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Re: [APML] 'Puter Questions



Warren,
Adding ram will definitely(!) help PS run better.  If you open a 22 mb file on a 64 mb ram machine, you
will most likely barely have 22mb of 'free' memory for PS to work with. So PS starts swapping (saving/reading from hard
drive).  This will REALLY slow you down.
You can verify this is happening by watching how often your hard drive lights up during operations.
If the computer will hold it, I suggest at least doubling your
memory.  If not more.  You just can't have enough ram for image processing.

You didn't mention the cpu speed, but being a pentium 2 you're probably under the 400mhz mark.  An upgrade to
a pentium 3 would likely speed things up.

In the meantime,
you can squeeze every byte of memory out of your system by rebooting.  The reboot will
free up all possible memory.  Then, after booting, run PS.  But don't run any other programs concurrently! 
You don't want to share any available memory.  You can also disable certain startup programs.  This free's
even more memory.
Reinstalling your operating system can really work wonders, but...doing so will erase everything on your hard drive.
If you don't have the money for a new computer, just fill your existing one with a ton of memory.  Memory is cheap
and easy to install.

Grant

At 02:25 AM 10/23/02 -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...)
 
Would an additional memory card help this, or is it more a result of the processing chip speed? Time for a new one?!
 
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?
 
Thanks everyone!
 
Warren A. Keller
Billions and Billions- Astrophotos
www.billionsandbillions.com