Low End Mac's Online Tech Journal

RAM Charger 8

Case Study #1: Mac II 

In early December, MacWeek announced a new version of RAM Charger. Version 8 would be fully compatible with Mac OS 8. As I would discover, it was also a big improvement over RAM Charger 3.


Figure 1

On Thursday, December 4, 1997, I downloaded the RAM Charger 3 demo and installed it on my faithful Mac II. This vintage Mac has 8 MB of RAM and is used as a web and mail list server. I'd wanted to add FTP capability, but with under 600 KB free, that wasn't an option. The first figure shows how tight memory was before I installed RAM Charger. (Neither virtual memory nor RAM Doubler are options with 68000-based and 68020-based Macs, so my only alternative would be more RAM.)


Figure 2

The second figure shows how RAM Charger 3 freed almost 1,500 KB. The System itself increased in size by 64 KB, showing RAM Charger has a very small footprint for such a sophisticated program. Additional fine tuning has allowed me to decrease Macjordomo68K size even further, as the next figure shows.


Figure 3

RAM Charger 3 left a lot of room for custom tweaking of the system. In fact, if it had a drawback, it was the amount of user interaction required. Each time you launched a new application, it would ask if and how you wanted it optimized. For the average computer user, this makes RAM Charger more intimidating and gives RAM Doubler a strong convenience advantage.


Figure 4

But on Monday, December 8, 1997, I downloaded RAM Charger 8. The folks at Jump Development have automated how memory is optimized based on an extensive list of applications and several years experience with dynamic memory allocation. They've also replaced "About This Macintosh..." with "More About This Mac." The new display puts short strokes at the end of the memory bar for each RAM charged application.

(BTW, I realize that NetPresenz can serve Web pages just like MacHTTP does. I haven't had the time to learn how yet, but I intend to.)

In February 1998, I moved everything from the Mac II to a IIfx.

Other Case Studies

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