Re: Virtual Memory on a //GS???????????????????

[irsman@iastate.edu (Ian Schmidt)]

In article <Pine.3.07.9401251851.A28856-a100000@cap.gwu.edu> dpfarrer@CAP.GWU.EDU (Daniel Pfarrer) writes:

>One of my schools got several new MACs the other day. One of their
>features I noticed was the "Virtual Memory" option. It takes advantage of
>your HD. For example: a MAC has 4MB ram, you can instantally expand that
>4MB up to 13MB by using the virtual memory feature. It reserves HD space &
>uses it for the RAM. So now each MAC has 4MB ram & 13MB virtual ram, a
>total of 17MB of ram overall.

This has been done on Unix since the beginning of time.  The rub is that when
you actually use some of the 'extra RAM', the machine has to swap it back and
forth between the disk, an operation which is distinctly non-trivial in terms
of time required.  In order to do VM, one needs an MMU such as the one built
into the '030/'040, '386/486/P5, etc, etc.  Since the GS has none, VM cannot
be done on it.

[Way too long .sig deleted]
-- 
Ian Schmidt / irsman@iastate.edu / IRSMan@aol.com
"I wanna decide who lives and who dies" - Crow, MST3K