BBS in a Box 7/BBS in a Box - Macintosh - Volume VII (BBS in a Box) (January 1993).iso/Files/Word/U-V/Virtual INIT News.cpt/Virtual INIT (TEXT file)

Text File | 1989-01-14 | 15.2 KB | 354 lines | [TEXT/MACA]

Article 28644 of comp.sys.mac:
Path: agate!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!eecae!netnews.upenn.edu!eniac.seas.upenn.edu!hodas
From: [e-mail] (Josh Hodas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Virtual memory init
Date: 13 Jan 89 14:19:11 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dave Thompson) writes:
>On the front page of this week's MacWeek (10 January 1989) there is an
>article entitled:  "Virtual memory ends RAM jam."  Connectix Corporation
>has come out with a package containing a PMMU and an INIT for $695 that
>creates an 8mb swapfile on disk, far cheaper that an 8mb DRAM upgrade.
>The article states that there is "some" performance degradation on 1mb
>RAM machines but performs adequately on 2mb machines and with no noticeable
>degradation on 4mb machines.  Sounds great!!
>
>My question is:  are there any beta testers of this software out there on
>the net who would be willing to attest to the quality of this product?
>Comments?
>--
>Dave Thompson                     uucp:   [e-mail]

Sounds real great to me too.  I am expecting literature from them next
week. I'll tell you what little I learned from their sales rep on the
phone yesterday, though.

Price for init + 68851 MMU = $695
Price for init alone       = $295

The product is supposed to ship next week at macworld, there will be show
special prices of ~600 and ~250 respectively.

The init will supposedly work with any off the shelf 68851 so it would
probably be worth shopping around. (This leads to the question of does anyone
know sources for the 68851?  I called all the places from the back of BYTE
yesterday, ie JDR, Jameco, Microprocessors Unlimited, and they all acted
like they had never heard of it.)

Also, a special version of the init designed to work with the 030 (in the IIX
and SE/30) will be forthcoming soon.

The rep was unable to answer questions like "What's the page size? What's the
page replacement algorithm?"

Any additional info would be greatly appreciated.

Josh
-------------------------

Josh Hodas    ([e-mail])
4223 Pine Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

[phone]   (home)
[phone]   (school office)

*****

Article 28657 of comp.sys.mac:
Path: agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!bmug
From: [e-mail] (BMUG)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Virtual memory init
Date: 13 Jan 89 20:50:33 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dave Thompson) writes:
>On the front page of this week's MacWeek (10 January 1989) there is an
>article entitled:  "Virtual memory ends RAM jam."  Connectix Corporation
>has come out with a package containing a PMMU and an INIT for $695 that
>creates an 8mb swapfile on disk, far cheaper that an 8mb DRAM upgrade.
>The article states that there is "some" performance degradation on 1mb
>RAM machines but performs adequately on 2mb machines and with no noticeable
>degradation on 4mb machines.  Sounds great!!
>
>My question is:  are there any beta testers of this software out there on
>the net who would be willing to attest to the quality of this product?
>Comments?

Connectix came to BMUG's weekly meeting last night and demoed the product.
Comments:

The demo was done on a 2 meg Mac II.  The program (i.e., INIT), ran
without breaking, with the demonstrator running Excel, PageMaker,
ImageStudio, Word, LightSpeedC 2.0, HyperCard, and about four other
applications.  The hard disk, btw, was Apple's stock 40 meg Quantum, with
a 29 mS access time.  Response was very good, even on memory (disk)
intensive tasks such as ImageStudio manipulations and the like.
MultiFinder context switching was smooth.  The only programs to date which
will not work well with the Connectix setup are debuggers like TMON and
MacsBug (nobody thought to ask about disassemblers like MacNosy).  The
faster the hard disk, the better performance will be.  Performance on a 1
meg machine will be sluggish during certain operations.  Performance on a
4 or 5 meg machine will be apparently unaffected (the last three statements
made by the demoer).
The company is planning to produce an INIT package for accellerated SE's
with boards able to accommodate a PMMU (Levco and a few others) or with a
68030.  These are in beta test right now.
Availability of the Mac II product is now.  Connectix will have a booth at
MacWorld Expo (Brooks Hall, perhaps Moscone also) with the following show
prices: INIT and PMMU: $595; INIT only (for Mac IIx and other 030
configurations): $249 (usually $295).
Seemed like a neat thing.  We're trying to get one to beat on before
recommending it.  Definitely worth a look, though.

John Heckendorn
                                                             /\
BMUG                      ARPA: [e-mail]    A__A
1442A Walnut St., #62     BITNET: bmug@ucbgarnet            |()|
Berkeley, CA  94709                                         |  |
[phone]                                              |  |

*****

Article 28658 of comp.sys.mac:
Path: agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!bmug
From: [e-mail] (BMUG)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Virtual memory init
Date: 13 Jan 89 20:57:01 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Josh Hodas) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dave Thompson) writes:
>>On the front page of this week's MacWeek (10 January 1989) there is an
>>article entitled:  "Virtual memory ends RAM jam."
>Sounds real great to me too.  I am expecting literature from them next
>week.
(stuff deleted)
>The rep was unable to answer questions like "What's the page size? What's the
>page replacement algorithm?"
>
>Any additional info would be greatly appreciated.
>
>Josh

According to the BMUG meeting demoer, the page size is 2k.  Nobody asked
about the algorithm (I'm not sure he would have answered that one!).

John Heckendorn

                                                             /\
BMUG                      ARPA: [e-mail]    A__A
1442A Walnut St., #62     BITNET: bmug@ucbgarnet            |()|
Berkeley, CA  94709                                         |  |
[phone]                                              |  |

*****

Article 28659 of comp.sys.mac:
Path: agate!garnet.berkeley.edu!bmug
From: [e-mail] (BMUG)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Virtual memory init
Date: 13 Jan 89 21:06:48 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley

In an earlier message I reported the show price for the Connectix
PMMU/INIT combo at MacWorld Expo as $595; I *should* have typed $495.
Many apologies for the error.

John Heckendorn
                                                             /\
BMUG                      ARPA: [e-mail]    A__A
1442A Walnut St., #62     BITNET: bmug@ucbgarnet            |()|
Berkeley, CA  94709                                         |  |
[phone]                                              |  |

*****

Article 28684 of comp.sys.mac:
Path: agate!ucbvax!hplabs!hpl-opus!hpccc!seghers
From: [e-mail] (David Seghers)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Virtual memory init
Date: 13 Jan 89 22:51:28 GMT
Organization: HP Corporate Computing Center

>/ hpccc:comp.sys.mac / [e-mail] (Dave Thompson) / 12:42 pm  Jan 11, 1989 /
>
>On the front page of this week's MacWeek (10 January 1989) there is an
>article entitled:  "Virtual memory ends RAM jam."  Connectix Corporation
>    has come out with a package containing a PMMU and an INIT for $695 that
>creates an 8mb swapfile on disk, far cheaper that an 8mb DRAM upgrade.
>The article states that there is "some" performance degradation on 1mb
>RAM machines but performs adequately on 2mb machines and with no noticeable
>degradation on 4mb machines.  Sounds great!!

>My question is:  are there any beta testers of this software out there on
>the net who would be willing to attest to the quality of this product?
>Comments?

I'm not a beta site for this product, but I did see a demo of it at SMUG
(Stanford).  It was very impressive, and showed no performance degradation
on a 2 Meg Mac II with 8 meg of programs loaded (graphics, spreadsheet, C plus
debugger, etc.).  I called the company the next day to find out when I could
get mine, and was told that it will be ready for MacWorld, and the price
will be $495 as a show special.  This includes a PMMU which is required for this
program to run.  I was also told that the reason there was no performance
penalty on the 2 meg machine was that each individual program would fit into
the 2 megs when swapped in, and this is why the 1 meg machine might be slower
depending on the programs being run.  Cautions:  Needs 8 meg contiguous free
disk space on the boot disk, and if you already have 8 meg DRAM, it won't
give you another 8.

There was a typo in the MacWeek article on the phone #.  It is 415-324-0727.

I have no connection with the company that sells this,

David Seghers (Waiting for DRAM prices to fall! Ha! Now I won't care!)

Generic disclaimer, my opinions are my own, keep my employer out of it.!
(including "I HATE vi"!!!! Hold your flames for better issues)

*****

Article 28686 of comp.sys.mac:
Path: agate!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!decwrl!labrea!polya!kaufman
From: [e-mail] (Marc T. Kaufman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Virtual memory init
Date: 14 Jan 89 02:07:58 GMT
Organization: Stanford University

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dave Thompson) writes:

>My question is:  are there any beta testers of this software out there on
>the net who would be willing to attest to the quality of this product?
>Comments?

I would specifically be interested in what happens to SCSI transfers that
cross page boundaries, when one of the pages is not in memory.  There are some
SCSI devices that cannot abort and retry easily.  What does this INIT do?

Marc Kaufman ([e-mail])

*****

Article 28685 of comp.sys.mac:
Path: agate!pasteur!ames!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!decwrl!labrea!cascade!trewitt
From: [e-mail] (Glenn Trewitt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Virtual Memory for Mac II -- report from a beta-test site
Date: 14 Jan 89 01:52:48 GMT
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Glenn Trewitt)
Organization: Stanford University

Several people asked about the new product "Virtual" (TM) from
Connectix that provides virtual memory for Macintosh II and other Mac's
with PMMU's.  In this message, I hope to answer some of those questions.

First, a DISCLAIMER:
I am not am employee of Connectix.  I am, however, a friend of the
founders.  I am a beta-test site.  (Can a person be a site?)  Also, I
know internal details about the product, so I AM UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE
in those areas.  Nevertheless, I consider myself a fairly impartial
evaluator.  I am trying to provide information, not advertising.

First, about my beta-test: I have a Mac II with 2 Mb of real memory and
a Jasmine 70-meg drive (24 mSec, I think).  The only times I notice the
presence of Virtual is when it boots up and installs itself (a few
seconds delay) and when changing levels in Tetris (it has to pull a
full-screen 8-bit color image from the disk, which takes about a second
longer than normal because of swapping).  Other than that, I've
forgotten that it's there.  I've also forgotten that I only have 2 Mb
of memory, which is the whole point.  It's very nice and I won't
belabor the obvious benefits of having 8 Mb of memory.

I've been using Virtual for a bit over a week.  I only run "regular"
applications such as HyperCard, MacWrite, Excel, Kermit, etc.  I do NOT
do program development.  In that time, I had one crash when copying a
very large folder with some very large files in it.  I was unable to
duplicate the crash, either with or without Virtual installed.  (Like
most INITs, you can disable its installation by holding down a key
(Escape, in this case) when booting.) My conclusion is that, for normal
applications, it works fine.  Applicable quote: "Before, my Mac crashed
once a day, whether it needed to or not.  Now that I have Virtual, it
still crashes once a day, whether it needs to or not." :-)

There are some problems that Connectix freely admits:

1) Currently, most debuggers will not work with Virtual running.  This
is a known problem, and will be fixed.  Some debuggers are very poorly
behaved and root around in all sorts of nasty places.

2) Virtual does not currently work with software that does direct SCSI
I/O, bypassing the OS file manager (?) calls.  Connectix is working on
this.  Most scanner software does this when actually scanning something
(but not when doing post-processing).

3) Virtual will not work with hardware (i.e.  NUbus boards, especially
coprocessors) that does DMA, because DMA bypasses the PMMU and writes
directly to memory.  With Virtual running, the memory isn't where the
the board expects.  This problem is very difficult to fix and would
require changes to the drivers and the Apple OS.  Don't expect anything
soon.

In all of these cases, Virtual can be turned off by rebooting and these
things will work OK.  For most people who run "plain vanilla"
applications, Virtual should work well.

Some answers to some questions that I saw here earlier:

1) The page size is 2K, and the replacement algorithm is LRU, although
ages are only checked periodically.  This works fine for the Mac, which
doesn't have real multi-tasking.  Most paging will be directly
user-driven -- when the user switches applications under MultiFinder.

2)  As far as I know, single-unit prices on the 68551 PMMU are over $250.

3) MacNosy's debugger functions don't work under Virtual, although its
disassembly functions should (don't know if that's been extensively
tested) work fine.

Finally, there were several misprints in MacWeek and in the BMUG note:
The MacWorld Expo show price is $495 with PMMU; $259 without.
Connectix' phone number was misprinted in MacWeek; the correct one is
[phone].  As stated in the article from BMUG, they will have a
booth at MacWorld Expo in Brooks hall, perhaps in Moscone.

--
Glenn Trewitt, Center for Integrated Systems, Stanford University
    {ucbvax,decvax}!decwrl!miasma.stanford.edu!trewitt    USENet
    [e-mail]                Internet

*****

Article 28729 of comp.sys.mac:
Path: agate!bionet!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!decwrl!labrea!polya!kaufman
From: [e-mail] (Marc T. Kaufman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Virtual Memory for Mac II -- report from a beta-test site
Date: 14 Jan 89 18:17:53 GMT
Organization: Stanford University

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Glenn Trewitt) writes:

>There are some problems that Connectix freely admits:

>2) Virtual does not currently work with software that does direct SCSI
>I/O, bypassing the OS file manager (?) calls.  Connectix is working on
>this.  Most scanner software does this when actually scanning something
>(but not when doing post-processing).

My reading of this would lead me to the conclusion that non-disk SCSI devices
would also not work.  This includes the Tape Backup 40SC, the LaserWriter SC,
Mirus FilmPrinter, etc.  Also, disk initialization (formatting and partition
building) may fail.  I would appreciate hearing more from people who know how
the I/O is "REALLY" handled.

Marc Kaufman ([e-mail])