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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!oster
From: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Resizing the System Heap
Keywords: heap system macsbug
Message-ID: <32961@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 3 Dec 89 03:17:32 GMT
References: <1195@kl-cs.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 22


You should not need to manually resize the system heap. There is a
mechanism, documented in the Startup Manager chapter of Inside Mac, Vol 5,
for attaching a 'size' resource to an INIT that will cause the system to
automatically grow the system heap.

Apple put this in so INITs that start big device drivers in the system
heap can get the system heap space without going through contortions at
run time.

It has a bug in it though: if this mechanism is used to make the system
heap be bigger than 1/2 the total RAM, the system heap will overflow into
the INIT time stack, and the mac will crash.

Ordinary mortals should never need to concern themselves with this level
of system booga-booga.

> The mac is a detour in the inevitable march of mediocre computers.
> drs@bnlux0.bnl.gov (David R. Stampf)
--- David Phillip Oster          -master of the ad hoc odd hack. 
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu 
Uucp: {uwvax,decvax}!ucbvax!oster%dewey.soe.berkeley.edu