Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!ccicpg!felix!kehr
From: kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Virtual Memory for Mac II -- report from a beta-test site
Keywords: virtual
Message-ID: <79271@felix.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jan 89 15:26:37 GMT
References: <1250@cascade.Stanford.EDU> <35421@think.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@felix.UUCP
Reply-To: kehr@felix.UUCP (Shirley Kehr)
Organization: FileNet Corp., Costa Mesa, CA
Lines: 56

In article <35421@think.UUCP> ephraim@think.com (Ephraim Vishniac) writes:
>In article <1250@cascade.Stanford.EDU> trewitt@cascade.ARPA (Glenn Trewitt) writes:
 
<>Several people asked about the new product "Virtual" (TM) from
<>Connectix that provides virtual memory for Macintosh II and other
<>Mac's with PMMU's.  In this message, I hope to answer some of those
<>questions.
 
 I called Connectix yesterday asking if we can buy at the show price of
 $495 even if we aren't at the show. They will accept a major credit
 card number over the phone or send it COD. The price goes back up to
 $695 next week (after Sunday 22nd).

 The sales rep cautioned that the init for 68030-based machines is
 different from that for the PMMU they are supplying for Mac II. She
 said that Apple only implemented a subset of the instruction set on
 the PMMU that comes with the 030 machines. (I barely know what I'm
 talking about; please forgive the vagueness)

<>There are some problems that Connectix freely admits:
 
<>2) Virtual does not currently work with software that does direct
<>SCSI I/O, bypassing the OS file manager (?) calls.  Connectix is
<>working on this.  Most scanner software does this when actually
<>scanning something (but not when doing post-processing).
 
<I think this answers an earlier article's question about, "What if a
<SCSI transfer page-faults?"  (Or words to that effect.)  It sounds
<like Virtual hooks the I/O calls and examines the length and address
<for transfers to be sure that they're paged in.
 
I also asked about the Apple Tape drive, CMS disk drives, and big screens.
She didn't have the list of equipment tested by beta sites, but knew one
of them has the E-Machines (yea!). She said she uses a tape drive 
(MacPeaks? - is there a drive like this?)

<Besides the problem mentioned with scanners, this could also be a
<problem for SCSI disk formatters, which might issue SCSI commands
<directly in the course of installing the driver.  (SCSI Evaluator is
<another problem if you select certain options.)  I hope Virtual's
<instructions are quite clear about possible gotcha's and how to debug
<them.
 
I hope so too, because my boss is very interested in letting me try it.
Now, if he can just get HIS boss to say OK in time...(report at 11, if so).

Another question I had concerns future OS development by Apple. She had
recently attended a talk by Scully who said that multi-tasking and virtual
memory were two years away for the Mac.

She had also heard that System 7.0
features were to be folded into System 8.0 and that System 7.0 would not
be released. (That was not part of Scully's talk. She noted that it was
from the rumor columns.)

Shirley Kehr