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From: kris@tpki.toppoint.de (Kristian Koehntopp)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.amiga.programmer
Subject: Re: Virtual memory for Amiga!
Keywords: Virtual memory
Message-ID: <3033@tpki.toppoint.de>
Date: 27 Mar 91 23:05:47 GMT
References: <1004@cbmger.UUCP>
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Organization: Toppoint Mailbox e.V., Kiel, BRD
Lines: 50

peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) writes:
[ ... Availability of VM for Amiga ... ]
>Now this is April's issue, but this is a commercial ad. I didn't
>talk with them, but this sounds hot. I also don't know whether they
>developed this themselves or only distribute it. It may even be an
>imported product?

This is no april's joke at all, but instead a program smaller than 10 KB
plus two 250 byte utility programs. I have no idea, wether these are
depending on the evolution hardware.

I have been able to test the Evolution HDD Controller on an Amiga 2500 with
2 MB Fast Memory and Quantum 50 MB SCSI HDD. I was using the entire disk as
VM and tested several applications with this amount of memory.

Most memory-clocks fail, since they used signed shorts for displaying
kilobytes of memory and having an entire 50 MB HDD as VM gives you negative
numbers on these displays. Myclock had to be slightly patched and recompiled
for proper operation.

Installation was easy and straightforward. I chose the entire disk for VM
and the entire 2 MB as buffer pool for the VM. There is no use in having
pure, no-VM fast memory, as long as you don't have any realtime
applications. These better go in real RAM and be not paged out, to achieve
good and somewhat determined response times.

DPaint III worked good with this immense amount of mem, although allocating
memory for a large animated brush lasted nearly one minute. I suppose this
is because DPaint III also cleares this memory.

SnapShot Studio plus, Version 5, ran fine and was faster at allocating
memory for a 50 MB RAM animation. Of course the overall playback speed was
nearly the same as for a disk animation, but when it came to browsing
forward and backward through a small set of frames, response was real fast.

Several other applications also worked fine except for some minor problems
with short integers for free memory displays. These problems will not show
up, if you choose a sane amount of VM, instead going for manta-style amounts
("Ey, my A2500 now displays 500 MB of free ram at boot and I already have 3
resident copies of CED running then.").

Yours,
	Kristian

PS: Commo should really include this in the next KS release. Since the
    program is that small, it should not very difficult to handle.

Kristian Koehntopp, Harmsstrasse 98, 2300 Kiel, +49 431 676689
"Im uebrigen ist 'Z-NETZ-Sysops quaelen' auf Dauer weder lustig noch
 befriedigend." - sysop@infinet.zer.sub.org