🚀 go-pugleaf

Well, I picked up my copy of Virtual yesterday, went home, plugged in the
PMMU, and installed the init.  I've got a 2 meg MacII, btw.

They don't tell you is that Virtual doesn't seem to run with the 'old'
version of Multifinder (pre System 6.0).  I struggled with that for a
while, then downloaded the newest Multifinder from Compuserve,
installed it, and all was well.

I then tried most all of the significant applications I had gathered
for the test (not extensively, it was 11:30 by this time), under
Multifinder.  They warn you that debuggers won't work, and that some
applications will bitch about not having enough memory because they
couldn't get loaded where they want (like some Microsoft products).  I
also found that the FullWrite Demo crashes the machine,
depending on how much stuff was loaded before it, but that doesn't
really surprise me.  The newest production version may be happier.

They also warn you about memory fragmentation, a problem with the
MacOS, not Virtual (in fact, their manual is good reading for many
novices, it could even reduce the traffic here, and the Mac owners
frustration level in general, by answering some of those nagging
begginers questions that Apple's documentation engineers don't think
are a problem).


I tried out the following programs (all loaded under Multifinder in some
combination) successfully:

MacWrite
FullWrite (Demo)
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
Think C
MacScheme + Toolsmith
Hypercard
Soundwave
Opcode Librarian
Stuffit
Versaterm
SmartcomII
Beyond Dark Castle
Giffer
Edit2.0
ImageStudio (pre release)
PixelPaint
Image

Probably some more, but I forget.

All of these ran perfectly (Soundwave said I could record 350+ seconds of
stuff!  I'm going to try that next week).  When I brought up 3Meg worth
of images in Giffer, and then brought up the bottom one, I got to see the
'degredation', if you can call it that.  It wasn't instantaneous, to be
sure, but it was damn quick.  I do have a WrenIII (16.5ms) hard drive, so
I suppose that helps a bit.  

In any case, it is as transparent as it can be (except for the 'jitter
start', when it installs itself on startup).  The context switching in
Multifinder is virtually unnoticeable (< .5 seconds, virtually (-:)
the same as without Virtual). I can now use the Mac more productivly,
without giving money to the extortionists in the memory biz (but
rather to software folks who have nothing but my best interests at
heart :-).

My MacII has now become *much* more valuable to me than my old 128->512K
Mac.  Not being able to run Multifinder (whenever you want to), made me
wonder if just having color and a bigger screen were worth the investment.

I highly recommend it.

--
Ken Wallich 			 	
Ardent Computer Corp		kmw@ardent.com
"I'd let you be macrobiotic, if you'd let me have some pie"