daemon@rutgers.UUCP (04/06/87)
From: Thomka.OsbuSouth@Xerox.COM OK, this past Thursday I got my Squeeze-Ram from Aminetics. It is presently being sent out as a kit. The kit contains a blank, silk-screened board, 38 chip sockets, capacitors, resistors, header and socket strips. Except for having to cut the header and socket strips into proper lengths it all went together with no problems. (I don't like the idea of having the option of cutting or distroying those strips to their various lengths.) Took my time in assembling the board, which was about three hours. In trying to install the board between the motherboard and WCS RAM board, I found that it can be a bit of a bother to get all the mating (100+) pins just right, but as long as you are careful it will finally fit. I found that using a contact lubricant (like Cramolin) will aid in getting the pins to fit. So, the time now came to install the board and turn it on. Stand back! . . . A couple of color changes and finally it stays at yellow!!? Oh, my gosh! it didn't work! Well, let's take this out and see what we can see. You know ... as many times as I looked over this board and was careful about putting the thirty-two (41464) memory chips in, I don't remember seeing this one in backwards before. GDI! a memory chip that has just got to be smoked! Oh well, I can switch the jumper to the 512k position and just use half until I can buy another chip. I might as well properly install the chip and turn it on to see just what a bad memory chip symptoms are. Power on. IT WORKS!?! Well, if that don't beat all. So now I can tell you that it is a real nice feeling to see in excess of 1.5M displayed up on the available memory line. Why is it in excess of 1.5M? I also have the CMI KickStart Eliminator installed (puts KickStart in ROM) which then frees up the otherwise unavailable 256k of WCS RAM for your own use. So after the workbench is up and running, and even after having a second drive installed I still see over 1700000 in the memory display. (If you figure it out 1.75M = 1835008 bytes.) [I was curious to see how many Demo boxes I can get running at once. Got 3 "Lines" and 1 "Spots" (both require "Chip Memory", "Lines requires 126k of chip memory!) 14 "Boxes" and over 44 "Dots" going, and then I got tired of opening more things. And then I still had over 600k left! Not a realistice test, I was just playing. But it is interesting to see over sixty things happening on the screen at once, and it wasn't all that slow either. The only really noticible thing was that in it took a few seconds to get mouse response back between opening a new object and then moving and resizing the new window.] The Squeeze-Ram is automatically recognized by Workbenck 1.2, OR if you are still using 1.1 (why?) you'll have to put in this one line in your StartUp-Sequence: AddMem 0c00000 0cfffff So, if you're interested in purchasing a Squeeze-Ram board yourself, call or write: Aminetics P.O. Box 982-205 Whittier, CA; 90608 (213) 698-6170 The board, a disk that has a couple of utilities, and all components except the memory chips sell for $119.95. You can install either 16 or 32 memory chips, which would be 0.5 or 1M, respectively. Chuck