topic Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac in Installation & update

Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum iMac

drh64 — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:02:27 GMT

I have had this happen on two different IMacs and only when we run AC 11.

It seems to be triggered by Itunes running at the same time.

Has anyone else witnessed this before? Any suggestions?

http://www.connect-arch.com/graphics-problem/scatter.mov

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:23:30 GMT

Yes too often.

Didn't want to bring this post up from the grave but-.. your observations are correct.

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=17636&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=20

Read your logs, every app wether designed that way or not is multi threaded. Do ignore my recommendation for getting a new HDD and instead an SSD would be a wiser choice, so as for recommendations that may help resolve these issues replace your HDD with an SSD.

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=20882&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=10

Before you take my advice Google "Mac, Data loss" or something like that and see what you coma up with. Also note the dates of my posts and that of these "new" findings. I started experiencing these issues with a PB G4 OS X.3.9 and QT 7. and lost a lot.

There have been a couple of posts like this http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=18519 where the virtual memory seemed excessively high so I went looking to find out why. This is what I found. I rely on Apple's docs and not user posts with the exception of the numerous people experiencing similar issues. I believe that the AC community had bypassed many of these issues do to GS's wise choice to develop to the separate platforms and they write to the kernel bypassing this error.

Being that there is another underlying error at the lower level of the OS I don't believe the stability we have become accustomed to will return until it s fixed. Aside from losing about all of my most important files/data they can no longer be reproduced on a Mac.

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Karl Ottenstein — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:44:45 GMT

drh,

Please be cautious in taking any advice on these forums from Jeffrey. There is enough truth mixed with the misinformation in his posts, that I have not banned him yet, but I am waiting for an excuse.

Jeffrey: please either post accurate information or do not post and give the appearance of being an expert. Your lack of response to Ralph's request for backup to your opinions in the Developer forum is telling. You are wearing out the welcome mat here...

Karl

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:59:08 GMT

Karl wrote:
drh,

Please be cautious in taking any advice on these forums from Jeffrey. There is enough truth mixed with the misinformation in his posts, that I have not banned him yet, but I am waiting for an excuse.

Jeffrey: please either post accurate information or do not post and give the appearance of being an expert. Your lack of response to Ralph's request for backup to your opinions in the Developer forum is telling. You are wearing out the welcome mat here...

Karl

So what part is innacurate?

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 01:26:10 GMT

Jeffrey wrote:
Karl wrote:
drh,

Please be cautious in taking any advice on these forums from Jeffrey. There is enough truth mixed with the misinformation in his posts, that I have not banned him yet, but I am waiting for an excuse.

Jeffrey: please either post accurate information or do not post and give the appearance of being an expert. Your lack of response to Ralph's request for backup to your opinions in the Developer forum is telling. You are wearing out the welcome mat here...

Karl
So what part is innacurate?

Perhaps that your response has nothing to do with his display problem.

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

drh64 — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 01:31:26 GMT

yes, it definately is a DISPLAY problem. it seems to occur only when running Itunes.

I have a 24" Extreme with 4G of Ram.

Dan

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:34:35 GMT

So where's the rest of my post?

And I don't recall posting, so searched the developer forum and have not found any posts by me in this forum. So what post is Ralph looking for an answer to?

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:02:24 GMT

Matthew wrote:

Perhaps that your response has nothing to do with his display problem.

http://www.dropshots.com/macimages#date/2007-04-05/08:51:35

But then perhaps it does. Quartz Composer and iTunes were the only two apps open. As I had indicated in the past an OS void of these apps experience none of these types of issues. I have hundreds of images like this and can be quite certain that the original poster's luck cannot be quite as bad as mine that he would receive 2 machines with a defective displays that only act up running iTunes or everyone who owns this model would be experiencing the same.

Why would a DISPLAY problem only occur while running iTunes?

The OP can try to disable all internet communications in iTunes > Preferences but that does not seem to work any longer We do have similar machines and the graphics card is of the only relevance for the similarity as both our cards can power displays considerable larger than what we have connected. Why is it that those with "skookum" graphics cards on the Pros are those experiencing the most issues? The extreme option is equivalent to a MBP and has 256MB VRAM if I am not mistaken. He may even have one of the new upgradable slots.

I have been indicating I have had nothing but issues with my Macs and "displays" being one of the main ones.

I really didn't come here for a contest. No one answered this post after it had been viewed quite a few times so to indicate that he is correct in his observations and according to the thousands of Apple's documents I've read along with the logs on my machines experiencing the same that is the best educated advice I can give. It is more than anything I had gotten from Apple or elsewhere. His only other alternative is to send them back for a new display if it is a hardware problem.

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:40:25 GMT

Karl wrote:
drh,

Please be cautious in taking any advice on these forums from Jeffrey. There is enough truth mixed with the misinformation in his posts, that I have not banned him yet, but I am waiting for an excuse.

Jeffrey: please either post accurate information or do not post and give the appearance of being an expert. Your lack of response to Ralph's request for backup to your opinions in the Developer forum is telling. You are wearing out the welcome mat here...

Karl

Hi Karl,

Is this what you are looking for?

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/11/mac_software_bu.html

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Mac+Data+Loss&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Unfortunately my experience agrees with the first link as my issues began with Panther.7 and QT 6.5

As for what you read about the Seagates or Chinese drives you may want to head my warning as my first was the TravelStar, more recently a Hitachi in a Macbook 2,2, and out of curiousity I had someone open a 30 GB (that indicated 2 TB) Maxtor that was no longer working for them, it was connected via FW to a G5 D2.0 and it is a 3.5" with the same type of damage. The first one (TS) the disk was actually blued indicating excessive heat and arcing and it was obvious the head melted off (Dec 2004). the others are the same though not blued the arm is warped and scrapes midway and the other's head is cocked to the side and the solder was almost gone. The reason for the lack of drives from G4's and 5's is that many are beyond warranty and many don't make it to these recovery places as many won't spend/invest the incredible amount of money for the possibility the data will be recovered and like myself some are just assuming because of the age of the drive it was simply time for it to go.

As for my recommendations of the Solid State drives aside from the reasons above, this opinion comes from trying to understand why, when looking at the process manager of certain posts here the virtual memory seemed excessively high. Something I never paid attention to on my machine until reading some of these posts.

So If this satisfies you maybe you can ask the same of Thomas. I would like to know the specs of his machines and wether or not they are shared memory. If he uses HW acceleration etc. That should be enough to indicate what I have been saying about that as my observations of the shared vs dedicated VRAM? For me this comes from using a MacBook and a MacBook pro side by side. I don;t think that Apple would be telling their "Pro" customers that they wasted their money because a lesser machine will out perform it. It's not a good feeling when the machine that created something cannot read it or display it properly and a machine that should be coughing and sputtering isn't.

I am sorry I no longer have a need to participate in this forum for AC as I no longer use it for it's intended purpose but my lack of presence should not be a reason to automatically discredit anything I say especially in regards to the OS. I am also very sorry to "appear to be an expert", I can assure you I am not, as if I were I wouldn't have lost the most important project of my life and I would be telling you how to fix this error. The only reasonable explanation is a time formatting error as the symptoms are erratic and the core technologies do not come together properly and the myriad of issues trying to sync things.

What about this post?

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=20961

IMO Laszlo has nailed it on the head BUT it is because the refresh rate isn't synced properly. A timing issue and I don't thinks its GS's error. Look around at other SW forums as there are too many similar issues.. My question to this OP would be if he ever gets double file/folder images in the finder as these two types of symptoms are the same.

And this is why I think Laszlo is correct This come from the OpenGL Porgrming Guide fro OS X.

Synchronize with the Screen Refresh Rate
Tearing is a visual anomaly caused when part of the current frame overwrites previous frame data in the framebuffer before the current frame is fully rendered on the screen. Applications synchronize with the screen refresh rate (sometimes called VBL, vertical blank, or vsynch) to eliminate frame
tearing.

As for other iTunes/time formatting issues I would hope this may be evidence for some of a time formatting error. Note the length of the first tune and the total time at the bottom it doesn't even calculate this correctly but I suspect the duration at the bottom is correct but the first song I can assure you is 3.2 minutes and not 32 days long.

http://www.dropshots.com/macimages#date/2008-01-31/08:31:33

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

drh64 — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:49:14 GMT

ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro:

Chipset Model: ATI,RadeonHD2600
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x9583
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-B2250F-219
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.219
Displays:
iMac:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 1920 x 1200
Depth: 32-bit Color
Built-In: Yes
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Display Connector:
Status: No display connected

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Ralph Wessel — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:04:11 GMT

Jeffrey wrote:
I don't recall posting, so searched the developer forum and have not found any posts by me in this forum. So what post is Ralph looking for an answer to?

Jeffrey,

I asked you to substantiate your claims with links to qualified sources. And because everyone was becoming bored and irritated with the conversation (including me), you were asked to take up your complaints in a developer forum so others don't have to suffer through it. Will you please listen to others and stop posting this unsubstantiated "advice"?

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Ralph Wessel — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:38:29 GMT

drh64 wrote:
I have had this happen on two different IMacs and only when we run AC 11.

Weird graphics artifacts been noted by a number of people, not just ArchiCAD users. It isn't consistent, in the sense that some will encounter the problem, while others with an identical configuration aren't seeing it. There certainly isn't a problem running iTunes (and much more) in conjunction with ArchiCAD - I (and many others) do that all the time. Have you taken this up with Apple?

You might also find some advice on Apple's discussion forums - try this for a start: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1195969

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

drh64 — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:25:01 GMT

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

owen — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:49:04 GMT

Ralph wrote:
There certainly isn't a problem running iTunes (and much more) in conjunction with ArchiCAD - I (and many others) do that all the time.

There certainly isn't .. iTunes+AC+4-5 other apps running 6-7 hours a day, 5 days a week for the past 18 months and i have never seen this happen once on either of my MBPs.

Haven't seen this sort of thing on any of the 40 odd Mac Pros + G5s in the office either

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 02:29:44 GMT

It seems to mostly (if not exclusively) affect ATI cards. In some cases it is related to overheating.

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:32:05 GMT

drh64 wrote:

Have you taken this up with Apple?

I started my company in July 07. I purchased two IMacs (20"/24"EX)and one MacBook. I swear the 20" runs more stable than the 24" model. The 24" had the hard drive replaced after 4 weeks. It also has a tendency to simply crash and drop out of an app at any moment. It happens in about any application.

Taking it up with Apple is a good idea, yet, it is difficult to repeat the problem because it is so unpredictable.

Hi Dan,

You don't need to reproduce the problems. go to Application > Utilities > Console( Put it in your Doc while your there.) Click on the "Logs" button > and expand ~/Library/Logs and expand crash reporter. Read it and weep. I would like to see any ArchiCAD reports but they would be too long to copy and paste here.

You have a "Skookum" graphics card that makes the "Pro" machines like mine and many others akin to an etch a sketch with a cord. Is the 20" equipped w/ the same card? When they replaced the HDD was it an exact swap or did you get a larger/smaller slower/faster HDD? Do you know what brand HDD it was that failed? Did it start with a long progress balls in the finder and other apps? Very slow graphical response to your input? Did it get to the point of click, click, click, on start up?

I would like to continua a dialogue with you and feel that based upon Karl's statement about "enough truth with misinformation" you would understand the difference between misinformation and outdated information as seems to be the case here although in this particular topic I don't really see where anyone else gave any information other than they've never seen these symptoms and would not have any first hand knowledge to be able to help you. At this point I have very little if any respect for Ralph and do not feel the need to play to his superiority complex as he does not seem to provide much in useful information and if someone were to go back and read many of his post there is no reasoning to much of what he says either along with contradictory statements scattered about this is not an AC problem and is an OS problem.

What you have indicated about your experience should lend at least a little credibility of what I am saying at least to you. 4 weeks and a HDD fails? I do not rely on third party info too much except to see what issues people are having and to see if user error, outdated, underpowered hardware, is the cause, is there an actual solution or if one has to resort to a work around. A Bug in SW like AC is not a security issue though, it can be a major setback, but an error in the OS leads to hardware failures and sometimes even data loss.

So if you would like to continue this in a useful way instead of accepting what the others are saying and that iTunes has nothing to do with it please do so by posting the answers to the questions above as well as the following.

If the 20" has a different graphics card can you please post that as you did the last?

Do you use Bootcamp, and if you do does it indicate 256 MB VRAM or 512 MB VRAM for you GC spec?

As a side note. If you had read my recommendation about including a G4 into an office, for you I would make a new recommendation based upon new information. Everything my machine does (or actualy doesn't do) relies on software emulations. Apple calls these virtual machines. According to ATI and unless Apple has disable these functions you have hardware support for MPEG-2 MPEG-4 H,264 and a list of legacy and modern encoders and decoders. This may even be the reason why you have issues with iTunes as it has it's own SW to provide support for these technologies for the rest of us. Many encoders are only available with their pro software. One thing that I do find odd though is that ATI indicates 1920 x 1200 as the maximum physical display, unless that is for an externally connected one.

Another thing to ponder. Being that ATI's R&D appears to have engineered the technologies that even NVidea uses to keep their portable chip-sets cool if heat is the issue why? One of the reason could be misfiring timers. and the timers could be failing due to an error in a time-formatter somewhere.

Thanks

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Ralph Wessel — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:15:32 GMT

drh64 wrote:
I swear the 20" runs more stable than the 24" model. The 24" had the hard drive replaced after 4 weeks. It also has a tendency to simply crash and drop out of an app at any moment. It happens in about any application. Taking it up with Apple is a good idea, yet, it is difficult to repeat the problem because it is so unpredictable.

Sounds like the 24" iMac was a real lemon. Random crashes - and especially kernal panics or total lockups - are symptoms of RAM failure. The computer will still be covered by AppleCare, so I would suggest dropping the machine into Apple. If you have good support in your area, they will leave the machine running test apps like TechTool for an extended period, which almost always exposes lurking hardware problems.

Also, show them the movie clip of the graphics glitches. This kind of behaviour should never happen, and is clear evidence of a significant problem. Unfortunately this does rely on the strength of support in your area. Many Apple resellers will bend over backwards to sort out problems, but a few just don't want to know. Given that it's still under AppleCare, you may be able to choose who you take it to - try looking up local technical support on Apple's website. You ideally want an outlet with in-house techies.

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

drh64 — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:39:20 GMT

Results from a TechTool Scan overnight:

Surface Scan
Failed - 1 errors
The Surface Scan test will scan the disk for bad blocks.

Media defects cause this test to fail. You should consider backing up the device, reformatting the media, replacing the data, and then testing again.

Does this mean I should backup, reformat and reinstall EVERYTHING!!????

YIKES!

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Dwight — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:28:14 GMT

What does Disk Utility say?

Re: Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum Imac

Thomas Holm — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:05:46 GMT

Dwight wrote:
What does Disk Utility say?

Please note that for Disk Utility to check your internal hard disk, you have to start up the machine from the OSX install CD that you got with the machine and run Disk utility from that.