Re: //e memory question

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <326D30D5.3E00@ix.netcom.com>, JB  <jbcole@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>I fixed the problem with no sound on my IIe (bad speaker.)  Now, is
>there a program that will tell me how much ram I have?

   [Warning! Gratuitous technical info follows. Short answer: no.]

   Given that //e memory expansion cards were multitudinous, used
slightly different formats, etc, there's no one canonical way to even
_address_ extra ram past 128K, let alone see how much is there. Your
best bet is probably any disk provided with the Ramworks III card and
see exactly how much ram is in the system. Only a few programs like
Appleworks will really be able to take advantage of the extra RAM
anyhow.

>I have an enhanced IIe with a Ramworks III card.  The card is fully
>populated.

   That's probably 1MB there.

>When I load up AW 3.0 it says I have 619k available.  
>So, how much does AW use and Prodos use?  If I add that to the 619k then
>I should have my total Ram right?

   That mostly depends on 1) how many AW 3.0 addons (Timeout, etc) you
have loaded, 2) How much of AW 3.0 you have preloaded, etc. (ProDOS is
pretty much only about 16K of RAM anyhow) Unless there's a Timeout
package that gives you memory stats, getting a hard number on memory
usage is probably impossible.

   What you're running into, though, is the fact that Apple didn't
design the extra memory protocols on the AUX slot very well at
all. Todd Whitesel mentioned that the Apple III did it right, being
able to drop pretty much any 32K (and possibly other sizes) block of
expansion RAM into $2000 in the lower 64K at will, just by setting a
few softswitches.  Unfortunately, Apple mistakenly blamed part of the
Apple III's failure on its technological features, not 1) hardware
that was more flakey than a beach bum 2) Crippling the Apple II
'emulation' mode in them. Thus, the //e was technologically a very
conservative design, only a few tweaks over the ][+.

   The AUX slot connector addresses memory by only allowing certain
blocks of memory to be accessed, and they're mapped into fairly
inconvenient blocks. [Well, if you want to have two totally separate
64K Apple IIs, it's great, but the Apple IIIs design was orders of
magnitude easier to deal with.] Due to this, there are certain chunks
of the expansion RAM that Appleworks really just can't get at. [Well,
it could, but it'd just be real painful.]

   All AUX slot connectors suffer from this; the 'Slinky' cards that
fit in slots 1-7 have a different design that make it nearly
impossible to run programs out of (they're not really accessible in
arbitrary order in realtime, which is what most code kinda wants), but
you can get at all of the memory in them. I remember all of the AE
Ramworks ads in Nibble listing (1) memory on card, (2) memory usable
by Appleworks.  Don't remember the exact ratio between the two, but
619K seems about right for either 768K or 1MB.

Nathan "Now that I've bothered to write it up, this might as well go
on my page of Apple II less Frequently Asked Questions" Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
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# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein