Mac SE memory management

[molten_software]

Hello world!

I'm using my Mac SE (4MB RAM, Farallon EtherMac SE) to participate in GlobalTalk this year. After getting the BlueSCSI configured with System 7.1 all is well and its running great over the internet.

I have a question about RAM though. I removed every control panel and extension that I could think of that would be irrelevant for this usage. (Color, PowerBook, AutoRemounter, every printer driver, Quicktime, etc.)

I'm guessing its Apple Internet Router using up the memory, but after boot, with no software running, the system is using 2.5-2.9MB of RAM with 1MB free. That's enough to run some apps, SimpleText, PhotoShop 1.0, MacPaint, etc. but Hypercard, etc. need a lil more than 1MB to open.

Is there anything else I can do to use less memory or is this typical of running network software? I could have sworn I used RamDoubler on this machine in the past, but looking into it, it was designed for 030 machines with way more RAM, and came out way after the SE in 1994. I'm not sure what I was thinking about.

Thanks!

(PS, I'm assuming I should be running System 6 on the SE but I don't know enough about AIR to set it up from scratch yet)

 

[robin-fo]

You could try to allocate less memory to the routing and zone tables. The setting is inside the Internet Router Application.

 

[JDW]

Reduce or disable the Disk Cache in the Memory Control Panel.
After that, give RAM CHARGER a try.

 

[naruse]

+1 to what @JDW suggests -- also check http://www.applefool.com/se30/ (long read but worth it) -- you might want to try working with system 7.0.1 basically uses less ram with the features that 7+ has

 

[molten_software]

You could try to allocate less memory to the routing and zone tables. The setting is inside the Internet Router Application.

I'll take a look at that!

Reduce or disable the Disk Cache in the Memory Control Panel.
After that, give RAM CHARGER a try.

OH! I actually increased the cache thinking it was like a swap file.. I'll disable that and see how it goes! Also maybe Ram charger was what I was thinking about.

 

[molten_software]

What I've tried so far:
Couldn't figure out how to turn the disk cache off, lowered it back down to 32kb.
Installed RAM Charger, crashed with unimplemented trap but still installed. It was reporting 1.8MB free/available while it was running. System was extremely laggy though.

Removed RAM Charger, changed the AIR config to use 512 entries in the routing table instead of 1024. This didn't seem to change free memory. System still felt laggy (mouse randomly pause then jump ahead)

Set the disk cache back to 512kb.

At the moment the system is showing 3mb used, 1mb free. Somehow it lets me open hypercard 2.4 now
I'm getting somewhere.

I can open kalleboo's GlobalTalk chat 0.9 now. Ethernet is too slow to connect but it is opening now. Not sure if disk cache is actually swapping memory allowing the larger application to load now.

I'm going to see what I can do to build a fresh image with 7.0 rather than 7.1. I was using 7.0 up until I started messing with globaltalk. I just used the prebuilt 7.1 image and built off of it.