G'day from Oz, Chris Firstly, let me apologize for my abrupt posting on Saturday night (Oz time). No excuses.
I haven't had time to go over postings since then, and I've whacked this together off-line, so I hope I'm not covering ground explained since. You'll undoubtably know most of this, but here goes... Lets look at what happens in 9 (within my limited understanding). 1. Normally, as programs are opened, they are allocated the maximum amount of RAM that is set for them. If you want to load another program once memory is full, you are told so, and advised to close down programs. 2. With VN turned on, some program memory allocation is chosen, and written to disk (virtual memory). The new program is loaded, and RAM allocated. I have no idea of the algorithym used to determine what programs will be saved. 3. When you need to use one of the programs with the 'saved' memory, more swapping has to take place. This results in a considerable delay. 4. If you could allocate some RAM to a RAM disk, and then also find a way to make VM use that disk instead of the boot disk, then the following would take place. Lets use my 3 sticks of 256 meg as an example. a) We'll allocate 2 sticks (512 meg) as a RAM disk, and somehow allocate it to VM, with the memory panel set to an additional 512 meg. (VM would now show as a total of 256 + 512 = 768 meg) b) We load in, let's say, 4 programs, and they almost use all the physical 256 meg. c) We load in another program requiring a large allocation of Ram, so VM might have to clear perhaps 2 program allocations out of the 256 meg, and write them to the 512 meg. d) We can keep repeating c) until the VM RAM is full, then we'll get the 'Insufficient memory' message. e) Note though, that we have only been able to use 768 Meg in total, and we can't use additional disk space. f) Now, whenever we call up each program that resides in VM, the swapping still has to take place. Even though, in your scenario, the VM allocation resides on physical RAM, it can't be directly addressed, cause VM is only written to swap, not directly read. g) Thus, we have actually slowed things down, and we've restricted the amount of directly addressed RAM. If we simply leave things alone, we can fit the same amount of programs into direct RAM, and in addition we can still write as much as we want to allocate to the disk. Hope this helps Regards Santa And what, you ask, was the beginning of it all? And it is this...... Existence that multiplied itself For sheer delight of being And plunged with numberless trillions of forms So that it might find itself innumerably Sri Aurobindo -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
