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From: kawakami@monsoon.Berkeley.EDU (John Kawakami)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: 1.44M 3.5 disks  //  floppies as swap space
Message-ID: <1990Sep10.105324.26957@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 10 Sep 90 10:53:24 GMT
References: <1990Jul31.165603.20869@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <1407@wet.UUCP>
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Reply-To: kawakami@monsoon.Berkeley.EDU (John Kawakami)
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In article <1407@wet.UUCP> nut@wet.UUCP (adam tilghman) writes:
>In article <1990Jul31.165603.20869@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> schultzd@kira.uucp (David Schultz) writes:
>>
>>2.)  Is there any program that allows you to use a floppy drive as
>>swap space to get more memory in an ST.  I realize this would be
>>painfully slow, but until I can afford more mem, it would have to do.
>>It would be infinitely more helpful on a nig hard drive.  (Set aside
>>an x meg partition on the hard drive and treat it as internal memory.
>>Virtual mem on the ST!!!)
>
>  If you are using just a plain-vanilla 68000 in your machine, this is
>completely impossible.  If you have installed a 68010 in your ST (I tried

Well, not practical, not nice, not useful, but definitely possible.  You
(the intrepid programmer) write a new malloc which returns pointers to
pointers: aka handles.  The pointer returned is a pointer into a table;
the table is made up of pointers to memory fragments.  Toss in some
swapping algorithms and you have a private VM system which can defrag
memory and do other neat stuff.  If you are the of the TOS-sux-so-I'll-
install-my-own-OS types, this would not be unfathomable.
Z
John Kawakami                  kawakami@ocf.berkeley.edu
                               ucbvax!ocf.berkeley.edu!kawakami
Amateur crank!                 My Atari Macks!