Flwrite wrote:

Stratcat wrote...

Well, its been an hour since this post.
Is it safe to draw the obvious conclusion???

I'm back, I'm back, I'm back, I'm back, I'm back, I'm back

I only had the nerve to increase my maxfilecache to 512 MB.  Does that mean
I'm only using 512 MB, and the last 256 MB isn't doing anything?  Should I
sell it and get a new DVD RW?

I know that 768 MB is a stupidly large amount of memory.  I was only
planning on upgrading to 512 or 640, but that guy was selling 768 MB for
$75.  How could I resist?

Occasionally, I will record some hi-fi audio from a streaming radio station,
such as a symphony.  That could be a 50 MB .wav file.  Then, I'll take the
.wav and trim the garbage from the beginning and end of the file (DJ talk,
etc), maybe add a fade as required, adjust the overall volume, and finally
convert it into a .mp3.  The more ram I have, the more of the file gets
processed instantly.  Then I run out of ram, and the rest of the file gets
processed real slow, and the hard drive swaps kerchunk kerchunk.  I can't
wait to process another symphony.

I'm afraid to try setting maxfilecache to 768.  Afraid the computer will
never boot again, and then I'll be screwed.  What's a cruncher to do?
Forget it?  The Microsoft article does _not_ say that all Win98 systems are
limited to 512 MB, and implies that it might not _always_ be a limitation.

Windows operations are much faster, by the way.  Alt-File > New > Folder
used to take 5 or 10 seconds; after increasing maxfilecache, now it takes
just a tenth of a second.  I can browse around Windows Explorer with no
delays, instead of waiting forever for the next folder to open.  I just
noticed that Internet Explorer is going real fast, holy cannoli.

I'm delighted.

Thanks for putting up with my Win98 story.  I know it's old news.

-Neil-

Hey, it works for you!

Win98 will use all 768MB of memory, you are just limiting the file cache
to 512MB. The other 256MB will be used for programs etc. A big file
cache means it doesn't have to read from disk so often. The memory will
be released to programs if they need it. The extra parameters are ok.
Just don't set maxfilecache any larger. It might work, but windows might
lock-up also. You can always get to system.ini by rebooting, pressing f8
to bring up the boot menu, go into command line mode, cd to the
directory using the 8.3 file/dir names and edit system.ini from there.

Lots of memory can be good. I have a Win98 PC with 1GB. useful if I'm
looking at a photo album with lots of piccies. Also  I sometimes edit
wave files recorded from Cassettes of vinyl before burning them. Being
able to hold a whole album in memory can really speed up clean-ups and
splitting into tracks.

Cheers,
Chris.