I should point out that if people can document crashs (in some 
repeatable fashion> I'm quite willing to fix any bugs that cause the 
mac VM to crash. The problem VM in question was 3.O.8MT. That version 
contained a serious bug that caused VM failures, which was fixed in 
3.O.9. I'll point out some other key things looked at in versions 
leading upto 3.O.18 in a bit

Note in general running Squeak low on memory can cause lockup, 
resetting the image to say 4OMB seems to make things much less likely 
to lockup. In reality this is more of an issue with how Squeak 
handles low memory situations. Also usage of the MPEG Plugin does 
require resetting the extra memory cushion <Smalltalk extraVMMemory: 
extraBytesToReserve>, add say another 1000000. Although 3.0.8 was 
used, like any software one needs to check to see what the current 
version is, because Squeak, like other software evolves, bugs are 
fixed,  hopefully in a timely manner, and one doubts anyone has a 
current version, well some do. But not 3.0.20 <yet...>

  v3.0.9 at change set #3776, Boston Snow storm build.

1) A number of changes were made to the interpreter:
	c) Fix problem with GC and class reshaping
Under the right conditions changing a class definition could cause a crash.

3) sqMacWindow.c  we added some logic to do the delay for 
primitiveRelinquishProcessor, but found it had an large effect on a 
freecell benchmark. I suspect on a Morpic step wait there is nothing 
to do so primitiveRelinquishProcessor gets called which then affects 
response time. So for now we revert to the 3.0.11 behavior, good 
performance and 100% CPU usage!

<Sigh this, makes your powerbook very HOT, squeak is fast but HOT>

4) Added logic to flush volume on a flush file to ensure file and 
control blocks are flushed.
<Be way more paraniod >

5) For the Carbon VM we increase nextevent wait time if we get 
sufficent idle time. This should reduce CPU usage under OS-X
<This makes your mac cooler when running the carbon VM of 3.O.18 under OS-X>
-- 
--
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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
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