Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!mcnc!unc!steele From: steele@unc.cs.unc.edu (Oliver Steele) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: New Macs, HyperCard, Multifinder, and Memory Constraints Message-ID: <1631@unc.cs.unc.edu> Date: Wed, 14-Oct-87 21:52:49 EDT Article-I.D.: unc.1631 Posted: Wed Oct 14 21:52:49 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 16-Oct-87 06:57:09 EDT References: <544@atux01.UUCP> <1015@oakhill.UUCP> Reply-To: steele@unc.UUCP (Oliver Steele) Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Lines: 52 Keywords: Good new stuff for Macs, but has Apple painted themselves into a corner? joej@oakhill.UUCP (Joe Jelemensky) writes: >>1Mb RAM is not fully sufficient. >I agree. I recently had my MAC enhanced and am now very much dismayed that >the minimum usable MAC is now a 2 Meg SE with a 40 Meg hard disk. This isn't yet true. 1 Meg memory and 20 Meg hard disk are closer -- you can run any software from this, and I believe you can run almost anything (anything except HyperCard, I believe) under Multifinder on 1 Meg, and a 20 Meg HD is enough for quite a few large file-heavy applications as long as you don't expect to archive your public domain software library on it (but that's what sumex is for, isn't it). Now if you use HyperCard with all its stacks, and Smalltalk with source, and MPW with, say, C and Pascal, you're cutting it close, but most combinations of applications leave you substantially more leeway. A year from now, I think you'll be right. >Even >before Hypercard & Multifinder, System 4.1 is useless on a floppy based MAC >because of its size, (150K bigger because, I am led to believe, of the MAC II >color support which is useless baggage on a regular MAC). Mac II support under System 4.1 comes to: 20K Color tables, Picker, etc. 12K Patches 29K Sound stuff 10K because I've probably missed something 55K +/- 5K So about a third of that extra stuff is Mac II, and can be deleted on a regular Mac. Some more can be deleted on a non-ADB Mac, and your total Control Panel setup is smaller if you go back to the System 3.2 Control Panel and delete all those cdevs from the System Folder (although I don't think these figured into your 150K bigger caculation, anyway). And you can always delete those extra patches, and a couple of DRVRs, and a few PACKs, and FONT 0, etc, but you can do that to 3.2 too so yes, 4.1 is huge, but no, not all of it is Mac II. You're still close to right about the "useless on a floppy" statement. It's tolerable on a two-floppy system, (and a lot of future software will probably make use of the Script Manager, so it will probably soon be necessary too), but I think Apple is on the verge of disowning 1-floppy computers and is probably about a year away from disowning 0-HD computers (and this will parallel the rest of the computer world). Fortunately, you don't yet need a CD-ROM to be with it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Oliver Steele ...!{decvax,ihnp4}!mcnc!unc!steele steele%unc@mcnc.org "'As it were' means 'I think that I sound very erudite.' 'Per se' is Latin for 'as it were.' As it were."