gt0831c@prism.gatech.EDU (William Moss) (10/21/90)
The new system release (6.0.7) now uses phrases when it bombs instead of obscure numbers. You will be greeted with things like "Bus Error" and "Address Error" but nevermore will you see "ID = 31" It is a bit unfortunate that I have seen more than my share of this new "feature" lately... WiLLiam Moss
tj@kona.cs.ucla.edu (Tom Johnson) (10/24/90)
In article <15565@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt0831c@prism.gatech.EDU (William Moss) writes: > >The new system release (6.0.7) now uses phrases when it bombs >instead of obscure numbers. > >You will be greeted with things like "Bus Error" and "Address Error" >but nevermore will you see "ID = 31" Yeah, but unfortunately they made a few assumptions. For example the "Line 1111 Trap error" is reported as "Co-processor not installed". A few people are getting rather confused about this. I personally don't see that it makes much difference. If the program crashes, then it crashes. There isn't much you can do about it. And knowing that Word crashed losing several hour of work because of a "Bus Error" isn't any more comforting than knowing it crashed because of an ID=31 (or whatever). > >WiLLiam Moss Tom -- Tom Johnson UCLA Computer Science Department 3413 Boelter Hall, Los Angeles CA 90024 (213)825-2145 Internet: tj@cs.ucla.edu
kenh@hscfsas1.harvard.edu (Ken Hancock) (10/25/90)
In article <15565@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt0831c@prism.gatech.EDU (William Moss) writes: > >The new system release (6.0.7) now uses phrases when it bombs >instead of obscure numbers. > >You will be greeted with things like "Bus Error" and "Address Error" >but nevermore will you see "ID = 31" > This actually irritates me. It's fine to add the wording, that way computer "novices" have some way of describing the error to technical support. (Whatever that is...) But I still want my error codes! Ken -- Ken Hancock | INTERNET: kenh@hscfsas1.harvard.edu Isle Systems | Disclaimer: My opinions are mine, Macintosh Consulting | your opinions are yours. Simple, isn't it?
ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) (10/30/90)
In <40549@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, tj@cs.ucla.edu (Tom Johnson) says, "I personally don't see that [having the new messages for system crashes in System 6.0.7] makes much difference. If the program crashes, then it crashes." I have to agree with this one. As I keep explaining to users who ask me about them, those ID numbers stand for all sorts of arcane things that can go wrong, that you really don't want to know about, anyway. Even speaking as a programmer, I have found very few of those messages to be much use, diagnostically speaking. Most of the problems with my programs tend to happen from faulty logic making things run amuck until they fall over from random causes. The one exception to this has been the "stack overflow" error. When this happens, it usually means what it says, and there's usually a simple cause. Question: will the next release of MacsBug have all these nice descriptive messages added to it...? Lawrence D'Oliveiro fone: +64-71-562-889 Computer Services Dept fax: +64-71-384-066 University of Waikato electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz Hamilton, New Zealand 37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+13:00 You are in a maze of twisty little Word 4.0 dialog boxes, all different.
wilkins@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Mark Wilkins) (10/30/90)
In article <2115.272d985a@waikato.ac.nz> ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes: >Question: will the next release of MacsBug have all these >nice descriptive messages added to it...? They already do. All the 6.x releases have this feature. -- Mark Wilkins -- ******* "Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude!" ********** *-----------------------------------------------------------------------------* * Mark R. Wilkins wilkins@jarthur.claremont.edu {uunet}!jarthur!wilkins * ****** MARK.WILKINS on AppleLink ****** MWilkins on America Online ******
ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) (10/31/90)
In <9406@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>, wilkins@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Mark Wilkins) says that all the 6.x versions of MacsBug have descriptive messages for system errors. No they certainly do not! What MacsBug *does* have is its own handlers for the hardware-generated exceptions such as bus error, line-F exception and so on. It outputs its own descriptive messages for these. But its handler for calls to _SysError does little more than output the ID number for the rest. Lawrence D'Oliveiro fone: +64-71-562-889 Computer Services Dept fax: +64-71-384-066 University of Waikato electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz Hamilton, New Zealand 37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+13:00 To someone with a hammer and a screwdriver, every problem looks like a nail with threads.