Old Mac Memory Confusion

[chuckwagen]

My wife brought home an LCIII her school was throwing out(they got eMacs-with combos!) and a nice 12" RGB monitor. The computer only had the standard 4MB RAM, so it was difficult to run anything off an old 300i ext. CDROM I hooked up to it. I bought a 32 MB chip for it. After restart, "about this macintosh" screen and RAM Doubler control panels both show: Built in Memory 36,864K; Total Memory 12,288K.
Shouldn't the total memory be higher? I have OS 7.5.5 installed; it still has the original 80 MB HD. Thanks, Chuckwagen

[swhitset]

I can't remember the specs on the LC III but I know the LC II only supported something like 10 -12 MBs of Ram.  That may be whatr you are up against.

I'll see if I can find the specs ...

Steve

Just checked... the LC III should support 36 MB's so ... That's not the problem.
 
 [ 02-09-2003, 05:32 PM: Message edited by: swhitset ]

[Epaminondas]

Chuckwagen,

Vague, dim human memory . . .

Check out the memory control panel.  Something about 24- vs. 32- bit addressing.  Vague memory - possibly wrong - is that 24-bit could not address greater than 12 MB of RAM, but was more compatible with earlier Macintosh programs.  32-bit was the more modern option.  Or something like that.

MacOSs later than 7.1 or 7.5.5 or so no longer had switching this as an option in the memory control panel.  It was a transitional thing.

As I recall, anyway.

A nice machine.  We paid a pretty penney for them once - around 1993 or so.

Oh - do you plan on running MacOS X on this machine?

Good luck,

Epaminondas
 
 [ 02-09-2003, 06:00 PM: Message edited by: Epaminondas ]

[kelly]

Looks like 8 MBs of RAM .  

http://www.unh.edu/cis-workstation/webdoc/14.648.html

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=6784

http://new.lowendmac.com/lc/lciii.shtml

[Bernie]

A very  generous TS member sent me some 72 pin Simms (80 ns) that will work just fine on your LC III    Give me a  hoot and there yours. Click on the link below.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_...mac_lc_iii.html

[chuckwagen]

Epam, I will try the 32 bit addressing in the morning- I know it's set to 24 right now. Bernie- thanks, but I'm sure the chip's OK. It's from DMS.
I'm sticking with 7.5.5! We had an LCII with 7.6 and it was ssllooww...

[Epaminondas]

chuckwagen,

Kelly is, of course, correct.  Thank you for shaking some of the cobwebs out of what I use in place of a mind, m'sieur Kelly!

A conjecture about your situation (i.e., I'll dig myself into a deeper hole :-):

You are likely seeing a combination of the 24-bit addressing matter plus RAMDoubler on board.  This would apply, as I recollect, if your OS is running about 4MB of RAM.  After switchihng over to 32-bit addressing, you should show as having something like Total Memory - 68 MB.  (RAMDoubler does not double the RAM used by the OS).

A note - MacOS 7.5.5 likes at least RamDoubler 1.6a. If you have an earlier version on board, you may wish to upgrade.

Good luck -

Epaminondas

[kelly]

Can't beat this.  

Resources For The Older Macintosh

http://w3.trib.com/~dwood/oldmac.shtml

[chuckwagen]

Everything's working well with 32 bit addressing on. What a great little computer for my daughter! All she needs is a 13" monitor for her CD's. I'm sure I can find one lying around work somewhere...

[Epaminondas]

chuckwagen,

MacOS 7.5.5 is one of the great Mac operating systems.  Made my living on it for about five years, right up to December 31, 1999 when Apple - and our developers - discontinued support.  Went directly to MacOS 8.6, bypassing 8.0, 8.1, 8.5 and 8.5.1.  Plan to do the same with MacOS XI!

7.5.5 wasn't broke and we didn't have any wish to fix it.

There are, however, a few idiosyncracies of which you might wish to be aware:

(1) The Finder heap memory as shipped with 7.5.5 is insufficient.  You can do the ResEdit hack, but if you are uncomfortable with ResEdit, just run Finder Heap Fix 1.0.1, and you should be fine.

(I believe that this was fixed in the shipped version of 7.6.1).

(2) Individual applications - including those in the OS 7.5.5 control panels and extensions folders -  in addition to third party applications - should have their memory allocation increased by 23 kb using the the "Get info" command.

(3)  Open Transport 1.1.1 should be upgraded to  Open Transport 1.1.2 - this contained both speed and bug fixes.

(4) You probably won't be needing to go into this kind of detail, but the best book out there on Mac OS 7.5 of which I am aware is David Pogue's Macintosh 7.5 for Dummies.  This was written prior to 7.5.5, however, so it does not include the above information.  Still, it is an excellent foundation for OS 7.5.

(5) Both ClarisWorks 2 and ClarisWorks 3 should run fine on that set-up.  

(6) If you are going to do any web surfing, running text-only is going to speed you up mightily. www.iCab.de might just work for you. Don't forget to pick up a free copy of Disinfectant 3.7.1 anti-virus software, at a minimum - it has not been updated since 1997, but it may be better than nothing.

(7) If you find your LC III sluggish, you should be able to increase its speed by as much as 2-10X by running it as a bootable RAM Disk. You should use a battery back-up for that, however.

Have fun,

Epaminondas
___________________________________________
 
 [ 02-11-2003, 11:24 AM: Message edited by: Epaminondas ]

[kelly]

One more.  

http://new.lowendmac.com/trouble/32bit.shtml