Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!apple!nerm
From: nerm@Apple.COM (Dean Yu)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: System 7: Crash and Burn...
Message-ID: <53320@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 24 May 91 23:22:30 GMT
References: <13809.283cfa73@ecs.umass.edu>
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 38

In article <13809.283cfa73@ecs.umass.edu> farmer@ecs.umass.edu (THE MAD MUSKRAT) writes:
>Hi,
>
>More fun and excitement in the still buggy land of System 7.  I have happily 
>(with emphasis added) been using 7 for nearly a week now without a glitch 
>(other than installing the bugger).  Then suddenly some wierdness happened:
>
>I decided to open the color cdev (despite the fact that I was on a B&W SE/30, 
>just curious) and my hard drive started to run.  I ran for ~3 minutes before I
>hit the programmer's switch, at which point the drive light stayed on and I was 
>in macbug.  I tried a 'es' and an 'rs' to no avail...and finally hit the 
>reset switch.
>
>Now my mac rebooted, the happy mac came up, and then the drive stopped 
>running (before I even saw the welcome to macintosh).  Then just the blinking 
>question mark.  I restarted again, and same problem.  By this point you can 
>image my undergarments were tinted.....
>

  When you first use a control panel that will write something to the System
file, it tends to take a while.  This is because most of the resources in
the System are compressed, and the control panel is writing an uncompressed
resource in which causes some stuff to get shuffled around.
  The Color control panel used to bring up a dialog box saying that it was
saving your cool new colours to the System and would you please wait, but that
got taken out when we thought we got the delay down enough that a dialog was
deemed unnecessary.  (Did that make any sense?  It barely did to me...)
  So by restarting your computer, you pretty much hosed your System file.
And MacsBug's rs command doesn't work under 7.0 any more.  (At least the rs
in the last publicly release version of MacsBug...)
  In short, if anyone is playing with the control panels, and it seems to be
taking forever before you can do anything again, go grab a can of Pepsi,
Dew, whatever and hang loose for a little bit.

  -- Dean Yu
     Blue Meanie, Negative Ethnic Role Model, etc.
     Apple Compuer, Inc.
     blah blah blah blah...