6 ms·

It's exactly how I remember the Macs my grade school was using back then. Click around a little bit, and boom, it is frozen. Do you wait? Do you force quit?

It's exactly how I remember the Macs my grade school was using back then. Click around a little bit, and boom, it is frozen. Do you wait? Do you force quit? The watch gives little feedback.

robotnikman 5y ago
Hah same. If it had kid pix it would be just like when I was a little kid.
- idreyn 5y ago
  Check the Graphics folder! (It crashed immediately for me in Firefox, though)
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    FWIW: The emulator dynamically loads chunks of the hard disk over the network, and will usually crash if that fails -- which can happen if the site is busy.
    - idreyn 5y ago
      I tried it again and was able to use it this time!
- perilunar 5y ago
  Kid Pix is available as a JS app: https://kidpix.app https://kidpix.app Was on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28073383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28073383
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gnicholas 5y ago
Set the system clock to display seconds and then you can tell when/how long it's been frozen.
- unpixer 5y ago
  Found another greybeard Mac user! I learned this trick under System 6 and used it religiously until just recently. (My clock keeps perfect time, but seconds don't update, under MATE Compiz. Go figure.)
- Cockbrand 5y ago
  Hehe, you bet my menu bar clock on macOS 12 still displays seconds, some 25+ years later :)
shadowgovt 5y ago
Cooperative multitasking architecture. If the frontmost thread doesn't `WaitNextEvent`, not even the OS gets a chance to update the UI (with some key exceptions... I think the mouse was interrupt-driven?). OS 8 started to add preemptive multitasking, but it wasn't mandatory and apps had to buy-in to it (so they didn't break backwards compatibility). Incidentally, games would squeeze a few more cycles out of the computer by using `getNextEvent` or accessing the input drivers directly, which wouldn't give other processes a chance to do things. This would lead to the hilarious consequence (especially when the networking era came along) that you'd play a game for a couple hours, quit it, and be greeted by several error dialogs as various processes that had been wanting to poll for timed events discovered they'd missed their polling windows because they essentially just came out of suspended animation. The need for always-available network access finally spelled out the death of the non-preemptive architecture; networking simply couldn't tolerate the client dropping out of the universe for ages at a time.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

It's exactly how I remember the Macs my grade school was using back then. Click around a little bit, and boom, it is frozen. Do you wait? Do you force quit? The watch gives little feedback.

robotnikman 5y ago

Hah same. If it had kid pix it would be just like when I was a little kid.

idreyn 5y ago
Check the Graphics folder! (It crashed immediately for me in Firefox, though)
- duskwuff 5y ago
  FWIW: The emulator dynamically loads chunks of the hard disk over the network, and will usually crash if that fails -- which can happen if the site is busy.
  - idreyn 5y ago
    I tried it again and was able to use it this time!
perilunar 5y ago
Kid Pix is available as a JS app: https://kidpix.app https://kidpix.app Was on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28073383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28073383

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gnicholas 5y ago

Set the system clock to display seconds and then you can tell when/how long it's been frozen.

unpixer 5y ago
Found another greybeard Mac user! I learned this trick under System 6 and used it religiously until just recently. (My clock keeps perfect time, but seconds don't update, under MATE Compiz. Go figure.)
Cockbrand 5y ago
Hehe, you bet my menu bar clock on macOS 12 still displays seconds, some 25+ years later :)

shadowgovt 5y ago

Cooperative multitasking architecture. If the frontmost thread doesn't `WaitNextEvent`, not even the OS gets a chance to update the UI (with some key exceptions... I think the mouse was interrupt-driven?). OS 8 started to add preemptive multitasking, but it wasn't mandatory and apps had to buy-in to it (so they didn't break backwards compatibility). Incidentally, games would squeeze a few more cycles out of the computer by using `getNextEvent` or accessing the input drivers directly, which wouldn't give other processes a chance to do things. This would lead to the hilarious consequence (especially when the networking era came along) that you'd play a game for a couple hours, quit it, and be greeted by several error dialogs as various processes that had been wanting to poll for timed events discovered they'd missed their polling windows because they essentially just came out of suspended animation. The need for always-available network access finally spelled out the death of the non-preemptive architecture; networking simply couldn't tolerate the client dropping out of the universe for ages at a time.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]