Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!FelineGrace
From: FelineGrace@cup.portal.com (Dana B Bourgeois)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Freeing memory on demand
Message-ID: <20831@cup.portal.com>
Date: 29 Jul 89 07:20:24 GMT
References: <1929.AA1929@geo-works> <20516@louie.udel.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 44

The FACC software mentioned is called the ASDG Low Memory Server.
It is *not* PD.  The software is available for non-commercial use
or for commercial use via a license.  The terms of the license are:

	1. credit is given to ASDG Corp. in a reasonable visible 
	   fashion within the documentation.
	2. licensee agrees to give ASDG a copy of the finished
	   product.

In addition a one time fee of no more than $50 may be required to
cover paperwork.  I guess it depends on demand whether ASDG will
charge for the server.

It works by monitoring a lowmemory structure during all waits.  This
structure is created by your program.  You also need a LMS message
port.

You create the structure and port.  You register the port with the 
server.  You set the lm_flag to lm_condition_ackknowledged and reset
it after every message from the LMS.  You don't reply the message
received.  

The reason for this non-standard way of sending messages is that
the LMS is assumed to be working while RAM is in short supply
and allocating a message structure and replying the message
may not work due to the RAM shortage.  The message structure is
therefore created ahead of time and only flags are checked.

When exiting, you de-register with the LMS, then close the LMS 
library.

All the above came from the LMS docs.  Send me email and I will
mail this stuff to you (if possible from Portal).  I used to
use the LMS option with FaccII but about half the time I got
crashes when memory got tight(I opened emacs until the server
went into action).  Without LMS the system thrashes but doesn't 
crash (well hardly ever if you are careful and close something
fairly big) so I stopped using it.  Now with expansion RAM it
is a moot point for me.

Dana

The above opinions in no way reflect the opinions of my employer.
Why should they?  They don't know I babble on UseNet.