Problems with Video Display on a new Aluminum iMac

[drh64]

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

[Anonymous]

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.

[Karl Ottenstein]

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

[Anonymous]

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?

[Anonymous]

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.

[drh64]

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

[Anonymous]

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?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[drh64]

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