🚀 go-pugleaf

Peter Ceresole <peter@cara.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, this one.
> 
> I was watching some chaps trying out a new PPC (I forget precisely which)
> running Avid Media Composer v.7. OS is 8.1.
> 
> The machine has 220Mb of RAM. Media Composer was set at its recommended
> 192Mb. When they launched it, it ran okay, but then if they attempted to
> use the Finder (for Simpletext I think), it complained that there was
> insufficient memory. "About this Mac" showed the system using about 10Mb-
> nothing like enough to cause trouble. There should have been 18Mb free over
> and above that. 
> 
> What causes the Finder to do this kind of thing?

I'm not sure *exactly* what's going on, but as I understand it, the
basic problem is that the Finder has a certain amount of memory
allocated to it (much the same as normal applications have a certain
chunk of RAM), and some applications take too much of this limited
memory from the Finder so it runs out.

I've often had this problem with background printing on my HP DW 520
under System 7.1 and while doing several other things, but since I got
7.6 I've only seen it a couple of times.

There is an application called `Finder heap fix' which apparently fixes
the small heap size problem under System 7.5.N (N=5, perhaps) and might
well help in this case.  I *think* it lets you adjust the amount of
System heap allocated to the Finder; this ought to work with pretty much
any recent version of the Finder, because I think it just changes the
value of that resource *there*, which is the one used to set the heap
allocation.

I've never used it myself.

Rowland.

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