ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu (Ed Krimen) (01/25/91)
Today I received two 1-meg SIMMs. $88 (including shipping and
handling and VISA surcharge) was the cheapest I could find. I got
them from Peripheral Outlet (800-332-6581).
Anyway, so I pop open my STe. (Actually, those who've done it know
it's not just 'popping' it open. :^) I pulled out the four 256K SIMMs
and installed the two 1-meg SIMMs. One of them I put in the slot
closest to the rear of the machine and the second, I put in the third
slot from the rear of the machine. I closed the hatch, booted up,
and, as John Madden would say, "BOOM! Two megs!" Being the
inquisitive type, I wanted to see if I could get 2.5 megs using two
of the 256K SIMMs I had left over. It's a good thing I didn't replace
any of the screws. I've heard that this can't be done (mixing the
SIMMs, not replacing the screws :^), but someone on here a couple of
months ago said he did, and he didn't use SIMMFIX.PRG. (When SIMMFIX
is loaded, it reprograms the MMU and sets _memtop.)
I popped open my STe again and installed the 256K SIMMs in the empty
slots. The docs to SIMMFIX say that the machine would stay in a
continuous reset-reboot cycle because TOS 1.6 doesn't program the MMU
correctly and "any non-trivial programs (e.g. GEM)" will cause the
crash. Without SIMMFIX installed, I turned on my STe and everything
was fine. GEM was there including some desk accessories and TSRs. I
checked amount of free RAM with several utilities and it said that I
had 4 megs. I was kinda expecting this, so I wasn't surprised. I
then tried memory test programs. One wouldn't load at all. The AERCO
tester gave me a <Sense $25> error and had trouble reading the hard
drive AFTER I hit any key to start the memory test. I thought this
was kinda strange 'cause it's supposed to check RAM not the hard
drive. Another one from New World Software lets me configure how
much RAM I want to test. So I tried 2.5 megs and I stopped it after
it had gone through 2 successful tests. Then I set it to 4 megs and I
didn't get ANY errors. I knew that was the wrong one to use.
So I loaded a bunch of memory hogs. It's pretty easy filling a meg,
but I never would imagine how difficult it would be trying to fill
4megs. I loaded a ton of stuff and I could tell that it had
passed 2.5megs because garbage started being written to the screen
and then it crashed and locked up.
In any case, it seems that my machine is working fine with 2.5megs,
but all the free RAM indicators are telling me how much free RAM I
have out of 4megs. Does anyone know of a program I can put in the
AUTO folder that sets _memtop to 2.5 megs, without having to reboot
like SIMMFIX?
Thanks for the help.
--
Ed Krimen ...............................................
||| Video Production Major, California State University, Chico
||| INTERNET: ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu FREENET: al661
/ | \ SysOp, Fuji BBS: 916-894-1261 FIDONET: 1:119/4.0