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From: dafa@ihwpt.UUCP (David Fay)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: 1.5 Meg Upgrade from MacMemory
Message-ID: <501@ihwpt.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 7-Oct-85 17:46:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihwpt.501
Posted: Mon Oct  7 17:46:45 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Oct-85 06:10:36 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 60


	Until yesterday I intended to upgrade my Mac to 2 Meg with a Levco
kit. I could get a kit for about $450 from a local dealer. The memory
chips would cost about $100 for a total investment of $550.
	Now I think I have a better deal. The Max(TM) from MacMemory, Inc.
is a 1.5 Meg upgrade (add 1 Meg on a daughter board to your 512K). It has
several advantages over the Levco upgrade. First, it draws 1.3 watts
instead of Levco's 3 watts. While I know almost nothing about hardware,
knowledgeable friends tell me that when it comes to power consumption,
less is more. In particular, with this small power draw you don't
have to worry about whether your power supply will work (Levco
maintains a list of power supplies which won't handle its
upgrade). Also you don't need a fan. Second, the upgrade was
designed to work with the new megabit chips. It uses 18 pin
sockets instead of 16 pin and has additional address decoding.
When the megabit chips are available at reasonable prices (say in
a year) you will be able to replace the 256K chips with megabit chips
and have a 4 Meg Mac (actually 4.5 Meg but the Mac will only address
4 Meg). Third, if you are running a ramdisk in the upper 1 Meg of
memory it will not be destroyed by a reset. This means you won't have
to reload the ramdisk if you have to reset on a runaway program
(assuming the program doesn't write all over the ramdisk).
	There is one disadvantage also. Unlike Levco upgrades, The Max
does not have its own ROM. So screen memory sits at the top of 512K.
This means that you can use the extra memory for a 1 Meg RamDisk while
programs have 512K to execute in. While this is not as desireable as
the Levco solution, which relocates screen memory to the top of
physical memory, MacMemory says the new Apple ROMs will do this.
So when they come out, all 1.5 Megs will be continuous.
MacMemory does provide a ramdisk program that gives you an option
of using 512K for applications and 1 Meg for ramdisk or vice versa. So
if you want to run Switcher with 6 or 8 programs you can.
	But here is the clincher. Look at these prices for the kit:
	
			Quantity		Price
			   1			 $525
			  2-4			$367.50
		 	   5+			$341.25
		
The Max is more than $200 cheaper than Levco and gives you a path
to more memory if you need it.
	Does anyone have any experience with The Max upgrade? Does anyone
see anything wrong with the way they have designed it? Unless I hear
about something I missed, I'm taking my Mac to The Max.
	If anyone else is interested, here's where you can get more
information:
				MacMemory, Inc.
				473 Macara Avenue
				Sunnyvale, CA 94086
				(415) 964-4176


David Fay
ihnp4!ihexp!dafa
-- 
--------------------
David Fay
AT&T Bell Laboratories
Naperville, IL 60566
ihnp4!ihexp!dafa