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schalliol · May 19, 2006, 01:27 PM

I installed Cee Pee You, which lets me see the percent utilization on my processor's cores. I find that frequently doing even relatively mundane tasks on this 2.16GHz 2GB RAM machine that I get a decent amount of spinning "beach ball" and just general unresponsiveness. This isn't anything new as far as OS X is concerned (happens on all machines I've seen), but what's going on in the Mac OS that is taking so long, yet the full CPU isn't being used (or even much at all?). Somehting certainly is a bottleneck here, but I'm not sure what it could be. Thoughts?

Millennium · May 19, 2006, 01:38 PM

When the SPROD (SPinning Rainbow of Despair) comes up, it usually means that the system is waiting for some form of I/O to respond. Nowadays that usually means that it's trying to get something off of the network, but it can happen with disk access too sometimes).

What sorts of tasks are you usually doing when the SPROD comes up?

ghporter · May 19, 2006, 01:40 PM

Mil, you need to copyright that term! "Beachball" just doesn't express the angst that comes with this item.

Thinine · May 19, 2006, 01:44 PM

Install MenuMeters and activate the memory module and set it to show VM I/O. You'll probably see a spike in the VM meter when the beachball comes up. That means you need more RAM.

SMacTech · May 19, 2006, 03:36 PM

How much more RAM does he need beyond 2GB ?

I have 1.5GB and hardly ever see the SBOD on a dual 867 G4.

schalliol · May 19, 2006, 03:45 PM

Well, I guess this isn't only the SBOD, but just things not executing as fast I as I would expect. As an example, why when I launch Photoshop would I only be using 40-50% of the CPU. Shoudln't it try to do whatever it is doing as fast as possible? I don't think either that the disk is just the bottle neck.

Catfish_Man · May 19, 2006, 04:05 PM

Originally Posted by schalliol

Well, I guess this isn't only the SBOD, but just things not executing as fast I as I would expect. As an example, why when I launch Photoshop would I only be using 40-50% of the CPU. Shoudln't it try to do whatever it is doing as fast as possible? I don't think either that the disk is just the bottle neck.

The disk is almost certainly the bottleneck when launching any application.

TETENAL · May 19, 2006, 08:55 PM

Originally Posted by Millennium

SPROD (SPinning Rainbow of Despair)

I think the official term for that thing is Spinning Pizza of Death (SPOD).

TheoCryst · May 20, 2006, 06:53 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

I think the official term for that thing is Spinning Pizza of Death (SPOD).

I always thought it was SBOD (Spinning Beachball Of Death).

Chuckit · May 20, 2006, 06:58 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

I think the official term for that thing is Spinning Pizza of Death (SPOD).

I thought "SPOD" meant "Spinning Pinwheel of Death."

Simon · May 21, 2006, 02:40 AM

It certainly looks more like a beach ball than a pizza to me. Unless I'd be wasted on LSD I'd never see a pizza in that rainbow colored thingy.

blackbird_1.0 · May 21, 2006, 04:10 AM

Originally Posted by TheoCryst

I always thought it was SBOD (Spinning Beachball Of Death).

Yep. That's what I call it.

Big Mac · May 21, 2006, 06:37 AM

As do I. . .

kick52 · May 21, 2006, 08:19 AM

get onyx ( http://www.titanium.free.fr/ ) and make it exectute all maintenance and cleaning commands. that should help. i dont get that much SPROD with my G4/400 sawtooth. only on certain apps when they are doing alot.

Mithras · May 21, 2006, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by schalliol

Well, I guess this isn't only the SBOD, but just things not executing as fast I as I would expect. As an example, why when I launch Photoshop would I only be using 40-50% of the CPU. Shoudln't it try to do whatever it is doing as fast as possible? I don't think either that the disk is just the bottle neck.

Of course, Photoshop is running under Rosetta, so perhaps it's waiting on things other than just CPU, e.g. doing funny things with cached bits of translated PowerPC code, etc.

Gee4orce · May 21, 2006, 11:55 AM

how much free disk space do you have ? If you are low on disk space then you will start to get real problems as the Mac can't free up enough space to use for it's virtual memory. I always try and keep my disks under 85% full...

Cadaver · May 22, 2006, 11:38 PM

Originally Posted by schalliol

I installed Cee Pee You, which lets me see the percent utilization on my processor's cores. I find that frequently doing even relatively mundane tasks on this 2.16GHz 2GB RAM machine that I get a decent amount of spinning "beach ball" and just general unresponsiveness. This isn't anything new as far as OS X is concerned (happens on all machines I've seen), but what's going on in the Mac OS that is taking so long, yet the full CPU isn't being used (or even much at all?). Somehting certainly is a bottleneck here, but I'm not sure what it could be. Thoughts?

Its too bad that this is happening to you. I don't have this problem, and I've got essentially the same machine as you (2.16GHz, 2GB RAM, 7200 RPM).
My machine idles at like 2% CPU max. Perhaps you've got a background app installed that is cycle-sucking™.

larrinski · May 23, 2006, 12:43 AM

I get the spinning beach ball quite often on my ibook G4, but the behavior of mine has never been explained. When I log into another user and the beach ball starts spinning, it abruptly stops spinning and is just a beachball of death. The only way to get rid of it, is to go into a program like Safari and move the cursor over a link, that would change it to the hand. I seems to reset the cursor. It does it on admin and standard users.

ghporter · May 23, 2006, 08:13 AM

larrinski, you're seeing a bit of a glitch in the OS. It leaves the wrong image as the cursor and you "fix" it by giving it a prompt (hovering over a link) to change to something else. I'll bet you can use the non-spinning beachball cursor just like a pointer (though it's probably hard to figure out exactly what you're pointing at).

larrinski · May 23, 2006, 10:07 AM

That is right. I can use is as a cursor. Kind of odd... Thanks for the answer.