[6116]

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but after the first time Classic starts up, couldn't it write its ram contents to a file and just read in the from that everytime, instead of actually going through the startup process? Weren't there some powerbooks that did something similar to this? It seems like the only annoying thing about Classic is how long it takes to start up, and this would take care of that.

[gunnar]

That would seem very possible. VirtualPC 4 does a similar thing. I would also like to see an aqua theme for classic and passing open applications to the dock not the old apple menu for consistency. Apple wouldn't have to sell 9.x with the theme or changes. It would only function in X. There'd be no reason to stay in classic, it would just make it more seamless.

[foobars]

Originally posted by 6116:
<STRONG>Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but after the first time Classic starts up, couldn't it write its ram contents to a file and just read in the from that everytime, instead of actually going through the startup process? Weren't there some powerbooks that did something similar to this? It seems like the only annoying thing about Classic is how long it takes to start up, and this would take care of that.</STRONG>

There are a number of reasons why this can't happen. The largest one being that Classic isn't a program so much as it is a front end to a much larger system. Remember that OS9 isn't emulated in X. It runs natively one the hardware, unlike VPC.

[ink]

Originally posted by 6116:
<STRONG>Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but after the first time Classic starts up, couldn't it write its ram contents to a file and just read in the from that everytime, instead of actually going through the startup process? Weren't there some powerbooks that did something similar to this? It seems like the only annoying thing about Classic is how long it takes to start up, and this would take care of that.</STRONG>

That would work if you never booted back into OS9. If you were allowed to do this, and then you rebootd the machine to watch a DVD or whatever, then the filesystems will all need to be checked (risking possible corruption, etc.) -- and then when Classic is started again you could have all sorts of problems (especially if you ran Software Update in 9.1 while in 9.1).

OSX could shut down Classic when the 'switch startup disk' panel is used, I suppose. (speaking of which, who wants a startup choice like PowerPC Linux give you, instead of fully booting into one OS and then rebooting into the other?)

[maxintosh]

Another reason this would be challenging to say the least is the fact that Classic thinks it has 1 GB of RAM automatically. Writing 1 GB to the hard disk would not only consume vast amounts of space, it would also take a very long time.


Maxintosh

[dogzilla]

Originally posted by maxintosh:
<STRONG>Another reason this would be challenging to say the least is the fact that Classic thinks it has 1 GB of RAM automatically. Writing 1 GB to the hard disk would not only consume vast amounts of space, it would also take a very long time.


Maxintosh</STRONG>

Well...wait a sec. Isn't that 1GB of RAM (or what's used anyway) *already* on disk? You'd just write out what's already in memory. And writing contents of memory to disk has to be reasonably fast, as we all use it every day (OSX's virtual memory/paging).

I don't know that this isn't technically feasible. There are other systems that do this, at least partially.

[Craig R. Arko]

Originally posted by dogzilla:
<STRONG>

Well...wait a sec. Isn't that 1GB of RAM (or what's used anyway) *already* on disk? You'd just write out what's already in memory. And writing contents of memory to disk has to be reasonably fast, as we all use it every day (OSX's virtual memory/paging).

I don't know that this isn't technically feasible. There are other systems that do this, at least partially.</STRONG>

Nope, there's only 80 MB (or so) on disk already. Allocated VM doesn't create swap unless it needs to.

I suspect the reason this will never happen is because of the bad time with the iBook/PowerBook 'save memory on shutdown' bug. Remember, they had something like this and it was hosing machines so badly Apple just released an 'update' that disabled the option. They wouldn't want to get burned twice.