wilson@csli.Stanford.EDU (Nathan Wilson) (01/16/91)
I recently noticed that the Finder was behaving a bit strangely on my IIci. In particular, when I opened a folder the expanding rectangle graphics were noticeably slower and jerkier than I remembered. I did a little more careful observing and I noticed that drawing windows and menus was also slower than I remembered. I had recently been messing around with various inits and new software so I rebooted from a floppy and the above functions all sped up. I guessed that the problem was some init interaction so I started the great init search. To make a long story short I finally narrowed it down to a combination of the init Responder and the background pattern! Its very hard to tell exactly, but it appears to be the case that the darker the background pattern, the slower the graphics. It isn't at all noticeable until you are within about four pixels from a totally black background pattern. I have since figured out that it has to do with drawing vertical lines in particular on a dark background. The minimal configuration I've found that causes the problem is: Hardware: MacIIci 8megs of memory (80ns page-mumble, anyway the right stuff for a IIci) monochrome Radius Two Page Display 80meg Quantum hard disk. (whether or not I'm connected to the LocalTalk network makes no difference.) Booted from a 800k floppy with: System 6.0.5 (with the background pattern set to solid black) Finder 6.1.5 General 3.3.3 Responder 1.1.1 All of the software is directly from the System 6.0.5 software release that came with the IIci. The software release has been locked since I got the machine and I locked the floppy after copying the software onto it. All of the files on the floppy are the same size as on the release. I have not been able to repeat the effect on any other system. The systems I've trying are 1 SE/30 with both 6.0.5 and 6.0.7, 2 IIcx's with both 6.0.5 and 6.0.7, and a dealers IIci with 6.0.5 and some sort of color monitor set to black and white. The problem on my machine persists if I switch to system 6.0.7 and a complete swap of all the monitor hardware. The possiblities I can think of that I haven't tested are: - something bogus in the Radius display firmware. - some weird interaction between the Radius hardware and the IIci, maybe having to do with the memory speed. - using 6.0.7 on a IIci has some very persistent side effect where persistent means lasts through shutdowns and PRAM blasts from the Control Panel. - using Retrospect has some very persistent side effect. I've been recently trying to get Retrospect Remote to do backups to a SCSI Exabyte tape drive. I've had various problems with this and it is possible that something weird happened to the SCSI port. - 1 bits are heavier than 0 bits and my IIci is a bit wimpy (as it were) and can't deal with Responder and heavy bits at the same time. (-: (-: (-: Can anyone out there shed any light on this problem? The work around is obvious. Keep the background bright. But I'd like to reinstall my background screen which is almost entirely black. Nathan Wilson Teleos Research nathan@teleos.com