[net.micro.mac] Odd Mac+ behavior

julian@riacs.ARPA (Julian E. Gomez) (09/26/86)

Here's a weird one that just started last night.  When I double click a
certain folder on my hard disk the system forgets to update the cursor
with the mouse position and i have to reboot the Mac. It still responds
to the mouse button, as clicking causes the finder to do its normal
highlighting.  It just won't move. The problem is not due to a dirty
mouse or the broken rollers inside, because everything is fine as long
as I don't double click that one folder, and the mouse works normally
in all other situations.

So that's weird.  What's even weirder is that if I "Open" or command-O
the folder then everything is fine.

I can't see any reason for double clicking a folder causing the system
to stop updating the cursor. Can anyone else?
-- 
"Be alert ... the world needs more lerts!"

	Julian "a tribble took it" Gomez
	(julian@icarus.riacs.edu) (...decvax!decwrl!julian@icarus.riacs.edu)

oster@lapis.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (09/26/86)

In article <328@hydra.riacs.ARPA> julian@riacs.ARPA (Julian E. Gomez) writes:
>Here's a weird one that just started last night.  When I double click a
>certain folder on my hard disk the system forgets to update the cursor

You should back up your files, and rebuild the desktop (reboot holding
down the option and clover keys.)  The Finder is a strange and wonderful
assembly language program.  If it follows a bad pointer, so that it
accesses a particular spot in the Macs hardware registers, mouse
interrupts will be disabled and you'll get the behavior you are
getting.

dlc@lanl.ARPA (Dale Carstensen) (09/27/86)

 julian@icarus.riacs.edu writes:
> Here's a weird one that just started last night.  When I double click a
> certain folder on my hard disk the system forgets to update the cursor
> with the mouse position and i have to reboot the Mac. It still responds
> to the mouse button, as clicking causes the finder to do its normal
> highlighting.  It just won't move.
This sounds like the common "mouse freeze."  Any memory reference to the I/O
area of memory (above 0x800000?), even though not exactly on an I/O address,
will reset the SCC that tracks the mouse X and Y movement, disabling the
interrupts.  Something in the "Desktop" file of your hard disk evidently
causes Finder to reference such an address, but fortunately not if you
use "Open" or Command-O.  You could rebuild the desktop by holding down
whatever keys cause rebuilding the desktop while mounting a volume.

It is advertised that the TMON debugger includes "mouse antifreeze" which
corrects this problem soon after it happens.  I have been able to write a
program that gets the mouse moving again, but the Imagewriter remains killed
off until the next reboot.  The program is semi-acceptable in the Aztec C
shell environment, but in the Finder environment, you can't execute a program
when the mouse won't move!!  What is needed is a "mouse thaw" FKEY, and one
that restores Imagewriter operation, at that.  Does anyone know the secret to
making it work?

  dlc@lanl.ARPA
  {cmcl2|ihnp4}!lanl!dlc.UUCP

julian@riacs.ARPA (Julian E. Gomez) (09/28/86)

Rebuilding the desktop does not fix the problem.

-- 
"If Chaos himself sat umpire, what better could he do?"

	Julian "a tribble took it" Gomez
	(julian@icarus.riacs.edu) (...decvax!decwrl!julian@icarus.riacs.edu)