Re: Appleworks 2.0 and 4 meg RAM???

[m_spect@pavo.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article twdorr01@starbase.spd.louisville.edu (Thomas Dorris) writes...
>
>I have an Apple ][gs ROM 01 running System 6.0.1 with a GS Juice Plus,
>equipped with 4 meg RAM.  Everything seems to be just peachy with my new
>memory, except Appleworks 2.0!!!  It gets to the point where it starts
>preloading Appleworks onto the memory expansion card and then it hangs
>(Vulcan drive light just stays on)... Any ideas what might be going on 
>here?  I've verified read and write to the ram banks by allocating a
>4096K RAM disk and running COPY II PLUS to verify the whole thing...no

	This is a bug present in AppleWorks 2.0 and 2.1. It will cause a
crash if more than 2megs of RAM are present in your system, regardless
of the type or brand of memory card installed (so it's NOT a flaw in your
GS Juice Plus). Now there's two ways to solve this problem: Either patch
your existing version of AppleWorks 2.x, or you can upgrade to AW v3.0 or 
higher. My Sequential Systems RAM GS 4mb card came shipped with just the
patch your looking for, though it'd be a good idea to see if it's 
distributible. I'd imagine so, it's only a 2.5k Applesoft BASIC program
and not really specific to the RAM GS card.

>One thing I don't like is the fact that my new rams are 120 ns while my 
>older 2 meg is 100... Will that cause some problems later and would faster 
>rams do any good at all?

	So long as your DRAMs are 150ns (or faster) there's no problem. Due
to the GS's 1 MHz I/O bottleneck, anything faster won't make any difference
in speed. Data is moved around and comes up faster in RAM, sure, but it'll
just sit there waiting for the GS to do something with it. My ROM 3 has
120ns DRAMs on the motherboard, yet another person's ROM 3 with 90ns DRAMs
won't be any faster than mine. The only time you'll experience problems with
DRAMs is if they don't use the CAS-before-RAS refresh scheme (and no, it
doesn't matter if you mix various speeds of chips, so long as their at least
150ns, or -15 rated).

>The last interesting point about this situation is that if I set the 
>jumper switches on the card so that it's configured for 3 meg, Appleworks
>comes up just fine.  It's that magical 4th bank that's making it throw
>fits... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

	The patch tricks AppleWorks 2.x into thinking your GS only has
2megs installed (only AW will think this, doesn't affect other software).
It's a much simpler solution than having to open up your GS and play with
the card all the time though..! ;-) I can mail you a copy of the patcher
program if Jawaid says it's okay...

>ThomasD

Mitchell Spector
m_spect@pavo.concordia.ca / spector@vax2.concordia.ca