AtariSociety Posted March 22, 2023 Share Posted March 22, 2023 Just curious for those with TT030 and have some TT Ram, what apps or games are you using that utilize that memory? I see the stock Atari TT Ram board can use 4MB to 16MB, and these newer devices like Storm with TONS of memory, but what have you all found that could use and needed this extra memory. Just curious. TJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted March 22, 2023 Share Posted March 22, 2023 I've always wondered that. Pretty sure MiNT can set stuff to use the 32bit fast RAM. I'm not sure how it decides which should be using that chunk or not though. Seems the Falcon is in the same boat, if you have a CT60e, you'll have up to 512mb of fast ram with up to 14mb of ST RAM. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian1 Posted March 23, 2023 Share Posted March 23, 2023 I'm not sure how TOS knows, but I think it's something in the Control Panel or DESKTOP.INF or something like that. I can't remember. I do know if you use an alternative desktop like Neodesk, there is a radio button in one of the configuration windows (not sure where) where you tell NeoDesk to load X.PRG in TT RAM instead of ST RAM. Of course, the program has to be a cleanly written GEM program to take advantage of this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariSociety Posted March 23, 2023 Author Share Posted March 23, 2023 7 hours ago, atarian1 said: I'm not sure how TOS knows, but I think it's something in the Control Panel or DESKTOP.INF or something like that. I can't remember. I do know if you use an alternative desktop like Neodesk, there is a radio button in one of the configuration windows (not sure where) where you tell NeoDesk to load X.PRG in TT RAM instead of ST RAM. Of course, the program has to be a cleanly written GEM program to take advantage of this. I see you are in NorCal. Where abouts? I am about 1 hour from Sacramento. Wish there was an Atari group around here. Sac has a great Amiga club but no Atari that I know of. TJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikro Posted March 23, 2023 Share Posted March 23, 2023 (edited) TOS is located in ROM. So that's that. Then you have various apps which may or may not be TT RAM compatible. You can control their TT RAM behaviour by the PRG flags and yes, usually it's controlled via a CPX or a command line tool. That way you can tell whether it should: - load into ST RAM and allocate from ST RAM - load into ST RAM but allocate memory from TT RAM - load into TT RAM but allocate memory from ST RAM - load into TT RAM and allocate from TT RAM The biggest issue usually is that app authors use the bss segment's space as video/audio buffers (which must be in ST RAM) and/or they call simple Malloc(amount) insteam of MxAlloc(amount, ST/TT RAM). So the optimistic answer is that any game/app can take advantage from TT RAM, the pessimistic answer is that unless officially supported, it's up to you to find out. Edited March 23, 2023 by mikro 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted March 23, 2023 Share Posted March 23, 2023 5 hours ago, mikro said: TOS is located in ROM. So that's that. Then you have various apps which may or may not be TT RAM compatible. You can control their TT RAM behaviour by the PRG flags and yes, usually it's controlled via a CPX or a command line tool. That way you can tell whether it should: - load into ST RAM and allocate from ST RAM - load into ST RAM but allocate memory from TT RAM - load into TT RAM but allocate memory from ST RAM - load into TT RAM and allocate from TT RAM The biggest issue usually is that app authors use the bss segment's space as video/audio buffers (which must be in ST RAM) and/or they call simple Malloc(amount) insteam of MxAlloc(amount, ST/TT RAM). So the optimistic answer is that any game/app can take advantage from TT RAM, the pessimistic answer is that unless officially supported, it's up to you to find out. Many years ago I was offered a 'free' Mega ST. Only, I had to figure out how to get this guy's spreadsheet off of it and onto a PC. It kept running out of memory, trying to copy it. So I brang along my TT, which at the time had 2mb of ST ram and 4mb of TT. Sti couldn't figure out how to get that data off, so never did get the Mega ST from him. But at the time I couldn't figure out how to utilize that TT RAM, as that would have worked so that I could get data from an ACSI to a SCSI drive. (Memory is a bit fuzzy, but pretty sure that was what I was trying at the time.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian1 Posted March 24, 2023 Share Posted March 24, 2023 15 hours ago, AtariSociety said: I see you are in NorCal. Where abouts? I am about 1 hour from Sacramento. Wish there was an Atari group around here. Sac has a great Amiga club but no Atari that I know of. TJ SF Bay Area. I haven't gotten around to the SLCC Zoom meetings yet as I'm very busy right now. Hopefully one day when things calm down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariSociety Posted March 24, 2023 Author Share Posted March 24, 2023 8 hours ago, atarian1 said: SF Bay Area. I haven't gotten around to the SLCC Zoom meetings yet as I'm very busy right now. Hopefully one day when things calm down. Not familiar with SLCC. Is that an Atari group that does zoom based meetings? Do tell.... TJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian1 Posted March 25, 2023 Share Posted March 25, 2023 17 hours ago, AtariSociety said: Not familiar with SLCC. Is that an Atari group that does zoom based meetings? Do tell.... TJ San Leandro Computer Club https://slcc.wdgeo.com/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariSociety Posted March 25, 2023 Author Share Posted March 25, 2023 8 hours ago, atarian1 said: San Leandro Computer Club https://slcc.wdgeo.com/ Super cool. Website book-marked. thx! tj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariSociety Posted March 26, 2023 Author Share Posted March 26, 2023 Thanks everyone for answering my questions. TJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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