I believe I am fairly computer litterate. After all, I speak C, and even C++ on occasion and my master’s project involves computer vision. And yet, there are times when I find myself swallowed in vortexes of mystery, bafflement, and, yes, frustration.
Lately, I’ve been having serious problems with a particular piece of software running on a mac OS 9. I have now come to accept that everyday, at least twice I’ll be faced with the following: “This program has unexpectedly quit: Error type 12”
There are times when just don’t understand my mac.
The GQ here are:
a) What’s the logic behind displaying cryptic error codes instead of descriptive messages?
The argument for the cryptic codes is that they’re either too general or too technical to be of help to most mortals but they may be of use to tech folk.
Where can you find out what these codes mean?
OK, if you promise not to let on, there’s this thing called the internet, it’s gonna be the next big thing for sure;)
I know, I know, it goes completely against the Mac’s “user friendly” spirit. But really, you’re not supposed to understand the error codes. At least I have yet to meet anyone who does.
There’s a book for the Mac with a “What do I do now?” title (sorry, I don’t remember it specifically) that had the best breakdown of the codes I’ve ever seen. It listed several pages’ worth of them and their descriptions. It was pre-OS 9, but I think most of the codes have stayed the same. (In case you can’t find it, IDG’s Mac Bible line of books mentions the error codes, and I imagine the Missing Manual series’s OS 9 book does it as well.)
IMO, you’re really not going to get ahead by learning what each code means. There kinda is a system to it, but it’s not the clearest, most easily understood thing. I have no idea if even Apple programmers were entirely clear on the numbering scheme.
You’re much better off blithely noting the error code and following the basic troubleshooting steps. Enough memory? Current version? Corrupted prefs file? Possible extension conflict? And so on.
The book Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters was a handy reference when I first started Mac support. I can’t ramble off what each code means, but since I’ve been doing this for a living for 5 years now, I get more information from what the machine was doing just before the error code happens, and trouble shoot from there. Knowing what the code means doesn’t help that much, and they are often wrong. The book has a nice list though, worth checking out.
