minich@d.cs.okstate.edu (Robert Minich) (10/30/90)
by boris@world.std.com (Boris Levitin): | ewm@mdavcr.UUCP (Eric W. Mitchell) writes that virtual memory is a feature | that people who "only" do wordprocessing and simple office tasks do, in fact, | need. | | Now, I don't like puny 8MHz-68000-type machines with puny little 1MB RAMs | any more than Mr. Mitchell does. This is called being spoiled. :-) After all, many people are most definitely squeezing their finances when they but that "lowly" Classic. If nothing else, they should get some more memory if possible. | (Typically, only people who are either unaware of what they can do with | powerful machines or are intellectually lazy are happy with Pluses, SEs | and Classics in their standard configuration; likewise, many DOS users | who have never experienced a Mac don't feel the need for one, living as they | do in the North Korea of the computer world.) These people are lucky to think they're happy. The rest of us get to keep the economy from going into a slump by upgrading whenever we can afford to. (Or at least make someone ELSE think they can afford to!) | But VM is rather beside that point. I do rather intensive multitasking in | my 4MB (soon to be 5MB) RAM, as the LC-owning secretaries/English students | will also be able to do. (At $37-odd per 1MB SIMM, stuffing your Mac to | the limit with RAM is cheaper than getting a 68030 model.) Why these | people need VM into the double-digit megabyte range is beyond me, | especially considering that the virtual part of that RAM will be unbearably | slow (I've used Ready-Set-Go with its down-your-throat VM facility, and | I've tried Word's load-only-used- portion-of-document thing, and as a | result, I'm less excited about VM than practically any other System 7.0 | feature). VM is for people who need RAM beyond the generous physical RAM | limits of every Mac down to the Plus. Perhaps, but I think you're missing the point of VM entirely. It's not that disk is so much cheaper than RAM and you only need RAM as some sort of cache (!) but rather you only need enough RAM to satisfy your average working conditions. For most people, this means that if they can run each of their programs INDIVIDUALLY in X MB of RAM, then they can run as many applications as VM will hold, with X MB of RAM for the foreground task. Sure, there will be a bit of swapping as you switch programs, but that's better than having to quit another program first! Also, 4MB is not what I'd call generous today. How about 16MB or so? Generous is when I have trouble _trying_ to run out of RAM. :-) (Like this new UNIX box with 160MB of RAM. Even with oodles of CS students, nothing ever gets swapped and most disk access is out of a cache!) In a couple years, 4MB will feel like 512K does today... | That | means serious (particularly color) DTPers, people who do animation or | rendering, video and sound editing, CAD, work with Mathematica or run A/UX -- | in other words, do things that, on a Mac, can be done with virtual memory | or expensive RAM NuBus cards or not at all. Except for possibly A/UX, I don't know of any products in the categories above that can take advantage of NuBus RAM thanks to the 8MB limit on RAM which the Mac OS can handle. This is one thing I'd like to see promptly fixed. | Now, with all the multitasking capabilities the Mac has today, the world is | still alarmingly full of those pathetic 8MHz-68000, 1MB RAM Macs. Don't forget how alarmingly many more 4MHz IBM PCs are out there... | Wanting VM | while such suffering is so commonplace is like living in the USSR and wanting | Communism; or living in the US and wanting Capitalism. :-) :-) :-) | let's concentrate on the doable and the realistic first, like a | 16MHz 020 (at least) and 4MB RAM in every pot. There are just too many people who can't afford to not "suffer." Sorry. -- |_ /| | Robert Minich | |\'o.O' | Oklahoma State University| A fanatic is one who sticks to |=(___)= | minich@d.cs.okstate.edu | his guns -- whether they are | U | - Ackphtth | loaded or not.
awessels@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Allen Wessels) (10/30/90)
In article <1990Oct30.093218.12931@d.cs.okstate.edu> minich@d.cs.okstate.edu (Robert Minich) writes: > Except for possibly A/UX, I don't know of any products in the categories >above that can take advantage of NuBus RAM thanks to the 8MB limit on >RAM which the Mac OS can handle. This is one thing I'd like to see >promptly fixed. If I read the ads correctly, the Maxima RAMdisk software will give you access to 14 meg - 1 meg * # of used NuBus slots of OS RAM in a manner similar to the way Virtual gives you virtual memory.
Garance_Drosehn@mts.rpi.edu (Garance Drosehn) (10/31/90)
Most people who will be buying a low-cost mac do not need VM. If they can't afford a few more megabytes of memory at $40 a megabyte, then they aren't likely to be able to afford the extra cost of a 68030 or a PMMU, plus the cost of the larger hard disk that is needed. Besides, I'd rather use RAM (with no moving parts) then increase the wear and tear on my hard drive. If *everyone* so desperately needs VM, how is it that the vast majority of all Macs sold right now are not also buying Virtual? How many Macs are bought each month? How many copies of Virtual? What is happening to everyone that isn't buying Virtual? Are they hopelessly mired down? At the moment I only have 4 Meg on my machines, and I don't find myself having to quit applications to start up new ones (unless I'm firing up MPW and SADE). In 8 Meg I'd be sitting pretty. People have been proclaiming how important VM on the Mac will be, and they have been saying that for years. For some people, that is true. For me, I'd rather have 8 meg of RAM and save the wear and tear on my hard drive. I suspect there are a lot of other users out there like me, who will do just fine without VM, at least for a few more years. Now, to save up to buy that CD-ROM drive. And a new hard disk (I have only 3 meg free on my current one). And 4 more meg or RAM (which costs less than a PMMU, I believe). And, well, the list goes on... Garance_Drosehn@mts.rpi.edu ITS Systems Programmer Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy, NY. USA
whit@milton.u.washington.edu (John Whitmore) (11/02/90)
In article <=V8%9Z$@rpi.edu> Garance_Drosehn@mts.rpi.edu (Garance Drosehn) writes: >Most people who will be buying a low-cost mac do not need VM. If they >can't afford a few more megabytes of memory at $40 a megabyte, then they >aren't likely to be able to afford the extra cost of a 68030 or a PMMU, >plus the cost of the larger hard disk that is needed. Besides, I'd rather >use RAM (with no moving parts) then increase the wear and tear on my hard >drive. > Damn straight. Four SIMM sockets allows 16Mbytes (with 4M DRAMs) right now on SE/30's. Our VAX with 12Mbytes had entire DAYS of operation in which up to forty users satisfied their virtual memory needs ENTIRELY from cache (i.e. NO disk access, NO true virtual memory use). The multiuser environment requires some strange things: fast disk access times/transfer speeds; memory recovery as processes depart; large numbers of I/O ports with overflow protection. The PC environment makes ALL these things unimportant. Bigger memory can give me three more megabytes on my Plus; virtual memory can't ('cuz I don't have that much disk space available right now). With some exceptions (Mathematica), memory size for applications is entirely satisfied without virtual memory support. That said, I should also point out that if Apple ever comes up with a complete line of machines with VM, they can do things for file handling and runtime library support that will make the system look like a bag of magic tricks, and retire most of the Resource Manager's software hooks (which give program developers a LOT of typing exercise...). In time, I expect VM will be required. Maybe when System V10 is ready, all our sub-68030's will be obsolete. 2005 maybe? I am known for my brilliance, John Whitmore by those who do not know me well.
paul@bk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Dr. Paul Fons) (11/09/90)
I have a SE/30 and am having trouble reading disks occasionally. The usual scenario is that the machine says this disk is not in the proper format would you like to initialize it. Reinserting the disk several times has always caused it to work fine after that. This is true for both low and high density disks, but the problem is worse with low density disks (often written by another Mac -- a low density drive equipped Mac II). Any ideas as to what I might check. I will open the case soon and put more memory in anyway. --