[comp.unix.aux] Tops compatibility with A/UX

morgan@ooc.uva.nl (Chris Morgan/RIKS) (02/27/91)

Can anyone confirm officially that TOPS 3.0 will not work with A/UX 2 ???

If this is not the case can anyone suggest how to get the two working in
harmony with each other ???

Another point...my A/UX is running on a MacIIfx with 4MB of RAM. I have ordered
another 4x4MB simms which I hope to see in about 2-3 weeks. Until then, is it
possible to take advantage of the virtual memory capabilities of the IIfx, which
I fully expect exist ???  Currntly the machine is pretty slow with a hell of a
lot of disk activity. When I try to run MacX or X11...well its simply not
practical even for a IIfx. Surely it must be possible to trick A/UX into
thinking that theres more memory available than is physically installed.

NOTE: I'm sure this information could be dug out of the correct documentation
but unfortunately Apple are experiencing delivery problems in this country
at the moment and I do not expect to see the 'A/UX documentation' bundle
for another few weeks yet.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

Chris Morgan
morgan@riks.nl

ksand@Apple.COM (Kent Sandvik) (02/27/91)

In article <18243@slice.ooc.uva.nl> morgan@ooc.uva.nl (Chris Morgan/RIKS) writes:

>Another point...my A/UX is running on a MacIIfx with 4MB of RAM. I have ordered
>another 4x4MB simms which I hope to see in about 2-3 weeks. Until then, is it
>possible to take advantage of the virtual memory capabilities of the IIfx, which
>I fully expect exist ???  Currntly the machine is pretty slow with a hell of a
>lot of disk activity. When I try to run MacX or X11...well its simply not
>practical even for a IIfx. Surely it must be possible to trick A/UX into
>thinking that theres more memory available than is physically installed.

Hmm, any UNIX workstation with 4Mb or less is doomed to be slow, unfortunately.
Especially running X Windows, which eats and chews memory.

I assume that your machine is busy paging and/or swapping. The virtual
memory is *always* turned on with A/UX - PMMU is a requirement for 
running A/UX in the first place. In the long run you should also look
into expanding the swap space - because virtual memory has to go somewhere...

Anyway, sorry can't give any more specific advice.

Kent


-- 
Kent Sandvik, Apple Computer Inc, Developer Technical Support
NET:ksand@apple.com, AppleLink: KSAND  DISCLAIMER: Private mumbo-jumbo
Zippy++ says: "C++ was given to mankind, so that we might learn patience"

abm@alan.aux.apple.com (Alan Mimms) (02/27/91)

In article <18243@slice.ooc.uva.nl>, morgan@ooc.uva.nl (Chris Morgan/RIKS) writes:
|> Another point...my A/UX is running on a MacIIfx with 4MB of RAM. I have ordered
|> another 4x4MB simms which I hope to see in about 2-3 weeks. Until then, is it
|> possible to take advantage of the virtual memory capabilities of the IIfx, which
|> I fully expect exist ???  Currntly the machine is pretty slow with a hell of a
|> lot of disk activity. When I try to run MacX or X11...well its simply not
|> practical even for a IIfx. Surely it must be possible to trick A/UX into
|> thinking that theres more memory available than is physically installed.

You set the environment variable TBMEMORY to something like "10M" (for
10 megabytes) in your .login or .profile so that when you login to
A/UX Multifinder world, the variable is defined before the world is
fully created -- it uses this variable's value to determine the size,
with the default being the size of physical RAM.  See "man Login" for
more information.

|> Chris Morgan
|> morgan@riks.nl

-- 

Alan Mimms (alan@apple.com, ...!apple!alan)   | My opinions are generally
A/UX X group                                  | pretty worthless, but
Apple Computer                                | they *are* my own...
"Laugha whila you can, monkey boy..." -- John Whorfin in Buckaroo Banzai
"Never rub another man's rhubarb" -- The Joker in BatMan

d88-jwa@byse.nada.kth.se (Jon W{tte) (02/27/91)

In article <> morgan@ooc.uva.nl (Chris Morgan/RIKS) writes:

>another 4x4MB simms which I hope to see in about 2-3 weeks. Until then, is it
>possible to take advantage of the virtual memory capabilities of the IIfx,
>which I fully expect exist ???  Currntly the machine is pretty slow with a
>hell of a lot of disk activity. When I try to run MacX or X11...

>practical even for a IIfx. Surely it must be possible to trick A/UX into
>thinking that theres more memory available than is physically installed.

Erhm... Think about it.

Q: Right, the computer thinks it has more memory. Now, where would it
    actually _put_ the data that goes into that memory ?

A: On the disk.

Q: What's all your disk activity when running X ?

A: Paging (and most probably swapping) because of your tiny physical
   memory.

UNIX Sys V (which A/UX is) has support for virtual memory and
uses it both for paging and for swapping. The whole _point_ of
virtual memory is to emulate memory using disk... as you clearly
see evidence of, it works, but it's slow on heavy usage. That's
why computers don't come with 1 MB RAM and the rest as "virtual" :-)

							Jon W{tte

"The IM-IV file manager chapter documents zillions of calls, all of which
seem to do almost the same thing and none of which seem to do what I want
them to do."  --  Juri Munkki in comp.sys.mac.programmer