Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: FacII problem?
Message-ID: <71727@sun.uucp>
Date: 5 Oct 88 18:51:22 GMT
References: <4653@louie.udel.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 22

In article <4653@louie.udel.EDU> Ata@radc-multics.arpa (John G. Ata) writes:
> Have installed FacII recently on the workbench disk, but while running
> this software, I noticed a substantial increase in the number of gurus
> and task held messages.  

This is probably not Facc II, rather it is programs that cannot handle
low memory situations crashing. One of the biggest problem areas on 
the Amiga is sloppy programming, and the most common mistake is to not
check that a malloc or AllocMem returned anything. Because frankly it is
a pain to follow every alloc with a check for the result. Also on UNIX
systems with VM malloc fails so rarely that people stop checking the
result and it never bites them. Not so on the Amiga. Anyway, that is 
why a lot of people would like to see a simple guard around low memory
like the Atari has, MemWatch is ok, but hardware protection would be
nicer. It shouldn't be to tough to build, and would help quite a bit. 
Anyway, try running MemWatch and see if some of the previously "good"
programs are now stomping all over low memory.


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.