Victoria, I have 48MB in the 5300ce and 40MB in the 5300cs. OS 8.6 is supposed to require 32MB, but it can run in less. Sure, that doesn't give me a whole lot of space left for apps, but it's enough to do what I do on the 5300. When I'm seriously pressed for space, I _might_ turn on RAM Doubler 9's paging feature.
Dan K wrote: >If you have OS 9.1 available, why not try that? ;-) [rant mode on] I'm not sure you were talk to me, but as for why I don't run OS 9... OS 9 without VM is a pooch and a RAM hog. And let me be straight - I HATE Virtual Memory with a PASSION. It thrashes the hard drive and quickly fragments the damn thing, causing the whole system to slow up while the drive head accesses random points on the hard drive to read paged memory back in or write portions of memory back to the disk... Sheesh. VM is really only fast (and I use that word loosely) when used immediately after a disk optimization. Honestly, I've never understood why anyone in their right mind would run VM on a PowerBook. I know many of you do just this, but I just can't stand it. Firstly, the disks are slow - 5400rpm AT BEST - so the responsiveness drops, especially during RAM intensive processes or when there is little RAM available. Secondly, most PowerBooks have slow system components, especially the 5300 and 1400. A 33MHz bus doesn't make for good data transfer rates, especially when it is being constantly saturated by data going back and forth between the RAM, CPU, and disk. This is especially true for the cache-less 5300 and 1400/117. Thirdly, running your disk all the time while on battery can potentially seriously decrease your up time. Spinning a hard disk all the time while on battery sucks power. Some people say they don't notice a difference between run times, but I DO. This is why many people (myself included) also advocate creating a RAM disk for booting when you want serious run times on your PowerBook. Back in the day, my Wallstreet only had 64MB of RAM. I was running OS 9 w/ VM turned on with one of the fastest powerbooks yet made. I hated it. When I upgraded to 96MB and turned off VM, it was amazing. Night and Day, really. Now, with 192MB, the Wallstreet is sometimes a little pinched, but runs fantastically. Let's face it, NOTHING beats real RAM. Fortunately, I don't have any real need to run systems that are beyond the reasonable performance expectations I have for my machines. For instance, I have no real need to run OS 9 on my 5300, so I don't. Similarly, I don't run OS X on my Wallstreet or my beige G3, even though they _can_ run the OS. If I had a full 64MB of RAM on the 5300, I might consider upgrading to OS 9, but I still wouldn't use VM... Still, if you HAVE to run VM, then who am I to tell you not to do something you have to do. If you really absolutely have to use VM, I'd first suggest getting a flash card or ATA storage card for the PC card slot (not that its faster, but at least you aren't thrashing your disk). I wonder, does anyone know what sort of impact that this would have on your battery time? I'm curious about the power requirements of such a setup.... [/rant] >I'm running 9.1 on my PPC 540Cs (pretty much the same as a 5300) with >40MBs ram and it runs fast and stable. I've got VM set to around 64MBs >and 9.1 uses about 15MBs or so. Dan, you said you got OS 9 on a PowerPC upgraded 540c? Damn! I thought that the max was 8.6 for these machines, and even then you had to do some fancy footwork to get it installed. For my academic and intellectual curiosity, how did you manage that? Peace, Drew -- <http://homepage.mac.com/alk/> "There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are `Why are people born?' `Why do they die?' `Why do they spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?'" -- Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." -- PowerBooks is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PowerBooks list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/powerbooks.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/powerbooks%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
