ProDOS Madness!

[dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Dave Althoff)]

I'm having troubles with ProDOS under BASIC.SYSTEM.  Everyone keeps saying
how much better ProDOS is than 3.3, and I keep getting object lessons to
show why I prefer 3.3 (but am currently using ProDOS since it will run
straight off of my hard drive).

Anyway, I have an Applesoft program which fiddles with a lot of strings,
and fills up memory pretty fast.  It runs slightly faster under 3.3 than
under ProDOS, because DOS 3.3 (after issuing a MAXFILES 1 command) leaves
more memory available for BASIC by only taking up *one* *256-byte* file
buffer.

I'd prefer to run this program under ProDOS because it works with
downloaded text files (my comm program is under GS/OS), and GS/OS doesn't
know how to write a DOS text file (and the file selection interface for the
old CONVERT program is horrible).  So...

Q1:  Is there any way to get ProDOS to surrender six or so of its oversize
(512-byte) file buffers to BASIC variable space?

Q2:  Didn't I hear that ProDOS had an improved string garbage-collection
routine written into it?  How can I force this instead of the *SLOW*
Applesoft garbage collection?  Or am I hallucinating?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.  (Apple ][ Old-Fart!)
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