[mkral]

I purchased a copy of Connectix Ram Doubler 9 for my old powerbook. I got rid of the powerbook & must have gotten rid of the Ram Doubler install disk as well. I just got my brothers old imac (Lime 333Mhz) and have been updating the software. The Ram is maxed out on it (96megs, IIRC) and I have OS 9.2.2 on it. I went to install Ram Doubler, but can't find the original disk for it. I still have the 9.0.1 updater, but it won't work without the original application installed.

I found it online for about $10, but the specs say that it calls for OS 8.0 to 9.1. Does anyone have experience with trying to install Ram Doubler 9 on OS 9.2.2? Or does anyone have a disk image of OS 9 that they'd be willing to send me to try it out?

Thanks in advance for any help,

[macmike42]

Just set the virtual memory to twice the amount of physical RAM. RAM Doubler was definitely faster than classic's virtual memory when it first came out, but always led to an unstable system after hours of use. As of Mac OS 9.1, I'm not even sure that RAM Doubler was faster.

[mkral]

I just read an article on "speeding up your Mac" (OS 9) & it told me to turn off virtual memory. Thanks for the tip, I'll try to put it back on.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by mkral:
I just read an article on "speeding up your Mac" (OS 9) & it told me to turn off virtual memory. Thanks for the tip, I'll try to put it back on.

Since OS 8.5 turning on VM can actually make it faster, just set it to 1 meg higher than your real RAM.

[mkral]

Twice the amount of my Ram or 1 meg higher than my ram. I seem to have 2 opinions here. Any ideas on the pros or cons on these two approaches?

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by mkral:
Twice the amount of my Ram or 1 meg higher than my ram. I seem to have 2 opinions here. Any ideas on the pros or cons on these two approaches?

1 Meg higher is the correct way to do it if you don't want your computer to be slow as hell.

If you have 96 megs of RAM set your VM to 97 megs.

[mkral]

Thanks!

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Before you say that will only give me one more meg of RAM, if you look at how much RAM apps take with No VM on and then compare to how much they take when it is ON you will see it is much less.

[Big Mac]

The ideal OS for an iMac that is low on RAM is 8.6. OS 9 is a hog in comparison, and it offers few features in exchange for the extra memory footprint.

[macmike42]

Under OS 9.2.2 (and lower):

If you don't have enough RAM for your applications, increasing virtual memory to double your effective RAM is about as high as you can go without having your system grinding to a total halt when you use it all. Once you run out of real RAM, either way, things will get slow.

If you DO have enough RAM for you applications, turn virtual memory on to 1 MB above your real RAM. The reason you need to do this is that if you disable to virtual memory system in OS 9 completely, all shared libraries (ie AppleScript, QuickTime, OpenGL, Carbon) will have to load each time a new application uses them, making all applications use much more RAM than they would need if virtual memory were enabled. With virtually memory enabled, each shared library loads only once, and all applications share the single instances. This isn't really the reason they are called shared libraries, but it is one benefit that OS 9 gains from having a VM system.

This is an over-simplification, but if you don't believe it, check the memory requirements (in the OS 9 Get Info window) with virtual memory enabled and disabled. Even Calculator and SimpleText have (slightly) higher requirements with VM disabled.

Under OS X:

If all of your free RAM isn't used, the operating system isn't doing its job! (Or you just restarted.) Either way, buy more RAM!

[tooki]

Originally posted by mkral:
... I just got my brothers old imac (Lime 333Mhz) and have been updating the software. The Ram is maxed out on it (96megs, IIRC) and I have OS 9.2.2 on it. ...

You can put up to 512MB (2x256MB) of RAM into that iMac.

tooki

[mkral]

cool, thanks for the explanation. I'll turn VM on & thanks also for the tip on increasing the memory, I'll pick another stick.