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GigaMem2.0
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1993-02-20
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21KB
Path: menudo.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!usenet
From: markus@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Markus Illenseer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: GigaMem 2.0
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications
Date: 20 Feb 1993 03:28:54 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 488
Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <1m48hmINN90u@menudo.uh.edu>
Reply-To: markus@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Markus Illenseer)
NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Keywords: virtual memory, MMU, RAM, commercial
PRODUCT NAME
GigaMem 2.0 (GigaMem 3.0 with 68040 support is available now)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
GigaMem is a software package which provides virtual memory for
Amiga Systems that have Memory Management Units (MMU) and a hard drive.
AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
GERMAN DISTRIBUTOR
Name: BSC Bueroautmomation AG
Address: Lerchenstrasse 5
D-8000 Muenchen
Germany
Phone: +49 89 357 130 0
FAX: +49 89 357 130 99
USA DISTRIBUTOR
Name: INOVAtronics
Address: 8499 Greenville Ave., Suite 209b
Dallas, TX 75231
USA
Phone: (214) 340-4991
LIST PRICE (approximate)
149.- DM, which is approximately $100 US.
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
HARDWARE
GigaMem needs an Amiga System with a working Memory
Management Unit (MMU), which is available on most
accelerator cards (e.g., A2620, A2630) or in the Amiga 3000
and Amiga 4000.
It does not work with the 68000, 68020 without 68851 (MMU),
680EC20 (can only address 16 MB of RAM), nor 680EC30
(MMU-less version of 68030), as all of them do not come with
a built-in MMU.
To be able to swap the content of the virtual memory, GigaMem
needs a reliable medium. In most terms, this is a hard
drive. The more space is available on this hard drive, the
more virtual memory you can obtain with GigaMem.
Basically, at least 100K of (real) RAM are required. The
more RAM you have, the faster GigaMem will work.
SOFTWARE
Amiga DOS Version 2.04 or higher is recommended.
Amiga DOS Version 1.2 and 1.3 are supported.
COPY PROTECTION
None.
GigaMem installs on a hard drive using the standard Commodore
Installer program.
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
GigaMem was tested on an Amiga 2000 with A2630 turbo card (4 MB of
32Bit RAM), A2091 SCSI adapter with several hard drives, and 4 MB of 16 Bit
RAM. It was also tested with 1 and 2 MB Chip RAM on this A2000.
A second test platform was an Amiga 3000 with 2 MB Chip, 8 MB Fast
RAM and several hard drives. On this system, a 1.9 GB DEC drive was used
for testing real large amounts of virtual RAM.
On both Amigas, AmigaDOS 2.04 and Kickstart 37.175 was used.
For some further tests, a A2065 Ethernet card was used.
As other hardware is not needed for a virtual memory system, it will
not be mentioned here unless it interfered with GigaMem.
OVERVIEW
When virtual memory systems started becoming available for the
Amiga, I wondered how they could be useful on an Amiga at all. At my
university, I work with several image processing packages and like to port
some these to my Amiga. Image processing is an expensive job requiring a lot
of memory. It uses a large amount of data (pictures in any form) and
requires a fast CPU (to use filters, detectors, etc.). A single 512x512
24Bit Image uses 700KB of RAM! Now imagine if you have a whole sequence of
pictures, or if you have to compare several pictures simultaneously!
On the Amiga, you always get in trouble with this if you don't have
enough RAM. For that purpose, a virtual memory system is exactly what you
need. It provides a way to simulate RAM on an external medium, such as a
hard drive. GigaMem is such a product and will be tested on the platform
mentioned above.
ANY virtual memory system needs a MMU to be able to provide such a
service. In addition, the OS must be able to track memory resources
somewhat. Fortunately, AmigaDOS does that with AllocMem() and AllocVec().
Even better, Amiga DOS provides a way to allocate specific RAM, such as
Public and Chip RAM.
Basically, the 68030 together with the 68851 (MMU), is able to
address 4 GB RAM. The Amiga system does split this into two 2 GB partitions
of RAM. So, any virtual memory system could supply 2 GB as maximum amount
of RAM. GigaMem does provide 1 GB RAM max. During my tests, I was able to
add more, but I unfortunately encountered a bug in GigaMem 2.0 here. There
was no check for more than 1 GB RAM. This problem vanishes with GigaMem
V3.0. You might consider 1 GB of virtual RAM as Utopian, but I know of many
purposes where this amount is really needed.
INSTALLATION
GigaMem comes on one disk. It can be installed manually or with the
supplied Commodore Installer program. The Installer works only on a
correctly set up Amiga system. From within WB 2.0, programs can be started
at WB start time by placing them into the SYS:WBStartup drawer. A wrongly
installed system will not allow a correct setup of GigaMem using Installer.
GigaMem will install itself in the SYS:WBStartup drawer and copy
some files to its own directory. Also, a vmem.library will be copied to the
Libs: drawer. Preferably, GigaMem works on hard drive based systems.
Floppy-only systems won't have much luck using the package, but it can be
done. (I have not tested this.)
Following the instructions in the manual, GigaMem-Prefs is started.
A full flavored, Style-Guide-compliant, Intuitionized window opens and
allows the user to install the virtual memory system on the Amiga.
The window is "localized" with the text is in English by default.
German and French text are also available.
The window is separated into two main parts: Memory Configuration,
and Program Database. The part for the memory configuration has Gadgets for
Virtual Memory, Buffer Memory, Cache Memory, and entries for the Swapping
Medium.
The manual explains the Gadgets and their functions in detail. Just
let it be mentioned that the Buffer Memory is essential for the speed of the
virtual memory, as this buffer will be swapped. The larger this buffer, the
more real memory will be used for swapping, and the faster GigaMem will
work.
The Swapping Medium can be defined in two ways. You can designate a
partition of a hard drive for GigaMem's use, or use a normal, sequential
AmigaDOS File on any hard drive or other AmigaDOS media. The solution with
the partition is preferred: AmigaDOS is not used, so it is faster and will
not interfere with any AmigaDOS partition. Any hard drive should work here.
Special informations for the mask-entry are read from the Rigid Disk Block
(RDB) of the hard drive; if this is not available, the Devs:Mountlist file is
scanned (for Amigas with no autoboot capability). I couldn't test GigaMem
on a system which does not provide the RDB, but I see no reason why it
should not work.
Using an AmigaDOS File allows to set up GigaMem quickly and is
useful for temporary usage. This solution is slower, but it works on every
medium; even swapping via network is possible.
After defining the amount of virtual memory and the way of swapping
the memory, the installation is almost done.
On the left part of the window, a database will show up in a
listview (scrolling list) gadget. This lets you specify how the virtual
memory should be used by individual programs. Some programs are already
listed: AdPro, Cygnus Ed, Audio Master, Maple, Pagemaster and many more.
Some entries have specific configurations already prepared. For AdPro, the
configuration shows that the authors of GigaMem intended to give it virtual
memory first. For AudioMaster, a comment states not to use the
HiFi-Play-Mode. This is because AudioMaster will disable the system in this
mode, and therefore disable GigaMem as well.
For each Program in the database, a priority of the use of virtual
memory can be given: use virtual memory before using real memory, use real
memory first, use only virtual memory, or use only real memory. Thus, the
user can provide specific types and amounts of memory to specific programs.
This is a very nice feature of GigaMem: it shows that