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So, if you’ve been keeping up, you’d know that I have a few unresolved issues with the ol’ HacBook. Other than the sleep/restart/shutdown issues, the system’s unstable when I try to use it like a big boy computer.

Although I’m a few months late (which, since I just started messing with the OSX86 two weeks ago, I think it’s OK), I finally decided to update to 10.5.5 and make sure I’ve got the latest kernel available. I figure it’s time for a status report.

My first attempt at installing the 10.5.5 Combo Update went awry when the system overheated during the installation. At least I figure it overheated, I was in the bathroom at the time. Hoping I didn’t hose my OS, I tried to reboot six different ways to no avail. I let out a louder-than-necessary ‘SON OF A BITCH!’ and removed my hard drive with the intent of formatting and starting over.

(This one gets kinda long, so more after the jump)

Oh, so that last sentence makes a little bit of sense – the SATA controller on my Gateway NX260X blows. Neither the Leopard Install DVD or Windows XP Installer will see it in boot-up. It became an issue with Windows XP due to my USB floppy drive going AWOL because I loaned it to my cousin; but that’s a whole other story. Needless to say, it’s kind of hard to install Leopard when the Install Disk doesn’t recognize your hard drive, so I’ve resorted to using some old Desktop my brother got rid of to perform the actual OS installation. So, when I need to reinstall OSX, I’ve got to physically remove the drive and pop it in to the desktop I keep under my TV.

Anyways, Instead of formatting the drive, I decided instead to just install over my previous Mac install, figuring if it worked I would at least be able to keep my Virtual Machine and all the files I’ve acquired. When the install finished, I threw the drive back in to the laptop and gave it a whirl. To my extreme delight, instead of the ‘Welcome’ OOBE I’ve become accustomed to, It simply prompted me for my password. I logged in, and there was my desktop, just as I had left it. Well, if I left it at a low resolution without it detecting any of my devices.

So, instead of going through the ‘post install’ steps I’ve developed to get the system right (I’ve installed leopard like a dozen times by now – the time I finally got it right, I decided to re-do it to make sure it wasn’t some fluke in the matrix and that I had everything I needed when the shit ever hit the fan), I decided to head straight for the 10.5.5 Combo Update posted by the zen master Mysticus C.

I don’t know exactly what’s changed in regards to my power management, but the laptop is running far cooler than it was under 10.5.2. Maybe the Installer installed an ACPI Kext that’s managed to get my rampant and unpredictable overheating under control, maybe the new 9.4.0 ModBin Kernel just handles processor resources better; I don’t know. However, I only know too well the placebo effect; the effect of thinking something is fixed because you want it to be fixed, not because it’s actually fixed. After a few unfortunate drop dead experiences with this thing, I’m kind of curious as to if it’s just gotten slightly better but still unstable, or if it’s actually running as its suppose to. So, i’ve spent most of the night stress testing it.

The First Stress Test I did was with SixtyForce. You see, after I got Quartz Extreme working in 10.5.2, one of the first things I did (after playing with the screen saver prefpane for like an hour) was play a little Mario 64; a game that I legally own and happen to have a rom of strictly for archival backup purposes.

As it turned out, by the time I was within diving range of my tenth star, it died on me. I found this kind of odd, since it doesn’t take all that much to run an N64 rom (if you have a 500MHz Pentium 3 and any kind of  3D Accelerator you’re  all set). So, naturally, I figured a good first step to seeing if the machine was stable was playing more Mario 64. I got up to about 17 Stars before I ultimately got bored and tried something else.

So, I decided to try a CPU Burn-In tool. So, I grabbed a copy of CPU Burn-In , which seems like it’s been around since I was a kid, and loaded it up in paralells. I gave it an hour, figuring if it can stand it for an hour it’s in all liklihood fine, and watched some TV on the iMac. About 15 minutes in, it died on me. No big deal, I figure. It’s sort of an unfair test. The tools designed to get desktop processors with two pound fans attached to massive heat syncs to melt down. The entire cooling system on this laptop is half the size of a pack of playing cards. Not a fair test.

So, I figure I’d give something else a shot… I’ve ran in to problems installing OS’ from Paralells from the optical drive. Stays cool when I do it from an ISO image, generates a shit ton of heat when I do it from the optical drive. So, I grab my Store Bought Windows Vista DVD and let it have at it. I thought I was in the clear, so much so that I started writing this article on the laptop about it’s success when it died on me on the last leg of the installation.

If you’ll notice in the menu bar, I’ve added Tempeture Monitor to my repeturare to keep track of the proccessor temp. It appears that normal operating tempature for this laptop is between 70-80 degrees celcus. Seems kind of high to me, according to some places I found on google, anything above 50 degrees is suicide, but that just doesn’t seem right to me.

The problem seems to come in to play when it gets in to the mid 90′s. Not just when it hits around 95, but when it hovers there for a few minutes. This makes sense, because 95 degrees is way to damn hot for a processor.

So, I’ve got some research to do. I think tommorow, I’m going to install Windows on a spare hard drive and run the same CPU Burn-in test I ran on the Mac and see how WIndows handles it. Try to narrow the problem down a little.
I still contend that it’s running a lot better now than before, but since I A) Don’t know why, or B) can really prove it, It seems that I should be able to at least reproduce these results in Windows if I want to settle with it on the Mac. It doesn’t make sense to use an unstable Mac OSX if I can use a stable Windows Vista.

It seems like, and I’m sure nobody’s going to bother reading this far in to this post, that the update – however it managed to do it – has been able to keep the system a good 5-10 degrees cooler; which might put it in line with Windows. Being that this is my father’s old laptop, I’m sure it’s done more processing in the past week than it’s done it’s entire life combined. So I figure if it’s a hardware issue – shit cooling fan, maybe needs some thermal greese, whatever, I might as well deal with it as a Mac. If not, then I need to do some serious work before I’ll be happy with using Leopard as my primary OS on this laptop.

More as it develops.

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