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Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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What's eating my RAM?
« on: January 18, 2012, 06:29:49 AM »
I was delighted to find this resource on the web for the Amiga.  First a bit of intro: I bought an Amiga 1000 when they first came out.  I then traded it for a 2000 when it came out.  I used it as my main machine until the mid 90's.  Now I want to bring it into the 21st century.

It originally had an A2088 Bridgeboard that I rarely used.  I then added an 8-Up memory board with 8 meg.  Last year I added an A2630 with 4 meg., a CD drive, a 2 gig. hard drive, a Deneb USB board, an Xsurf 3cc Ethernet board, and I upgraded everything to OS 3.9.  So far so good.

When I added the A2630, I jumpered out half the 8-Up board to keep the total of fast RAM at 8 meg.  I then discovered that the Bridgeboard wouldn't work with more than 6 meg. fast RAM installed so I removed the 8-Up entirely.  That's when the problems started.

Now when I boot, as soon as the WB screen appears, all of my fast RAM seems to be in use.  Avail shows 2 meg. of chip RAM (I also put in a Megachip 2000) and 4 meg. of fast RAM (all coming from the A2630), but only about 700 bytes of that are shown as free.

Is there a PC-like Task Manager program that will show me who's using all this RAM right out the gate?  Do I need some cryptic command in my startup-sequence?  What could be causing this?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I hope I've posted this to the correct forum.  If not, perhaps a moderator could move it wherever is more appropriate.  Thanks.
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline carvedeye

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2012, 10:00:47 AM »
Well i have amigaos 3.9 on my system (a1200t) and i have my desktop set at 256 colors which uses up a lot of fast ram so that could be one of the reasons, what resolution are you using on your desktop as this may also be the problem what are you using for your display?
A1200T: M1230XA 50Mhz 68030 w/64mb,DVDRom, 80gb hdd, Realtek LAN Card, Mediator LT4 + Radeon 9250 128mb(used for fast ram), Spider USB Card, Voodoo 3 3000 OS 3.9 +bb 1-3
 

Offline smf

Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #2 on: January 18, 2012, 10:37:32 AM »
check how many buffers you'r partitions have
 

Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #3 on: January 18, 2012, 08:19:23 PM »
Quote from: carvedeye;676387
Well i have amigaos 3.9 on my system (a1200t) and i have my desktop set at 256 colors which uses up a lot of fast ram so that could be one of the reasons, what resolution are you using on your desktop as this may also be the problem what are you using for your display?
Thanks for the reply.  I'm using NTSC Hi-Res interlaced, 724x482, 16 colors.  I'm displaying that on an ancient 19" Ramtek CRT with a long-persistence phosphor.  It looks quite lovely, although one of my projects is to switch to a flat panel - but that's another story.

Anyway, after checking this, it says I have 1 meg. of chip free and 9 bytes of fast mem free.  After switching to Lo-Res, I got 720 bytes fast ram free, 4,193,584 max, 4,194,304 in use.  So I don't think the display mode is the trouble.

I then tried a "boot with no startup-sequnce".  This drops me into something called the "ROM OS".  Doing an avail here, I get

            avail      in-use      max
chip    2007312    88816   2096128
fast    3322576   871728   4194304

So next I tried putting the 8-up board back in.  This time (still in hi-res mode) I get:

            avail      in-use       max
chip    1755920   340208   2096128
fast    3762112  4626496   8388608

That looks right (I guess).  8 meg. total fast ram, four of which come from the 2630 and 4 from the 8-Up.  I can now do stuff like load the Ethernet but now the Bridgeboard won't start (because of the 6 meg. fast RAM limitation).  Anyway, it looks like the problem is still there.  I'm guessing that a freshly booted 2000 running no programs other than WB should not already be consuming 4 meg of fast ram, even running OS 3.9, yes?

Unless anyone has a better idea (there's nothing like Task Manager for the Amiga?) I guess my next step will be to try pulling the Deneb board and then the Xsurf board to see if one of them is hogging my ram.
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #4 on: January 18, 2012, 08:20:54 PM »
"check how many buffers you'r partitions have"

I'm sorry, but one of my problems is simply remembering what all the Amiga commands were.  Can you tell me how I would check this?  Thanks.
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline zipper

Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2012, 09:02:08 PM »
type addbuffers in Shell or CLI window
 

Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #6 on: January 18, 2012, 09:09:33 PM »
Thanks!  I have two 3.5" hard drives - the original 105 meg. Quantum Prodrive and a new 2 gig drive.  They both report 30 buffers.  Is that bad?
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline zipper

Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #7 on: January 18, 2012, 09:29:18 PM »
No it's the default, taking just 30k total so it's something else; should look at your startup-sequence. This could help,too - but it isn't too good behaving in all cases:
http://main.aminet.net/pub/aminet/util/boot/startmem.lha (Aminet seems to be down)
 

Offline Thorham

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #8 on: January 18, 2012, 09:48:22 PM »
Quote from: zipper;676466
should look at your startup-sequence
And the user-startup file, and the contents of the wbstartup drawer in SYS:. All these contain things that get run at boot time, and there could be some things in there that eat memory (quite likely, actually).
 

Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2012, 01:47:01 AM »
Thanks for the pointer to startmem.  Sounds like what I need.  Aminet still seems to be down but I found a copy here: http://piotrkosoft.net/pub/amiga/aminet/util/boot/
 
 It un-lha'ed OK, but when I type "execute startmem_install", it said
 
 "(complete: Unknown command
 (complete failed return code 10"
 
 and then just returns to the command prompt.
 
 Any idea what that's all about?
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #10 on: January 19, 2012, 01:49:14 AM »
The wbstartup has three things in it: AmiDock, DefIcons, and rawbinfo.

startup-sequence is pretty standard:

PsdLoadModule DEVS:input.device QUIET ;Added by Poseidon-Installer
; $VER: Startup-Sequence_HardDrive 45.1 (25.11.00)
; Startup-Sequence for hard drive systems

If Exists C:IDEFix
  C:IDEFix
EndIf

C:SetPatch QUIET

C:Version >NIL:
C:AddBuffers >NIL: DF0: 15
FailAt 21

C:MakeDir RAM:T RAM:Clipboards RAM:ENV RAM:ENV/Sys
C:Copy >NIL: ENVARC: RAM:ENV ALL NOREQ

Resident >NIL: C:Assign PURE
Resident >NIL: C:Execute PURE

Assign >NIL: ENV: RAM:ENV
Assign >NIL: T: RAM:T
Assign >NIL: CLIPS: RAM:Clipboards
Assign >NIL: REXX: S:
Assign >NIL: PRINTERS: DEVS:Printers
Assign >NIL: KEYMAPS: DEVS:Keymaps
Assign >NIL: LOCALE: SYS:Locale
Assign >NIL: LIBS: SYS:Classes ADD
Assign >NIL: HELP: LOCALE:Help DEFER

BindDrivers
C:Mount >NIL: DEVS:DOSDrivers/~(#?.info)

C:LoadMonDrvs

;IF EXISTS DEVS:Monitors
;  IF EXISTS DEVS:Monitors/VGAOnly
;    DEVS:Monitors/VGAOnly
;  EndIF

;  C:List >NIL: DEVS:Monitors/~(#?.info|VGAOnly) TO T:M LFORMAT "DEVS:Monitors/%s"
;  Execute T:M
;  C:Delete >NIL: T:M
;EndIF

SetEnv Language "english"
SetEnv Workbench $Workbench
SetEnv Kickstart $Kickstart
UnSet Workbench
UnSet Kickstart

C:AddDataTypes REFRESH QUIET
C:IPrefs
C:ConClip

Path >NIL: RAM: C: SYS:Utilities SYS:Rexxc SYS:System S: SYS:Prefs SYS:WBStartup SYS:Tools SYS:Tools/Commodities

SYS:System/REXXMast >NIL:

IF EXISTS S:User-Startup
  Execute S:User-Startup
EndIF

Resident Execute REMOVE
Resident Assign REMOVE

C:LoadWB
EndCLI >NIL:

---------------------------------------------------------------

And this is my user-startup:

;BEGIN AsimCDFS
echo "Mounting AsimCDFS..."
assign AsimCDFS: "SYS:AsimCDFS"
assign AsimCDFS_Buffer: "FS3:AsimCDFS_Buffer"
mount >NIL: CD0:
;END AsimCDFS
;BEGIN Genesis
assign AmiTCP: "FS3:Internet/Genesis"
;END Genesis
;BEGIN ViNCEd
; Remove the ; default console handler CON:
; Entfernen Sie das ; die Standardkonsole CON: verwenden wollen.

;SetVNC Quiet Mount Override as CON:

; Remove the ; gadgets with new functions from ViNCEd that can be set with prefs tool ViNCEd.
; Entfernen Sie das ; Fähigkeiten von ViNCEd in Texteingabefeldern wollen. Diese konfigurieren Sie
; auch mit dem Voreinsteller ViNCEd.

;StringSnip >NIL: INSTALL

; Remove the ; assigns in pattern matching commands.
; Entfernen Sie das ; Unterstützung der mehrfach Assign in Dateinamensmustern wünschen.

;TrueMultiAssigns
;END ViNCEd
;BEGIN Poseidon
ENVARC:PsdStackloader
;END Poseidon
;BEGIN MUI
if exists "QDH0:MUI"
   assign MUI: "QDH0:MUI"
   if exists MUI:Libs
      assign add LIBS: MUI:Libs
   endif
   if exists MUI:Locale
      assign add LOCALE: MUI:Locale
   endif
   version >nil: exec.library 39
   if not warn
      if exists MUI:Docs
         if exists HELP:dummy ; do not remove
         endif                ; this entry!
         assign add HELP: MUI:Docs
      endif
   endif
endif
;END MUI
« Last Edit: January 19, 2012, 01:53:10 AM by Michele31415 »
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline itix

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #11 on: January 19, 2012, 06:01:54 AM »
Check your ENVARC: and delete old prefs files you don't need anymore.

But if you are really having Poseidon, MUI and OS 3.9 installed it sounds about right. You could get rid of 3.9 and use Kickstart 3.1 instead, though.
My Amigas: A500, Mac Mini and PowerBook
 

Offline J-Golden

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #12 on: January 19, 2012, 07:15:51 AM »
I agree with Itix, those programs will eat quite a bit of memory.  Going back to OS3.1 will be the easiest way to free up memory.

That and getting away from Ami Dock.  Never liked it anyway...
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Offline Michele31415Topic starter

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #13 on: January 19, 2012, 07:23:39 AM »
"if you are really having Poseidon, MUI and OS 3.9 installed it sounds about right"

Oh! [sheepish look]  So is this one of these cases where the reason I can't find what's wrong because there isn't anything wrong?  I didn't realize that those items might actually use up that much memory.

Maybe the answer then is to jumper the 8-Up board to provide just 2 meg.  That would give me a total of 6 meg which would still let me use the Bridgeboard (which I'm using to help debug another retro project - an old 386-SX) but still provide 2 meg to run the Amiga side.

Or is there some code I can run to fool the system into thinking it's only got a certain amount of fast ram?  Then I could just leave the 8-Up board as is.
Active: B2000 4.4, A2630, GVP 2000 HC+8, DKB 2632, SCSI2SD, Gotek, Deneb USB, XSurf 3cc, CD ROM, Megachip 2000, ECS Agnus, Denise, OS 3.9, GVP Spectrum EGS 28/24, Silicon Springs GOMF
Retired: A2088, 8-Up, A2090a, Oktagon 2008, Kitchen Sync
Busted: A2091
 

Offline matthey

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Re: What's eating my RAM?
« Reply #14 on: January 19, 2012, 07:25:29 AM »
Scout is probably the best Amiga task and resource snooping program...

http://aminet.net/util/moni/Scout_os3.lha

Mounting CD0: could use some memory if ACTIVATE=1.

Quote from: itix;676503
Check your ENVARC: and delete old prefs files you don't need anymore.


Or installing Happy Env (recommended) will free up more memory...

http://aminet.net/util/sys/envhandler.lha