This program reduces the amount of free fast memory to try and make some
badly written older software to work.
RELEASE:
1.02 07-21/99
DISCLAIMER:
Whilst this program works on my system with no problems, I have never tested
it on any machines other than my A3000/060/PPC with 132M fast RAM. It very
well may trash your memory, cause your machine to lock, or make smoke come out
of your floppy drive. I can't see how any of this could happen, I'm just using
the Exec AllocMem() routine, but you never know. I, as well as the distributors
of this software, take no responsibility for any damages. Use it at your own
risk, you have been warned. BTW, MemEat is emailware.
BACKGROUND:
A lot of programs (the High Speed Pascal Compiler to name one) apparently
read free memory above 32 megabytes as negative numbers. If you should have
more than 32 megabytes free, the program may crash or simply warn you that
there isn't enough memory available. It seemed to me that a lot of degraders
work this way, or won't allocate enough memory to correct the problem. My
solution always has been to copy an entire partition into the RAM drive,
(aren't you people with stock A500s jealous :) ) but I find this very tedious.
So, I wrote this program. It allocates fast memory in maximum 4 gigabyte
hunks until the total fast memory available reaches the amount specified by
the user.
INSTALLATION:
Just copy the program into a directory included in your path, like "c:", or
if you like doing things the hard way, put it wherever you want.
USAGE:
Execute "MemEat" from the CLI or Workbench. It will prompt you for the
amount of memory you wish to leave available on your system. It will then
allocate the necessary memory and wait for you to press return. Then it will
free all memory that it allocated, and terminate. Values you can enter for
available memory are in megabytes, you can use decimal values if you want to
leave an exact amount of bytes, e.g. 12.1 for 12687770 bytes. The number you
enter is multiplied by 1048576, (this is one megabyte if you didnt know) and
rounded to the nearest byte value. Negative numbers will cause the program to
notify you and abort. Zero will cause the program to abort (in case you ran
the program by accident you can just enter 0 until i implement break checking).
REGISTRATION:
There is no fee for registration, but i would really appreciate if you would
email me at mmw1 execpc.com (valid as of 12-10/98). This way I know someone
besides me is using this program, and I will bother to release new versions
with improved code, based on your input.
BUGS:
You tell me! :) I hope there aren't any...
HISTORY:
1.02: MAJOR bug fix. Bad calculation caused program to fail when memory isn't
fragmented. I can't believe how long it took this to happen to me!
1.01: Rewrote it with proper code.
Implemented simple error checking.
Changed size of hunks.
Reduced internal memory usage. (Rather pointless, no? I mean the whole
point of the program is to waste memory...)
1.0: Initial Relase
Very very simple code.
No internal error checking.
Bad .lha file uploaded to Aminet
Protection bits within archive were all wrong anyway.
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