[230] in bcs-newton
Re: slowness
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Parker)
Thu Sep 2 11:48:09 1993
To: caroma@ai.mit.edu (Carl R. Manning)
Cc: bcs-newton@world.std.com
In-Reply-To: Mail from caroma@ai.mit.edu (Carl R. Manning)
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1993 11:32:35 -0400
From: Brad Parker <brad@fcr.com>
In message <9309020528.AA16588@raisin-nut>, Carl R. Manning writes:
>The Newton is known to have memory fragmentation problems, which are
>causing the handwriting problem where recognition stops for long
>words, then shorter words, then shorter words, then no words. It
>might also be causing your problem. The work-around for now has been
>to
> 1. BACK-UP everything, to PCMCIA card.
> 2. CLEAR MEMORY, with a memory clearing reset: after newton is awake,
> while holding down power switch, push reset, then confirm in
> dialog boxes. (This clear includes system patches.)
> 3. RESTORE everything, from PCMCIA card. This loads everything back
> contiguously, leaving a big block of free memory.
>At least one user swears by doing this after every 4 hours of use,
>which also enforces a backup regime.
eeeyow.
I tried this (after I backed up to my sram card *and* sync'd with my
macintosh; I skipped tieing a string around my finger ;-)
After I reset, I got the two nice dialog boxes ("erase; *really* erase")
but the software rev remained 1.02 (so I assume it does not clear the
software updates)
When I inserted my sram card, got the popup window and tapped
"restore". It started to clear things and then said "Sorry, a problem
has occured (-48809)".
I had, as one of John Le Carre's characters says, "a *total* heart attach".
After regaining my wits I tried it again (from the preferences window)
and the restored worked fine. Seems to have sped it up a little, but
opening the "dates" still takes 5-10 seconds.
-brad
