Background

There have been many sweeping changes to the Macintosh architecture and the Mac OS since Signalyze was last updated in 1994. Signalyze continues to run well on the latest Macs running OS 9.1, but some issues have invariably cropped up.

This document details these issues, and gives appropriate solutions and work-arounds until these can be addressed in future upgrades.

Some incompatibilities are specific to a model of Macintosh, others are specific to certain OS versions; still others have only been seen on machines with certain PCI cards installed. The best way to verify that Signalyze will running correctly on your configuration is to download the 3.11 demo and give it a thorough test run.

Recovering from crashes (any application): Whenever your Macintosh crashes when running any application, you may be able to recover by Force Quitting the application: press the SHIFT-OPTION-COMMAND-ESC keys at the same time, then click on the Force Quit button. If you can successfully force quit whatever crashed (sometimes its a background application or a system extension), make sure you save your work and Restart your Macintosh as soon as possible to avoid further problems.

If you cannot Force Quit the crashed application, you may be able to force a Restart on Macs whose keyboard has a Power Key: Hold down CONTROL-COMMAND and then press the Power Key. The Mac should Restart itself. If the Mac does not have a Power Key, or if forcing a Restart does not work, the only alternative is to turn the Mac off and on again. Recommended: leave the power off for 30 seconds to clear all memory.

cutting/pasting in signal displays

Signalyze crashes when cutting and pasting between signals.

probable cause

• not enough signal and/or calculation memory in Signalyze

solutions:

• make sure your free signal memory (Apple menu>About Signalyze) is large enough for all the files you have open, the portion of the signal being cut, plus enough to store the new signal created by pasting the segment into an existing signal
• make sure your calculation memory (same place) has something available for smoothing the newly pasted portion of the signal

Note: far fewer crashes seem to occur in tight memory situations when copying & pasting rather than when cutting & pasting.

For help increasing your memory settings, see the ReadMe Signalyze 312 document, or the memory setup tutorial.

batch loading files

Trying to load signals into Signalyze by double-clicking on groups of them (batch-loading) results in Signalyze hanging, even with Signalyze-format or AIFF files.

cause

• incompatibilities between the OS (specifically, the Finder) and Signalyze

work-arounds

• open the signals one at a time (by using the File>Open Signal command, if necessary to avoid crashes)
• use the Open Signals AppleScript available on the downloads page

opening one file

Signalyze crashes when opening one file, no matter how it is opened.

possible causes

• 1. not enough signal memory in Signalyze
• 2. a bad signal file

solutions

• 1. For help with your Signalyze memory settings, see the ReadMe Signalyze document, or the memory setup tutorial
• 2. Make sure that the file is ok—can you open it with another application like SoundApp or FileConverter? If you cannot open it in any application, chances are the data is corrupt.

printing problems

Try to print using Signalyze's File>Print command produces one of the following symptoms:

• the printer spits out a blank page
• one page prints ok, but after that Signalyze gives an (often blank) error message
• nothing happens
• Signalyze can print to a local printer, but not to a networked printer
• the Mac crashes

cause

• incompatibilities between Signalyze and the hardware/software changes made in the PowerMacs

work-around:

1. First make sure your monitor is set to 256 colors, not to thousands. Having your monitor set to thousands will often cause Signalyze not to print.

2. Then do one of the following to create a printable image of the Signalyze window:

• save the Signalyze window using Signalyze's Save As Image... command
• use the Mac OS's screen capture (command-3 for a whole screen; command-4 for an area)
• use a 3rd-party screen capture utility to capture the screen, window or a region

3. Print the image with NIH Image or another dedicated imaging application.

This will not only avoid Signalyze's lack of support for printing under current system versions, but will also provide substantially faster printing even on machines where Signalyze will print just fine. (Signalyze is first and foremost a signal analysis program.)

Highly recommended: Take a look at the 3D spectrographic plots made with NIH Image in Tutorial 8: Advanced Operation of the Signalyze Guided Tour document, under File formats>Graphic files.

saving as a Snd Resource

Signals cannot be save as a sound (snd) resource using the File>Save As Snd Resource command.

cause

incompatibilities with changes to the OS Finder under OS 8 & 9

work-around

You can easily convert saved AIFF files into System 7 Snd resources or suitcases by using the freeware SoundAppª by Norman Franke or a similar program. SoundAppª is available at the SoundAppª home page:

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~franke/SoundApp/

If you have signals saved in the Signalyze format you wish to convert, you can first convert a folder full of them at a time using the FileConverterª utility available at the Signalyze Site:

http://www.signalyze.com/downloads/

Besides converting folders of files between many file formats, SoundAppª has the additional benefit of letting you listen to signals via drop-and-drag (System 7 and above). It is well worth having on oneÕs machine for general purposes.

Find in Signal function

On some machines when searching in a regular signal displays (but not in pitch displays), the Edit>Find in SignalÉ dialog displays obviously incorrect numeric values in the maximum and minimum fields.

cause

• Changes in how file information is handled in OS 8; seems to have been addressed in OS 9.

work-around

• Visually inspect the signal for maximum and minimum values.

screen display problems

• the Signalyze screen disappears in chunks
• there are bands of garbage running across the top of the signal tracks
• Signalyze crashes when changing monitor bit-depth from 256 colors to thousands under OS 8 and 9

(These occur with many older applications under OS 8.5 and up.)

cause

• Incompatibilities between Signalyze and the video display on newer Macs

work-around

• switch resolutions to 256 colors or grays before you start up Signalyze

If you forget and start up Signalyze before switching, Quit Signalyze, switch resolutions, and then Restart Signalyze--switching resolutions while Signalyze is running can result in a crash on newer machines.

Note: a thin line of ÔgarbageÕ (video noise) across the top of the signal display track may still remain on some systems.

window positioning problems

• dialog windows canÕt be moved when running OS 9.0.4 from an internal, PCI-card connected ATA hard disk; dialog windows are locked in place (usually toward the top center of the main window)

cause

• incompatibilities with the OS 9.0.4 window control routines when running from a PCI-card connected hard disk

work-around

• Start up from your normal SCSI hard disk when working with Signalyze.