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From: walton@tybalt.caltech.edu (Steve Walton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Memory loss problem
Message-ID: <3121@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Tue, 30-Jun-87 12:52:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.3121
Posted: Tue Jun 30 12:52:32 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Jul-87 05:37:31 EDT
Sender: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu
Reply-To: walton@tybalt.caltech.edu (Steve Walton)
Organization: Calfornia Institute of Technology
Lines: 20
Summary: Memory disappears mysteriously


My Amiga (stock 1000, external drive, 512K Alegra) has suddenly developed
a very weird problem. After certain programs are run, the free memory
(as returned by AvailMem) has dropped by some large amount.  Eventually,
the free list gets so corrupted that the machine locks up.  The only program
which exhibits the behavior that I've been able to pin down is TxEd--20K or
so disappear after every invocation.  This is *not* a problem with TxEd,
but with my machine, as I spent some time sizing editors a while back and
found that TxEd gave back every byte it took.
    Ideas?  I have run a memory test (under 1.1) on my Alegra and it checked
out OK.  I suspect either a bad chip in the chip RAM or in the WCS, with
the former causing free list corruption and the latter causing Kickstart
to be corrupted upon being read in.  Is there any way to check for either
or both of these, short of opening the machine?
    Please e-mail replies and I'll post a summary of suggestions and the fix
when I find it (could be a while :-< ).

    Steve Walton, guest as walton@tybalt.caltech.edu
    AMETEK Computer Research Division, ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu
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