CompuServe Thread

Those of you who have Deep Thought (Alink) Version 2.30 (It seems to have come with the 1.1 Assembler and Lattice 3.03 C compiler) may have noted that there is a new switch called FASTER. You just put it at the end of the alink command line and Presto! the catatonia mode (extremely long pause while it "thinks things over" in RAM) all but disappears! This was mentioned over in the BADGE developers. No one has found any problems with using this switch. It has been specifically tested for: 1) Making sure that external reference checking is not skipped 2) Making sure that the compiled code is no bigger 3) Making sure that it cleans up after itself (memory allocation) The Word on this *undocumented* beauty is that it causes Alink to use a "saner" internal memory allocation scheme internally, so that it doesn't have to pump vast amounts of bilge while building the output (executable) file image as it does when you don't give this command. Why isn't it documented? Why isn't it the default? Who knows? If anyone finds any problem with it, please post it! Meanwhile, it seems that FASTER is an unmitigated blessing to those of us who shudder when the machine appears to "die" for long periods of time on large links when Alink goes into its "deep thought" mode. Be sure that you have Alink 2.30, though. Version 2.20 doesn't have this switch. You can check it out by typing "Alink ?" (no quotes, natch).