RAMLOS.THD --- Copyright 1987 by Phil Wheeler An original compilation of Compuserve Model 100 Forum messages for use by Forum members only. New users are often puzzled when the amount of free memory is less than they expect. In extreme cases, members have reported having less than 10K of memory free in a 32K machine with nothing on the menu! This set of messages culminates in a tutorial on how to cure the problem. In this regard, the files FILEN.100 (DL 7) and FILEN.200 (DL 10) are very helpful for memory management. <> Message range: 143365 to 146731 Dates: 3/18/87 to 4/28/87 Fm: Don Wallbaum 70007,1413 To: Tony Anderson 76703,4062 BTW....what causes the memory loss??? Just onna those things?? Fm: Tony Anderson 76703,4062 To: Don Wallbaum 70007,1413 Any one of a number of things. An unsaved BASIC program in the "NONAME" buffer; a scrap of data in the Paste Buffer; a bit of reserved RAM area due to HIMEM being moved; a misplaced number in the Reserved RAM area; the phase of the moon; etc... Fm: Don Wallbaum 70007,1413 To: Tony Anderson 76703,4062 Ah, I _knew_ I shouldnt have mixed the eye of newt with the batwing tea I had! Anyway, for whatever reason, my RAM bank is back happily to 19590. thanx for the help. BTW -- am I correct in thinking a cold restart would have accomplished the same thing? I saved the procedure, but Ive found that things lost on a disk are just as lost as paper lost in a filing cabinet. Fm: Tony Anderson 76703,4062 To: Don Wallbaum 70007,1413 Yeah, a cold start would have accomplished the same thing, unless there was something seriously wrong with the RAM chip. But it's like getting surgery for a head cold; or swatting flies with a sledge-hammer. A case of overkill, unless absolutely necessary and nothing else works. (cold starts have often been referred to as "computer brainwashing") (grin) Now, as to rationale, CLEAR empties the Paste Buffer and variable scratchpad NEW empties the unnamed program Buffer MAXFILES=1 resets the internal I/O buffers to 1 (you could also set to zero, and recover use of an additional 256 bytes, but 1 is the default value, and many programs assume 1 buffer available for I/O CLEAR256,MAXRAM moves the HIMEM pointer back up to MAXRAM, killing any ML programs in high memory, or area reserved for a ML program. (sometimes we forget they're up there) (best of luck finding the info again, when you need it.) (grin) Fm: Don Wallbaum 70007,1413 To: Tony Anderson 76703,4062 Helpful as always. thanx so much for the primer. Fm: Curtis Karnow 73047,3120 To: [F] Tony Anderson 76703,406 I know I've seen the answer around before., but I forgot to copy it: So here we go: where's my missing RAM? Adding up files don't total 19k+ on my T200. I've tried: CLEAR in basic; emptying the TEXT buffer; CLEAR 256,MAXRAM in BASIC (which I need to do, as I use TS_RAndom). What else? About 3k missing. which to we little folk seems like a lot.... Fm: Tony Anderson 76703,4062 To: Curtis Karnow 73047,3120 There are also paste, editing and BASIC buffers that you need to clear, by going into BASIC and typing NEW; and there may be I/O buffers, which you can reclaim by setting MAXFILES back to the default value of 1, with MAXFILES=1 There is also the 4K or so of reserved system RAM, which is used by the operating system to store flags, transients, and other such "scratchpad" things, which is not generally available for your use... that's why you get only 19.5K in a 24K machine.