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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 onboard only
Message-ID: <1990Mar28.062640.26535@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 28 Mar 90 06:26:40 GMT
References: <1990Mar26.100104.552@eng.umd.edu> <367@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <1990Mar27.035008.2705@chinet.chi.il.us> <22344@netnews.upenn.edu>
Reply-To: henry@chinet.chi.il.us (Henry C. Schmitt)
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 35

In article <22344@netnews.upenn.edu> meuchen@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (Paul Eric Menchen) writes:
>In article <1990Mar27.035008.2705@chinet.chi.il.us> henry@chinet.chi.il.us (Henry C. Schmitt) writes:
>>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.
>>>
>>> [Reference to Mac IIci on board video deleted by person replying
>>>  to my article.]
>...
>>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.
>...
>By changing to two bit mode you won't get any more memory for system
>system use from the video card, but you can save memory. Let me
>explain.
>
Yes, you are correct in almost all instances.  However the article I
was replying to was discussing the Mac IIci on board video.  You
mangaed to overlook this when reading the message, then cut it out
of your reply.

To summarize:  we are both correct.  With any MacII NuBus Video
card, changing the number of colors displayed does not change the
amount of memory available to programs and the system.  With the Mac
IIci built-in video (the only non-NuBus Mac II video that I'm aware
of) more memory can be made available to the system by appropriately
twiddling the Monitors cdev (see my previous message for details)
and rebooting.

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