info-mac@uw-beaver (01/11/85)
From: cowan@GE-CRD 1. About Finder rewriting: Although a true rewrite of the finder would be nice, it may be possible to improve its performance on 512K macs by modifying memory management bits. I tried an experiment today; I turned off, using Rmover, the "Purgable" bits of the 4 "CODE" resources of the Finder. (Three of the four were purgable, which means that can be swapped out by the memory manager.) I booted the modified finder, ejected it, put in two non-system disks, and tried some disk to disk file copies. The results were encouraging; doing a small file copy using the standard Finder required me two insertions of the system disk. Doing the copy with the mutated finder required only 1 insert. Apparently, I was successful in bringing the file copying routines into memory, but the mac still had to modify the Desktop file on the system disk once it had completed the copy. Before I start playing around with other Finder and System resource bits, does anyone know which resources it would be best to change, though I suspect that Desktop management will always slow things down. Can much improvement be gained, or will I run against the 46K limit of the 512K-mac system heap size? (or of the desktop-updating algorithms that assume a small machine) Can the size of the system heap be expanded by patching the piece of the Finder code that sets it to 46K? And does the current finder notice that my mac is "fat," or does it leave the system heap at the 16.5K size of a small mac? (I am quite surprised that there is little performance difference between the Finder on a 512K mac and a 128K mac, considering the supposed 30K increase in system heap space.) Thanks for your help. 2. About the "Jackintosh" About the Atari Machine, there was also an article in the Wall St. Journal Monday. Your prices are correct, except that the disk drive is an extra $200, and a mouse is included. CNN's "Inside Business" showed pictures from the conference at which it was unveiled; the machine WAS displayed, I believe, but unfortunately the TV cameras didn't zoom in very close. They also interviewed Jack Tramiel, who tentatively forecast April production. The machine is not to be confused with Commodore's Amiga, which will someday (maybe soon) be more powerful and more maclike. Rich P.S. I assume you all noticed a bug in the clock on January 1; my Mac didn't advance the year to 1985. (Tell me if I'm wrong and your mac worked.) Regarding the super bowl ad: maybe it should say "Macintosh, why 1985 will still be 1984"