Re: [APML] 'Puter Questions

[Jerry Lodriguss <jml@astropix.com>]

At 02:25 AM 10/23/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>Gents.
>            I'm still limping along on a Pentium II, 64 RAM. PS v.6 and 
> other large programs, has it behaving like a drunken snail, and seems a 
> bit unstable with fairly frequent lock-ups and error messages. (# of 
> stack pages, fatal exception...)

Warren,

Honestly, you are lucky that Photoshop 6 even runs on 64mb of ram.

The stability has a lot to do with the OS you are running also, which I 
would expect to be something like Win98, which is not very stable.



>  Would an additional memory card help this, or is it more a result of the 
> processing chip speed? Time for a new one?!

What is your current processor speed? More memory will certainly help.




>  Also along these lines, are there problems, with any stage of post 
> processing, including smoothing, on a compressed TIFF file since a 22 MB, 
> 35mm full-frame takes an unpractical eternity here?

To work on the compressed TIFF file in PS, it has to be uncompressed, so 
it's going to be 22mb. Photoshop wants 3 - 5 times the file size in 
available ram to work without swapping, so you will be constantly writing 
to the swap disk on the hard drive, and this is what is taking forever.

Your OS is probably taking up 32 - 64mb, and PS about another 28mb, so you 
really need 64mb just to start. Then PS wants 5 x 22 - 110mb for the file. 
So you end up needing 110 + 64 = 174mb,  so you're probably best off going 
to 256mb, which should be fairly inexpensive.  The question is, will your 
motherboard support that much ram? If not, it's definitely time for Santa 
to bring you a new toy.

Jerry





Astronomical photography: http://www.astropix.com




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