freeman@spar.SPAR.SLB.COM (Jay Freeman) (03/30/88)
The other week I was running MPW 2.02 under Apple System 5.0 (Finder only, not Multifinder) on my Mac II, when the cursor changed to a tolerable line drawing of a bulldozer and a lot of disc activity began. This situation continued for a minute or so, whereupon the cursor returned to its usual arrow shape and MPW resumed normal operation. I have never seen the like before or since. It could have been a virus doing something wicked, but it has been long enough (several weeks, several hundred hours of active on-time) with no obvious evidence of disaster, that I doubt it. If I had to make a guess, I would say that either MPW or the Finder had decided to do a thorough heap-compaction and was writing out a large temporary file to disc as part of the process; the bulldozer cursor seems appropriate for pushing a big jumbled heap around, and duplicating the heap to disc is a fairly common trick in garbage-collection algorithms. However, I could not find any obvious reference to this behavior in any of my manuals. (On the other hand, considering the size of the MPW manuals and of _Inside_ _Macintosh_, I may well have missed something.) Does anyone either (a) recall seeing this happen or (b) know what was going on? -- Jay Freeman <canonical disclaimer -- this posting represents my personal opinions only>
freeman@spar.SPAR.SLB.COM (Jay Freeman) (04/05/88)
I shall reply to my own posting; today I got a nice E-mail note from someone at Apple: Yes, the "bulldozer cursor" is MPW's way of telling you that it has decided to garbage collect.
mystone@caen.engin.umich.edu (Dean Yu) (04/05/88)
In article <1210@spar.SPAR.SLB.COM>, freeman@spar.SPAR.SLB.COM (Jay Freeman) writes: > The other week I was running MPW 2.02 under Apple System 5.0 (Finder only, > not Multifinder) on my Mac II, when the cursor changed to a tolerable line > drawing of a bulldozer and a lot of disc activity began. This situation > continued for a minute or so, whereupon the cursor returned to its usual > arrow shape and MPW resumed normal operation. I have never seen the like > before or since. (Some text deleted) > Does anyone either (a) recall seeing this happen or (b) know what was going > on? I checked out the CURS resource for MPW, and the bulldozer IS there. So it's a built in function of MPW. What it is though... well, ya got me there... ================================================================================ Dean Yu | mystone@caen.engin.umich.edu | This space intentionally left blank "I'm too young to have an opinion..." | ================================================================================
rs4u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Richard Siegel) (04/08/88)
The bulldozer cursor is part of MPW's resources; I have noticed it in the MPW resources. However, I don't know under what circumstances it comes up. But it definitely is not a virus. -Rich
dan@Apple.COM (Dan Allen) (04/10/88)
We put the bulldozer cursor in to let the user know that the MPW Shell was doing garbage collection. Occasionally the Shell needs to collect unused blocks of memory and the like: when it does, you will see the bulldozer. Dan Allen Co-author of the MPW Shell
holland@mips.csc.ti.com (Fred Hollander) (04/13/88)
In article <46@spar.SPAR.SLB.COM> freeman@spar.UUCP (Jay Freeman) writes: > >I shall reply to my own posting; today I got a nice E-mail >note from someone at Apple: Yes, the "bulldozer cursor" is >MPW's way of telling you that it has decided to garbage >collect. I didn't think the 'GC' cursor in Allegro was adequate so I changed it to a garbage truck. I'd be happy to mail it to anyone who wants it. Fred Hollander Computer Science Center Texas Instruments, Inc. holland%ti-csl@csnet-rela The above statements are my own and not representative of Texas Instruments.