CompuServe Thread

DP IV

8 messages in this thread
#19220From: NEIL GOLDSMITHMay 10, 1992 3:57 PM
I own an Amiga 2000 with 1 meg. I recently bought DP IV which requires 1 meg to run. When I load it in from my hard drive, I get the message not enought memory. I have around 600K after the startup sequence which is obviously not enough. When I close all my windows and delete all my extras that I have in my startup sequence, I am able to load it from my hard drive but the anim menu item is masked and unselectable. I can load DP IV from disk and it works fine, but I am unable to use all my files on the hard drive and I sacrifice the hard drive speed. Is there anything more I can do to make DP IV work fully from the hard drive, short of buying more memory?
#19225From: Jim OgilvieMay 11, 1992 1:52 AM
Neil… The answer to that question is really no. You can't make DPaint 4 work fully with a hard disk and one meg. You need to have very close to the full one megabyte of memory free in order to have animation menus unghosted and useable. The best advice would indeed be to get more memory. If you have a 2091 controller card or other controller card that supports additional memory, then you can add more memory inexpensively. Hard disk drivers, and hard disk partitions, along with PD utilities and other hard disk startup considerations, eat bits of memory. It's likely that this is what is happening. Jim
#19240From: NEIL GOLDSMITHMay 11, 1992 9:32 PM
Jim, Thanks for the advice. Funny thing — I called NewTek when I first got DP IV and I saw the anim menu was ghosted. I had thought something was wrong with it. They said that it should not be ghosted under any circumstances. I am 99% sure it is ghosted because I don't have enough memory, but they should know their product better than that. Can I ask for a little more advice? I am interested in buying an 030 processor for my 2000, and I think a memory, processor, controller package looks appealing. If I was to add a memory board now, would I be able to add the processor, mem, controller package later and still have them all compatible? If it is product dependent, can you tell me some boards that you know of that are compatible? thanks alot
#19244From: Jim OgilvieMay 12, 1992 12:52 AM
Neil… As I understand it, you have a controller card for your hard drive already, so you don't need another. If it's the Commodore 2091, you can add two megabytes of RAM to it. Then all you really need is an accellerator card, many of the ones available come with their own memory expansion on board. There are many ways to go. You can get an accellerator card alone as I suggested above, or ditch the controller you have now and go for a complete all in one controller combo. It's best to invest in a solution that goes one way or the other. People have had problems having multiple controller cards in the same machines, depending on what they want. If you want your existing controller card to stick around because it has memory expansion capabilities, and you end up buying an 'all in one' solution, there is no guarantee that they will all work together. However, I am not aware of any situations where a memory or accellerator card did not work with any given controller card. You can be fairly safe in assuming that almost any memory card or accellerator will work with the hard drive controller you have NOW, but trying to make two cards with hard disk controllers on them be happy together in the same machine MIGHT be a problem. The best thing to do is identify the hardware you want, and then ask us here specifically about whether it will work with what you have. Be as detailed as you can (model names and numbers) of the cards you want and the cards you have. There is likely someone watching this thread that will be able to offer some concrete advice based on past experience. Jim
#19253From: NEIL GOLDSMITHMay 12, 1992 8:47 PM
Jim, Thanks alot for the information. That is quite helpful. Well, I assessed my financial situation and I determined that An 030 is further into the fut future than I thought, but I really need to add more memory now. I don't have a controller that allows memory expansion, so I would need to get a memory board. can you recomeend a good board that I can populate with ram chips as I need to? I own an Amiga 2000. I might in the future get the mega-chip 2000, so if there are any boards that aren't compatible with that I would like to steer clear. THANKS, Neil
#19256From: Jim OgilvieMay 12, 1992 9:29 PM
Neil… You'll likely find that just about all the memory boards are compatible with the Megachip. The Megachip, by the way, is a NICE little thing to have. You'll certainly never regret it! The only recommendation as far as a memory board that I can make, is to NOT get the Commodore 2058. The reason I say that is, Commodore designed this board so that it is expandable in 2,4,8 megabyte allotments. This means that if you want to just start off with 2 megabytes of ram, and then add another 2, then another 2, you can't do it. After your first 4 megabytes of expansion you need to add an additional 4. Most other 3rd party 8MB memory boards (yes, definitely get an 8MB type board or similar) will allow you to populate them in 2MB chunks, which is the best way to go for your configuration, methinks. Have a look around in the popular Amiga magazines and check out what's available, or drop into a local Amiga dealer if you have one. It's best, if you can, to buy from a local dealer and let him/her install the memory for you. That way, if any of the memory chips are defective or you aren't a moderately skilled person with memory chips, you won't run the risk of absorbing the cost of dead chips. It's not a HARD thing to do to install them, but I've actually had one bad memory chip that I bought from a dealer and told him I would install them myself. One chip was definitely bad, and the dealer was kind enough to replace it, no questions asked. I was lucky. Jim
#19271From: Wayne ColeMay 13, 1992 8:39 PM
Jim, I have a GVP serie II SCSI Ram card partially populated with 16 bit RAM and a GVP Combo 33 MHz card with 8 meg of 32 bit ram that live together quite nicely. The only program that will not run on my set up under either 2.04 or 1.3.2 is DirOpus rev 3.4.1 (latest). Innovatronics claims I am the only one with Opus crash problems and seems not to test the cases I setn them sao I don't know if it is my machine or Opus. So I use SID instead:^} Other than that – no problems! wmc
#19231From: Jonathan BlackwellMay 11, 1992 11:13 AM
Got to get the memory bud. 1 MB is the "minimum" requirement for running, want the extras? – Get the memory. -Jonathan