I need more memory allocation.

[Bazango]

I want to "manage my own memory" in the virtual memory systems control to run the GFXx version of EF2000 for 3dFX. The configuration software provided for this says it needs 30,000 bytes and wants me to "free up 15,555 bytes of either RAM or disk space".

What kind of problems could I expect if I switch to managing my own memory? I am running an extra 300 MB HD that is just sitting there. Would it speed things up generally to use that as a swap disk file? How much memory does the Windows managed option of virtual memory use? Would this also solve my "conventional memory" problem in trying to run MS Flight Simulator version 5?

[Alzarius]

Conventional memory is a whole nother ball game from the Windows swap files. Conventional memory is usually the first 640k of memory. If a program asks you to free up that 15k of memory, then you need to check your autoexec.bat and config.sys files and see what you've got in there. You may need to REM out some of the less useful items. Better yet, since you seem to be running a DOS program, you should prolly make a boot disk that only has the necessary files to run the game. Something you could also try is to enter the bios and turn of...errr, video caching? bios caching? I forget which ones, but turn them all off. Those video/bios caching options take up a bit of conventional memory. By the way, that's also a good thing to keep in mind if you have to flash your bios and the bios flasher says you don't have enough memory. Turning those couple caching options off frees up a bit of memory for the flasher. Worked for me at least.

As for the 2nd 300 meg harddrive. What's the size of your current harddrive? If it's less than a gigabyte, you might want to dump the swap file on the 300 meg drive to save space on the primary drive. Be warned though that the 300 meg drive is old and is not as fast as the newer drives. It's usually advised to keep the swap file on the larger, faster drives. Managing your swap file yourself is actually a good idea. There's a general rule about how large you should make your swap file. But I don't remember the rule. I have 64 megs of memory and have a fixed swap file of 200 megs. That works fine for me. Windows managed swap files use a variable size file based on how much space you have free on your computer. The variable size is not as efficient as the fixed size. Something you might consider if you want to keep the swap file on your main drive. Try and move some programs to the 300 meg drive and use the freed up space on your main drive for the swap file. And as far as my experience goes, managing your own swap file is a safe thing to do (as long as you don't make the swap file, say, 10 megabytes!).

[This message has been edited by Alzarius (edited 10-22-1999).]

[Bazango]

Thanks. My reasoning is that even if the 2nd older 300 MB HD is slower, it will still be faster to use a second drive thinking the system may not have to wait for other work to be done from my 1st ~6 Gig drive. Similar thinking suggests that partitioning my large faster drive and using the small partition for a swap file would also speed things up.

I once bumped into some weird hard drives that were less than 3 gigabytes but seemed to be incredibly fast or had a high RPM or something. Not only that but they were priced between $600 and $1200 a unit. It occurs to me that these act as swap files for larger floor mount or installed computer systems. They would still be cheaper than that much IC memory. Hmmm...sounds like a job for Linux.