Damion Jones will never forget the
day he installed virtual memory
I used ST's for many years - and enjoyed
every single moment - but often found myself dreaming
of owning a faster machine such as a Mega, or a TT.
Years passed while I remained content with my systems
additions and enhancements until finally my dream came
true...
The TT - for sale at next to nothing
- had 2MB of ST RAM and 4MB of TT RAM, a huge amount
when compared to what I had been used too. I was understandably
looking forward to the performance boost the extra memory
would provide. I was consequently a little disappointed
when I found that after installing several Auto Folder
programs (such as NVDI, BoxKite, LED Panel, LetEmFly
etc.) and a few Desk ACC's (like Kobold and Cops) as
well as MagiC o/s and Ease, I was soon knocked down
to just under 2MB!! While this amount could be argued
more than adequate (for most users), I always seemed
to need that little bit more. I did the best I could,
but in the end decided that a memory upgrade would be
my next essential upgrade.
I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that
my TT would have STE-type memory. I soon found this
not to be the case. The ST RAM was soldered to the board
(like pre-STE models) while the TT Memory was on a special
TT RAM board that used simms (ARGH!). This consequently
meant that the costs involved would be sky-high, or
higher. As a result, I began my search for an alternative
solution to my memory problem...
Initial results showed that upgrading
my TT's memory was possible, but at a cost I was not
yet prepared to pay. I therefore decided to stick with
what I had. After a little tinkering with various settings,
like making my programs run in ST RAM rather than TT
RAM, I managed to squeeze a little performance boost
but remained frustrated at having to keep a constant
eye on my memory usage (a big thanks to MemView and
AppList BTW).
Then I suddenly remembered about a
program called "Outside", a piece of software
that let an Atari machine with an 030 processor (or
better) use available hard drive space as virtual memory.
After searching a few of my Atari CD's, I managed to
locate a demo. Although the demo was limited to only
2MB of virtual memory, I instantly saw the benefits.
Outside works differently to virtual
memory managers found on Windows and the like. In fact,
Outside works more like virtual memory managers found
on Linux. Rather than allowing you to use any drive
for virtual memory, you first need to allocate a swap
partition which will then act as RAM after a re-boot.
However, the allocated partition then become read only.
After using the demo of Outside, I was so impressed
that I decided to buy the full program and upgrade to
real memory at a later date when I could afford it.
So, I picked up the phone, and went
hunting... After contacting System Solutions and agreeing
to fork out forty pounds for a copy, well £39.99,
but lets not cut the mustard here! my copy arrived two
days later and I threw it on!
Now, one thing that did get my goat
was that under MagiC (v2) Outside refused to work? This
puzzled me as I had been using the demo for a couple
of weeks under MagiC without a problem. Anyway, I tried
MultiTOS without a problem, but as I found MultiTOS
made my TT run slower than my 8 MHz ST - enough said!
After a little soul searching and
brain teasing, I eventually solved the problem. The
program Flags on the Demo version were both set to TT
RAM while the full program was not. So after some messing
about I soon had a running version of Outside on my
TT! In use, it is mostly flawless! - I say mostly because
it will hang the system if you push it or load/quit
programs every 5 minutes, but you can happily have CAB,
QED, OLGA, GEMVIEW and GemJing all running at once without
a problem.
A couple of months ago I finally bought
myself a real memory module, so although I still have
Outside running, I hardly need it now! With Atari programs
being small, compact and generally well written, I find
that even when I go and do something stupid like create
a 10MB RAMDISK using my new TT memory, I still never
seem to use any of the virtual memory :-)
On the whole, if you are short of
real memory, then you could seriously give this a look.
As for crashing when its overloaded, I can only surmise
that either Outside is not truly multitasking compatible
- which I seriously doubt - or that my TT's MMU chip
is faulty in some way. But no matter how much true RAM
I get, Outside will always be a part of my system.
Pros
- Cheap alternative to real memory
- Stable if used sensibly and with
caution
Cons
- Unstable if pushed
- Only works on TT RAM
- Kobold can be a swine
If anyone does have any tips or clues,
for getting a more stable working copy of OUTSIDE running,
then I will be grateful for any suggestions.
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