iMac Performance

citytrip

citytrip

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I have my old iMac with Os9.2.1 standing here as a secondary computer, but performance is becoming a real problem. I cleaned up the harddisk so there is 10 gb (from 30) free again.
But...
Indexing doesn't work anymore because it takes too much disk space.
Sometimes even opening the preference panels becomes too hard a job for the poor thing.
Any advice would be nice.

I' m not ready yet to dump the little one..
 
First off, I would recommend updating to OS 9.2.2 if that's an option. It's a free download from Apple's site.

Without seeing what extensions and programs you've got loaded as well as assessing the operating system's "health," it's tough to say what may be bogging it down. OS 9 does run out of memory sometimes (it becomes severely "frangmented" -- which is why sometimes your free memory and used memory don't always add up to the total amount of memory), and requires rebooting occasionally.

How many programs are open and running, and how much free memory is the system showing during these slow times?
 
I do run Diskwarrior on it to defragment from time to time.
Last time was one week ago.

I happen to get "out of memory"-messages, when I open a preference panel while only outlook and the finder are open. ?? Free memory at that point was 8.24 GB.
Seems like I have a problem..
 
It sounds like you simply may have a lack of memory (did you mean 8.24 MB?). If you're frequently seeing these "out of memory" errors, then it may be time to bump that iMac up in terms of RAM. That model of iMac can support up to 1,024MB (1GB) of ram in two 512MB DIMMs:

http://lowendmac.com/imacs/2001-500.html

8MB is not nearly enough free memory to keep on hand. If at all possible, try turning on "Virtual Memory" in the "Memory" control panel, and set it to be 1MB larger than your physically installed memory (so, for now, set it at 129MB). Your machine may run ever so slightly slower, but it will help in terms of memory management. You'll still need to restart occasionally to free up memory, but not nearly as often as now.
 
No, I meant 8.25 GB free memory on the hard disk.
That's why I believe it's weird when I defragmented earlier...
It "should" act fine, (even with its 128 MB ram) to keep it as a scrapbook and management of old datafiles.
No money for memory bumping, I just bought myself a new G5 2.3 ghz which runs Really Nice, but I would like to use the G3 for some classic stuff and old perference files.

Probably I'll have to try cleaning every program of data which is out of use.
(Help,Where do I start ? Some caches where I do not know off ??)
Thanks for the fast advice, Diablo. I appreciate it...
 
Ah, I see... I would still recommend turning on virtual memory, though, as it can help with the "out of memory" errors.

What do you have on that drive? Any old applications you can get rid of? What about in the way of documents? It's hard to believe that system files are the reason there's so little room left -- they wouldn't amount to a few gigs at the most.

I'll poke through some of my old OS 9 stuff and see what comes up -- I may have a utility around here I can recommend for cleaning up a drive...
 
If you have 8+GB free, indexing shouldn't be a problem. Really, nothing should be a problem. 8GB is an insane amount of free disk space for OS 9. (I usually have less than 500MB free on my 9 systems, and it causes no problems.) "Out of memory" messages refer to RAM, not disk space.

128MB of RAM is fine for OS 9, but I would also recommend turning on Virtual Memory.

You might also want to tweak the memory settings of your various applications. Get Info on the applications in the Finder and make the "preferred size" higher or lower as you see fit. It's possible you have some set too high, and they're starving the rest of the system if your RAM. Or it's possible you have some apps' set too low, which would cause them (but not other apps) to report "out of memory" errors.
 
Hi Mikuro,

I'm juggling a bit with application memory here. A good reminder from you.. I'll try that..
I could work with 1.5 gig free, but less became a problem..
Especially when I bought myself a good digital camera, so that's the point where the system got overloaded. Since I'm doing my photo-editing on the G5 now and after freeing up some disk space, I expected the G3 to work properly again for smaller tasks. VM is running again, and I'm checking out the preferred sizes for apps. Let's see what happens in the next few days.

Thanks
 
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