it went down to 44. When I was in Leopard prior to booting into BIOS, I'd say I was only putting about a "normal" amount of load on the CPU. Just running the torrents and doing some web browsing/emailing. A few hours earlier, I was trying to watch a hi-res quicktime video online (of the Fallout 3 trailer, hehe) and it was putting A LOT of load on my system - to the point of causing spinning beachballs and short freezes, etc. I can only imagine what my temps were like at that point, but I don't know for sure. Probably in the upper 50s at least. Anyway, I'm just going to leave the idlehalt=0 flag on for the time being. It works fine, and the system is pretty damn stable. Plus, I don't usually put too much stress on the CPU on a daily basis, and I don't overclock, so I should be okay. If I can get ahold of a hardware thermometer, I'll be able to keep my eye on it a little better, but that won't be for a while. If I have anymore news for you guys, I'll be sure to post, but for now I'm gonna close this case until something new arises. Good luck everyone!

Well been out and bought myself a cheepo Intel setup, haven't put it together yet. But no matter what can't see me leaving you lot completely, might even have to keep an AMD somewhere in the house to give me an excuse lol.
Haven't put the new gear together yet "tomorrows project".

Leo4All is in your hands.

Still trying to download it lol.
But to be honest not sure wether to use it or I have a brazil patched 10.5 or kalyway. I think its either gonna be Eddies or Brazil. Might end up trying both.

hello dudes
havent ever thought about temperature problems with my x2 4600+ running on 2,8 GHz with a big scythe mugen cooling fan on it.
by the matter of fact that my cpu temps are about 55 degrees on vista64 running crysis or prime95 and no errors on osx with idlehalt=0 (no errors since 10.5.2 rev.2!! and yea i fixed the boot problem by simply re-installing pc-efi v8 from zeph's boot-dvd) i couldnt warn u all about that risk. i didnt think so far and im sorry about that. furthermore i didnt know what idlehalt=0 does exactly do.

the thing is that i always had some weird problems with osx86 and i already decided that rev.2 is the last try for mac on my pc. now, very lucky ;) , everything is running flawlessly (crossing fingers to keep that). despite that my next system upgrade will be the change to intel e8400 cpu on an x48 board and ddr3 ram for homogeneous 1333 MHz bus speed and much upgrade and overclock potential. is a good way to monster speed for 600€ i think (if i had more i would buy a mac pro of course... i love mac)

maybe this will be the next challenge for osx86 as no more errors would occur on my amd system hehe. otherwise i still i have my girlfriend's macbook hihi

so sorry again for that risky hint and keep ur eyes on the cpu temps.
hope not to need more visits to these sites except by interest in the scene and wanting to share experience.

cheers

just a last update on the temperature thing before I dismantle my system.
temp running around 45 degrees no overclocking but I do have a thermalright xp-120 so I'm guessing the temps would be hell of a lot higher for some people, to give you a guide I usually have my processor runnging @ just under 2800mhz and it never gets hotter than around 45. i'm thinking someone with a standard amd cooler will definatly be up in the 60's.

@agrafuese

Hey =) Regarding your question, no i don't do any overclocking or better said i can't because my Bios won't let me. My Bios is pretty static, i can't alter memory timings or anything related to my CPU. That's one bad thing about preconfigured HP/Compaq-machines =(

Anyways, here are my specs:
-----------------------------------
Modellname: Mac
Modell-Identifizierung: EP164AA-ABE SR1759ES ES610
Prozessortyp: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+
Prozessorgeschwindigkeit: 2.2 GHz
Gesamtzahl der Kerne: 1
L2-Cache: 512 KB
CPU-Funktionen: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 HTT SSE3
Speicher: 1 GB
Busgeschwindigkeit: 200 MHz
Boot-ROM-Version: Hack.88Z.int.0sh.061193037 (Phoenix Technologies, LTD)

My mainboard is an MSI Amethyst M, a pretty cheap piece of hardware

1GB DDR 400 Ram
---------------------------------------
Hm, when i look at the number of my cores it states "1". Weird, shouldn't it say "2"? Is it because i cloned my old HDD to a new 500GB SATA HDD with the following bootloader options (might sound stupid but i can't say it often enough that i'm a ubernoob with Leopard and the whole OSX stuff *hehe*):

Please let me know if you need anything else. Thanks and cheers,
Tom

Usually the number of cores reported in System Profiler doesn't mean anything, unless you have "cpus=1" in your boot.plist. If you run Activity Monitor and see two CPU graphs moving, then you have two cores running. Although, my System Profiler is reporting both cores and I'm running the latest Netkas version of AppleSMBIOS. Maybe that could be why you're only seeing one? Anyway, that shouldn't be any reason for your system to act up. But actually, you may want to try that "cpus=1" flag instead of the "idlehalt=0". I've heard it has the same effect, but it probably reduces performance on your machine, since you'd only be running one core. It's worth a try. Certainly wont heat your CPU up like idlehalt does.