info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (09/29/84)
From: John W. Peterson <JW-Peterson@UTAH-20.ARPA> After getting access to Fat Mac a few days ago, I tried bringing up the "Ram" disk driver supplied with the Lisa Workshop. This simulates a 320K floppy by using the Fat Mac's extra address space as an in-memory disk drive. By copying the System and Finder to it, you can make it the "startup" disk. The results are ASTOUNDING. For example, starting up a MacPaint document normally takes 27 seconds, just takes four with the Ram disk. Exiting back to the Finder takes three seconds instead of the usual 15. Desk accessories, dialogs and the like all pop up instantly - In short, all of the normal "tedious" delays caused by the floppy drive vanish. It really points out both how much horsepower the Mac really has, and where the system bottleneck is. -------
info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (10/03/84)
From: Tim McNerney <TIM@MIT-MC> Your results are indeed astounding. I would have expected this sort of speed-up WITHOUT having to resort to hacks like using a RAM "disk." It sounds like the operating system's memory manager is not making effective use of all the physical memory that the Fat Mac has. Does anyone know what Apple plans to do about this? Has anyone compared the performance of 512K Mac and the "small" Mac? Tim
info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (10/09/84)
From: Mike Caplinger <mike@rice.ARPA> I'm glad that RAM disk results are so nice, but RAM disks are a massive hack. If you have more memory, your system should be able to utilize it in a much nicer way than just pretending it's secondary storage. So my question is, will the Fat Mac try and keep things in memory more? How about leaving an application or the Finder in unused core so that the second time I start it, it's already loaded? After all, even with a RAM disk I have to read RAM contents off a disk sometime! RAM disks are for people who either don't understand the memory hierarchy, or have 64K machines and bank-switching. Mac owners shouldn't fall into either catagory... - Mike ps. If Mac code isn't relocatable, it should be.