Weird / Messed Up Timing

[bdonkey]

Hi all,

 

I just installed with JaS 10.4.7, and everything works on my system with one severe quirk: there seems to be something wrong with the internal "timers" or something. For example:

 

1) Logout timer / countdown is jumpy (suddenly pauses on a number, suddenly speeds through a bunch). This happens with a lot of countdowns in the system.

2) Graphics and animations (windows, dashboard animations, expose, etc.) They'll be very smooth (QE & CI enabled), and then suddenly stop... and then fast-forward, etc.

 

So essentially, my system is not slow or jerky or stressed... "time" just doens't flow very evenly.

 

Has anyone else had this problem?

 

Some (possibly) relevant specs:

JaS 10.4.7 with Combo Update / Intel SSE3 patches

Thinkpad Z61t

1.83Ghz Core Duo T2400

Intel GMA 950

Intel HD Audio

SATA hard drive

 

Thanks.

[Rammjet]

Many core duo machines have a "stutter" that can be solved by disabling one of the cores.

 

During boot, the screen turns black and then grey with a spinning icon. As soon as the screen turns black, start tapping the F8 key quickly and repeatedly until a command prompt appears. Type: cpus=1

 

If this fixes your problem, you can add it to your boot.plist file so you don't have to type it at every boot.

Boot into OSX.

 

Edit the boot.plist file at "/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist" and add the following to the Kernel Flags parameter:

 

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>cpus=1</string>

 

You can edit the file by dragging it to the Desktop and editing it with TextEdit, then dragging it back, answering the 2 resulting dialogs - Authenticate and yes to replace, then followed by using Disk Utility to repair permissions on the OSX partition.

 

Or you can do it via Terminal with this command:

sudo nano /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

[bdonkey]

Thanks, worked like a charm! I spent a lot of time searching the forums, but didn't know how to word the problem!

 

Now everything works except wifi and ACPI sleep, woo!

[thinkingman.com]

I was having the same problem - just follow the above steps if you're having this problem <b>even if your CPU only has one core</b>. Works on Pentium 4 (3.2GHz) - yeah, yeah I know, it was lying around ;-) and worked with my mobo.