The "+44kb" hack on A500

[sharper]

I remember composing in ProTracker on A500 and when i ran out of memory i rebooted with no startup sequence, BUT I also ran a small hack called +44kb which added 44kb of free ram. What exactly did this hack do? Was it widespread?

/axel, sweden

[jlariv8957]

Hi,

The hack was simple: when amiga start the screen display is 4 colors (2bit planes) this utility was simply changing the depth of the screen to 2 colors (1 bit plane) so you recover the memory used by the second bitplane.As far as i know I still have this utility !

[zipper]

add21k, add44k ; drop bitplanes to 2-col?

[zipper]

..lost by one minute...

[Piru]

add36k.lzh

Code: [Select]

Add36k          Add36k is a very short utility that adds not only 21k, but
                36kB of ram to your free chip memory.
                This is done by removing a bitplane completely and reducing
                the other to only 50 pixels.
                FreeWare, source included
                Author : Alexander Rawass


...Read the source, luke... ;-)

[SamuraiCrow]

There was another not-so-hackish solution in the OS called CloseWB supported by MED 3.22 that would close the Workbench screen altogether to free up some chip ram.