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Hibernate Mac OS 9?

AndiS

Well-known member
Yes - even Mac OS 8.6 that came with the first Blueberry iBook was able to hibernate.

This is "Suspend to RAM" of course. If you're talking about "Supdend to disk" then I cannot remember if this was possible.

 

jeremywork

Well-known member
"Hibernate" in the windows world meant suspending memory contents to disk and powering the machine completely down. Apple has always taken a more fluid approach of copying memory contents to disk, but leaving power on for the fastest wake time (unless the power source is lost, in which case the copy on the disk is used to restore the session instead.) In OS X this is enabled by default on portables- it can be configured using pmset in the terminal.

On my Pismo G3 running 9.2.2, the 'Energy Saver' control panel contains a section for 'Sleep Options' in the Advanced Settings tab. There's a greyed out box there called 'Preserve memory contents on sleep.' which I presume would enable Apple's style of hibernation in OS 9. Perhaps the Pismo does not support this feature in hardware, so I'll need to check my TiBook when I get back to town.

FWIW, my 5500 and TAM do not present this option at all in their Energy Saver control panels under 9.1. This could be because they're old-world models with less sophisticated power management, because they're desktop machines, or both. More data needed. 

 

AndiS

Well-known member
On my Pismo G3 running 9.2.2, the 'Energy Saver' control panel contains a section for 'Sleep Options' in the Advanced Settings tab.
Just checked on a 2003 G4 MDD and it's the same. Since this is the last OS9 Machine, maybe they did not implement the Suspend to disk feature at all? Or it's because this is a Desktop with no danger of a battery running out of power while the system is seeping.

 

NJRoadfan

Well-known member
Apple didn't support any sort of Suspend-To-Disk until OS X 10.4. My Powerbook G4 supported it, but it really was an emergency feature called "Safe Sleep" (it wouldn't actually write contents to disk unless the battery was going dead).

http://web.archive.org/web/20060101040639/www.andrewescobar.com/archive/2005/11/11/how-to-safe-sleep-your-mac/

The comments above do note that classic MacOS had the feature on some iBooks and Powerbooks, but it was removed with the release of 9.0.4. I suspect the function was troublesome enough that Apple killed it off.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070819171424/http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=59016

 

dan.dem

Well-known member
Hi @jamie marchant!

There WAS an option of "Preserve memory contents on sleep" (not sure the exact wording was used, but it clearly means "suspend to disk") at least in the Mac OS 9.0(.0) version that came with 1st generation clamshell iBooks. I remember that I had read a warning that it may lead to crashes if you were low on disk- or RAM-space (cannot remember correctly). While I had (and still have) the said iBook, I never tried it out. Maybe I should.

I found a report in TidBits of the year 2000 ( https://tidbits.com/2000/04/10/apple-releases-mac-os-9-0-4-update-2/ ) reading:

Mac OS 9.0.4 does not address the data corruption problem affecting iBook and PowerBook (FireWire) systems using the "preserve memory contents on sleep" option in the Energy Saver control panel; like Apple’s Sleep Memory Extension, Mac OS 9.0.4 merely blocks access to the feature.



 

dan.dem

Well-known member
Seems like the 'Books had difficulties awakening. MacWorld in the year 2000 ( https://www.macworld.com/article/1014038/streetsmarts.html ) mentions a work around (see boldface in text):

"Selecting Preserve Memory Content On Sleep in the Energy Saver control panel should, in theory, help ensure that your work will still be there when your iBook next awakens. However, you might not be able to get your iBook to stop snoring. If this happens, restart the iBook and hold down the escape key until you see the Happy Mac icon [my emphasis, d.d]. This procedure tells the iBook to bypass any corrupted file that might be keeping your iBook from booting correctly."


The article goes on to explain that this feature was meant to enable a battery swap without completely switching off the iBook / PowerBook.

 
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