Hi,
I had a couple of misc. questions about Squeak, your answers are appreciated.
First, what is the latest and "official" version of the Win32 port of the VM? My first download of Squeak 2.2 (as a complete zip archive) included a VM called "SqueakBeta.exe." Then I got a distribution whose VM binaries are "Squeak.exe" and the jitter version, "SqueakJ.exe" Then while browsing the Swikis this morning, I saw a notice that Squeak for Win32 was going back to a single VM. So you can understand my confusion... (and incidentally, SqueakBeta *seemed* to run a little faster than SqueakJ)
Second, does anybody have any suggestions for optimizing Squeak running on a 90Mhz pentium laptop with 8M ram? Some operations (and morhpic in general) bog the system down. I thought perhaps the vm has options to control initial memory allocation, or some such things.
Thanks!
-- Jason Karney <- Advanced Technology Scientist NetGenics, Inc. [jason@netgenics.com] [STOP] Okay, you were there yesterday, but Where do you want to go tomorrow?
First, what is the latest and "official" version of the Win32 port of the VM? My first download of Squeak 2.2 (as a complete zip archive) included a VM called "SqueakBeta.exe."
As the name says, this was a beta version ;-)
Then I got a distribution whose VM binaries are "Squeak.exe" and the jitter version, "SqueakJ.exe" Then while browsing the Swikis this morning, I saw a notice that Squeak for Win32 was going back to a single VM.
Where did you read this?! I haven't seen nor stated it. Even though the Jitter VM is not as stable as the interpreter VM and hopefully to be replaced soon by Jitter II (Ian, how's going?!) it is still supported on most systems.
Second, does anybody have any suggestions for optimizing Squeak running on a 90Mhz pentium laptop with 8M ram? Some operations (and morhpic in general) bog the system down. I thought perhaps the vm has options to control initial memory allocation, or some such things.
I doubt it - running Morphic on a 90Mhz Pentium is a hard thing to do (but I'm a hero - I've been running Morphic on a DX2/66 ;-)) It's even harder if you have only 8MB of RAM. But if you want to try then start Squeak with
Squeak -memory: NN Squeak2.2.image
where NN is number of MB of memory to use (note the space before NN).
Thanks!
You're welcome,
Andreas
Andreas Raab wrote:
I doubt it - running Morphic on a 90Mhz Pentium is a hard thing to do (but I'm a hero - I've been running Morphic on a DX2/66 ;-)) It's even harder if you have only 8MB of RAM. But if you want to try then start Squeak with
Squeak -memory: NN Squeak2.2.image
where NN is number of MB of memory to use (note the space before NN).
Years ago I worked on a 386 with 16MB running OS/2 developing in Smalltalk/V PM and it really wasn't too bad. But I love the technology we have available today.
I have a question about the memory argument for Squeak that you show above. Wait, I have 2: 1) Is that only for the Win versions of Squeak? 2) What is the default memory allocation then, if none is specified explicitly?
Thanks,
- Steve
Steve,
Years ago I worked on a 386 with 16MB running OS/2 developing in Smalltalk/V PM and it really wasn't too bad. But I love the technology we have available today.
You can run Squeak on such a system - it's just Morphic that likes a bit more processing power (but that is entirely understandable from my point of view).
I have a question about the memory argument for Squeak that you show above. Wait, I have 2:
- Is that only for the Win versions of Squeak?
No. There's three more of them:
* -headless Tells Squeak to run without a main window. However, for allowing at least some access to Squeak, an icon is added to the system tray. If you double-click this icon, the Squeak window will show up again.
* -log: logName Use the named file as log file for VM messages.
* -service: serviceName Install Squeak as Windows NT service. You will be asked for a couple of things such as if to start the service on system startup or if to run the service right now. You can modify these settings in the service control panel.
NOTE: You MUST give the entire command line as if you want to run the image immediately. The installation process will add a few registry settings to determine the command line during system start up. Example: Squeak -memory: 4 -log: C:\VM.log -service: "Squeak Sample Service" C:\Swiki\Server.image
The "-service:" switch is fully supported on Win95 but has a little non-standard behavior. Squeak will show up in the system tray (just as when running -headless) because there is no such thing as a service control panel within Win95. If you want to remove a service from a Win95 system you'll have to remove the entry in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
- What is the default memory allocation then, if none is specified
explicitly?
16 MB - that's an average choice between common memory sizes and the amount of memory you need to have fun with the system. Oh, but don't expect Squeak to physically use the amount of memory - we're on Windows, we *do* have dynamic virtual memory management ;-)=)
Andreas
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