Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!udel!mmdf
From: Ata@radc-multics.arpa (John G. Ata)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: FacII problem?
Message-ID: <4687@louie.udel.EDU>
Date: 7 Oct 88 12:27:31 GMT
Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU
Lines: 35


    From:  Chuck McManis <cmcmanis%pepper at SUN.COM>
    Subject:  Re: FacII problem?
    
    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.
    
Where can one get a copy of MemWatch?  Fred Fish?

If I can get a copy, I will look to see if any program is trashing
memory.  However, some of the times that it crashed were clearly not a
low memory condition.  For example, one time I was running only PCCOLOR
and attempted to assign the parallel printer to the IBM side via LPT1.
That simple program crashed.  I believe I only had 30 buffers at the
time with about 500k or more of free memory ( I run on a 1 meg Amiga
2000).  Of course, previously run programs may have trashed memory, and
then LPT1 caused the actual crash.  Don't really know at this point.  
Thanks very much for your repsonse, I appreciate it.

                    John G. Ata