Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!gargoyle!chinet!henry
From: henry@chinet.chi.il.us (Henry C. Schmitt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Where does video on the Mac II get its memory?
Summary: IIci needs reboot
Keywords: Video Memory IIci
Message-ID: <1990Mar27.035008.2705@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 27 Mar 90 03:50:08 GMT
References: <1990Mar26.100104.552@eng.umd.edu> <367@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>
Reply-To: henry@chinet.chi.il.us (Henry C. Schmitt)
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 25

In article <367@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> dale@bcm.tmc.edu (Dale A. Samuelsen) writes:
>In article <1990Mar26.100104.552@eng.umd.edu> allon@eng.umd.edu (Allon 
>Stern) writes:
>> and that you can save memory by switching to 2-color mode.
>
>The answer is "It Depends".  If the Mac II is a Mac IIci, then the video 
>interface is built into the mother board and "borrows" some of the RAM to 
>use as the video memory.   In this case your friend is accurate in his 
>assertion that you can save RAM memory by switching to 2 color mode.
>
Please note that simply going to the Monitors cdev and changing to 2
colors (or greys) will _not_ save you any memory, the video memory
is allocated at startup and cannot be changed without rebooting.

The way to do this is 1) open the monitors cdev, 2) hold down the
option key and hit the options button (so much for intuitive), 3)
choose the maximum colors you want memory allocated for, 4) reboot.

I find many people have the mistaken idea that changing the number
of colors at the top level of the Monitors cdev will allocate or
deallocate memory for video.
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