Strange situation

["Jeff Monroe" <monroe@uu0841.ca.metsci.com>]

        Reply to:   RE>>Strange situation
>  You are right.  I just checked the memory, and the free Mac heap only
>  has 11K (the free Lisp heap has 8000k), which leads MCL to be so slow.
>  It seems that the Mac O/S (System 7.1) does not do garbage collection
>  to find free spece.  Is the only way to this situation to quit MCL
>  and re-load a fresh MCL system?  Thanks.

I think that the Mac O/S (System 7.1) does do garbage collection.  If, however,
you have alot of windows open at the same time you could be using up all of your
Mac heap.  There is a way to allocate more memory to the Mac heap before
startup.  

Go into ResEdit and open up MCL.
Double click on LSIZ.
Double click on the only line in the new box.
This should open a dialog with entries for things like:
     Initial Mac Heap minimum size
     Initial Mac Heap maximum size
     Initial Mac Heap Percentage

By changing these values you should be able allocate more memory to the Mac
Heap.
NOTE/WARNING:  The above is a true hack.  I have read no documentation and have
no real knowlege in this are.  It does however seem to work.  I made these same
changes in my own system and have been using them for the past year or so without
problems.  Perhaps someone more knowlegable than my self would care to comment.

I hope this helps.

Jeff Monroe

Beauty is the first test.  There is no place in the word for ugly mathematics.
Godfry H. Hardy