[net.micro.atari] Large Arrays In Sight

franco@iuvax.UUCP (12/13/85)

Well, I guess I am the newest member of the ONE MEG club.  Anyone wanting
to convert can use me as another data point.  I will be happy to answer
any questions about reliability or the installation itself.  Also, I would
like to receive reports from other ONE MEGers about reliability and about 
possible side-effects.  Thanks.

franco.indiana@csnet-relay

franco@iuvax.UUCP (12/14/85)

P.S. In case anyone is interested, ST BASIC does not take full advantage
of the new memory.  I find I can now load large BASIC programs without
having to turn off GEM accessories and the Graphics Buffer but I still
cannot get the array sizes I want.  In particular it seems that the maximum
amount of memory ST BASIC is able to devote to arrays is around 8192 (8K)
words minus some overhead (maybe 5 words) for each "column".  For example
the following limits were found:

  1. DIM A(8187)
  2. DIM A(4093,1)    <<comment: there is a column "0" and a column "1">>
  3. DIM A(2728,2)
  4. DIM A(2045,3)
  5. DIM A(1636,4) 
  6. DIM A(4091), B(4091)
  7. DIM A(2726), B(2726), C(2726)
 
I would greatly appreciate someone telling me how to get ST BASIC to allocate
more space, if that is possible.  Thanks.

P.P.S.  Another peculiarity is that, by means of poke, one can find the
highest byte address recognized by ST BASIC to be about 1014000 which is
short of 1Meg by about 30000 bytes.  Did I get gipped or what?

lbl@druhi.UUCP (LocklearLB) (12/16/85)

>Nf-From: iuvax!franco    Dec 14 13:17:00 1985

>P.P.S.  Another peculiarity is that, by means of poke, one can find the
>highest byte address recognized by ST BASIC to be about 1014000 which is
>short of 1Meg by about 30000 bytes.  Did I get gipped or what?

No, you did not get gipped.  The highest 32K of the 520ST is used for
the screen display.  The end of the Transient Program Area (TPA) is
32K from the end of memory.  Apparently the BASIC interpreter doesn't
allow you to poke past that.

Barry Locklear
AT&T Information Systems Labs
Denver, CO
ihnp4!druhi!lbl

sansom@trwrba.UUCP (Richard E. Sansom) (12/18/85)

In article <500018@iuvax.UUCP> franco@iuvax.UUCP writes:
>P.P.S.  Another peculiarity is that, by means of poke, one can find the
>highest byte address recognized by ST BASIC to be about 1014000 which is
>short of 1Meg by about 30000 bytes.  Did I get gipped or what?

I don't know about the extra memory for ST BASIC, but I do know that
the upper 32K of the TPA (Transient Program Area) is reserved for
display memory.

Richard E. Sansom
{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!trwrb!trwrba!sansom

wrd@tekigm2.UUCP (Bill Dippert) (12/19/85)

> 
> Well, I guess I am the newest member of the ONE MEG club.  Anyone wanting
> to convert can use me as another data point.  I will be happy to answer
> any questions about reliability or the installation itself.  Also, I would
> like to receive reports from other ONE MEGers about reliability and about 
> possible side-effects.  Thanks.
> 
> franco.indiana@csnet-relay

Please state what machine you have converted to "One Meg" -- locally there
are now both 520ST's and 130XE's that have been converted to one meg.  I
am interested in the 130XE conversion.


By the way, have heard via the grapevine that the 256XE is about to hit
the market place, anyone seen one yet?  Why doesn't Atari just bite the
bullet and bring out the 1040XE?  The "Super 520" (why not 1040ST?) is 
now available in europe, why not in the good old USA?

			   --Bill--