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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: lauri.lotvonen on May 08, 2011, 09:51:36 AM

Title: Does a hard drive eat chip mem?
Post by: lauri.lotvonen on May 08, 2011, 09:51:36 AM

Ok, another weird problem with my A600 with an CF-HD =) :

I tried installing Fury of The Furries and Brian The Lion and always get the same error "not enough memory". It makes no difference if I boot to WB 2.05 or without the startup-sequence.

The A600 has only the basic 1mb chip mem, and I know that this causes a lot of hassle and I should get the chip mem upgrade.

But when I tried to boot the Fury of The Furries from floppies, I still got the  "not enough mem" error.
I removed the CF-HD and the game booted fine then. This bother's me a little, does a HD really eat away some memory even if a game is "cold booted" from a floppy?

Oh, and I have the basic kickstart 2.05 installed on my A600.

Title: Re: Does a hard drive eat chip mem?
Post by: Robert17 on May 08, 2011, 09:58:17 AM

Yes, having a hard disk fitted does use chip memory if you only have chip memory. I know it uses some memory for buffers at least.

Robert.

Title: Re: Does a hard drive eat chip mem?
Post by: futaura on May 08, 2011, 11:03:14 AM

Each partition on the HD has a certain amount of memory buffers assigned to it, which you can see (and temporarily change) using the addbuffers command.  The boot-time buffer sizes can be changed via HD partitioning software like HDToolbox.

If you want to boot the game from floppy with the HD still attached, hold down both mouse buttons on reboot to get to the boot menu and disable all the HD partitions.  When it boots it'll then be like the HD was not attached.

Title: Re: Does a hard drive eat chip mem?
Post by: J-Golden on May 08, 2011, 11:34:42 AM

And this type of problem would go away if ANY style of memory was added? I guess I'm asking if the HD buffers ONLY use CHIPMEM... So, er, does it?

Title: Re: Does a hard drive eat chip mem?
Post by: Karlos on May 08, 2011, 12:00:47 PM

Quote from: J-Golden;636510

And this type of problem would go away if ANY style of memory was added?  I uess I'm asking if the HD buffers ONLY use CHIPMEM...  So, er, does it?

The buffer allocation code just asks for whatever memory is available. Therefore, higher priority memory types will always be used in preference. If any FastRAM is fitted, it will be used instead of Chip RAM which is considered low priority. Normally, where Fast memory is available you only allocate Chip RAM to satisfy a particular need, such as a sprite, bitplane, copperlist or sound buffer or whatever.

Title: Re: Does a hard drive eat chip mem?
Post by: J-Golden on May 08, 2011, 12:11:57 PM

Ah, that makes sense.  Thanks Karlos.
 
BTW, I miss the killer Krusty the Clown Avatar you used to have :(

Title: Re: Does a hard drive eat chip mem?
Post by: lauri.lotvonen on May 08, 2011, 04:05:02 PM

It's strange that most of the games I tried to install to my A600
wont run, always the "not enough mem" error.
Leisure Suit Larry 5 ran just fine with the 1mb chip ram :lol:...
It would be cool to know what the original manual of, lets say
Fury Of The Furries says about how much you need ram to run the game from HD.

Title: Re: Does a hard drive eat chip mem?
Post by: runequester on May 08, 2011, 04:42:15 PM

With a few exceptions (Dungeon Master 2 f.x.) almost no OCS/ECS game required more than 1 meg of RAM, so just about any extra RAM would make life easier for a hard drive equipped machine.

Title: Re: Does a hard drive eat chip mem?
Post by: Karlos on May 08, 2011, 04:50:59 PM

Quote from: J-Golden;636514

BTW, I miss the killer Krusty the Clown Avatar you used to have :(

Erm... You sure you're not mixing me up with Kronos ?