What do you use the slow-ram for?

[Tigerskunk]

Using an A500 with the slow Ram expansion is a pretty standard config to aim your game coding at.

I just wonder, except not needing to reload stuff so often, what kind of use case does slow ram have, since Agnes can only access the built in 512 KB chip ram?

At the moment I can only think about copying stuff from the slow ram section to the chip ram all the time with this setup.

Some one please gimme some pointers in the right direction...

[phx]

Strange question. Use it for your code!

512k Chip RAM is already quite a limitation. You want to make sure that you put graphics and samples into Chip RAM only.

[DanScott]

Yep, put your code there... and map data, animation tables, compressed graphics etc... anything that does not need to be accessed by the chip set.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Steril707

I just wonder, except not needing to reload stuff so often, what kind of use case does slow ram have, since Agnes can only access the built in 512 KB chip ram?

Sometimes it can be accessible as CHIP, on many newer motherboards it is possible to access is as CHIP or after few modification make it real CHIP.

Originally Posted by Steril707

At the moment I can only think about copying stuff from the slow ram section to the chip ram all the time with this setup.

Some one please gimme some pointers in the right direction...

Check if your mobo support one of above options and Agnus may address 1 or even 2MB CHIP.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by phx

Strange question. Use it for your code!

512k Chip RAM is already quite a limitation. You want to make sure that you put graphics and samples into Chip RAM only.

That's like, a couple of kilobytes of assembled code in the end.
What to do with the rest of these 512 kb slow ram then?

Sometimes it can be accessible as CHIP, on many newer motherboards it is possible to access is as CHIP or after few modification make it real CHIP.

Thanks for the insight into this, but I want to code for a bog standard A500, though.

Yep, put your code there... and map data, animation tables, compressed graphics etc... anything that does not need to be accessed by the chip set.

Okay, that's what I thought about as well. So basically for code and various data. And for copying stuff from slow to chip ram inbetween levels or something.

One more question: how much ram does the workbench usually use up in this configuration? And it's always chip ram it uses, isn't it?

[phx]

Originally Posted by Steril707

One more question: how much ram does the workbench usually use up in this configuration? And it's always chip ram it uses, isn't it?

No, the WB also uses some Fast/Slow-RAM, when it gets it. Assuming you have Fast/Slow-RAM you can expect that nearly 100k Chip RAM will be allocated and more than 100k of Fast RAM, after WB has launched.

You probably shouldn't care much about those allocations, but take over the system completely and use every byte of it (except 512 or 1024 Bytes for the exception auto vectors at $0).

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by phx

No, the WB also uses some Fast/Slow-RAM, when it gets it. Assuming you have Fast/Slow-RAM you can expect that nearly 100k Chip RAM will be allocated and more than 100k of Fast RAM, after WB has launched.

Nice info, thanks...

Originally Posted by phx

You probably shouldn't care much about those allocations, but take over the system completely and use every byte of it (except 512 or 1024 Bytes for the exception auto vectors at $0).

Would like to being able to just go back to wb, though. And I am also not too keen on doing my own loader routines.