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From: jtw@lanl.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Help! I can't seem to run a program > 2meg in my 4meg Amiga
Message-ID: <12032@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 28-Jan-87 18:25:05 EST
Article-I.D.: lanl.12032
Posted: Wed Jan 28 18:25:05 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 30-Jan-87 05:49:40 EST
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 54

Could someone please explain why an AMIGA with a 4 megabyte memory expansion
will only run tasks that total to 2 megabytes or less???

Recently I added an AMERISTAR expansion bus with two 2 megabyte memory boards
and a hard disk.  I am running the new Amiga 1.2 operating system with the
Absoft Fortran compiler.  AmigaDos 1.2 auto configures memory, and
automatically sees the 4 megabytes.  I can easily copy 4 megabytes of files
into the memory without any problems.  It appears part of the operating system
sees the 4 megabytes, but part does not.  To be exact, the part of the
operating system dictating memory available for running processes, appears
to be seeing only 2 megabytes!

To try to understand what is happening, I wrote a simple 10 line fortran
program and tried some experiments.  I dimensioned an array of 500,000
and wrote into it, without any problem.  This required 2 megabytes.
If I added another array of 50,000 words, this crashed the operating
system.  Since 4 megabytes are available, I tried running two smaller
programs concurrently, each requiring 1.6 megabytes.  Individually they
run fine, but together they crash the machine.

Getting down to the Amiga operating system - AvailMem sees 4 megabytes of FAST
memory, but if I ask AllocMem to allocate any memory block greater than 2
megabytes it crashes the machine.

Granted this is not a reasonable action, but if I ask AmigaDos to set the stack
(with the STACK command) to any number greater than 2 megabytes, it refuses -
even when the machine is empty and 4 megabytes are present.

I have spoken with the Absoft Fortran people, and they see no problem running
programs greater than 2 megabytes.  I have spoken with the expansion bus vendor
and they do not understand why there should be a problem. My knowledge and
understanding of the Amiga hardware and software is limited, but my guess is
AmigaDos 1.2 has a BUG and is not allowing processes to use more than 2
megabytes of memory - total.

I called Amiga in Pa, and was told to call Marketing Link in Colorado.
Marketing Link, said the question was too technical, call the Amiga
engineers in Calif.  The secretary for Amiga in Calif told me to
call Amiga in Pa for technical support!  Where is the support???

I WOULD VERY MUCH APPRECIATE SOME HELP - PLEASE.


Thanks,

Jim T. West
Group X-6
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, New Mexico

Phone: 505-667-5615 (work)
       505-672-1592 (home)

Electronic Mail Address: JTW@LANL.ARPA