PC hardware forum: Why all the hype for installing lots of RAM?

Funny you should ask this since it was the subject of a question at my Windows 7 Launch Party last night. The answer is simple and complicated... if you are using a 32-bit operating system you are limited to 4GB of memory but you can't access it all. When the PC was originally designed, nobody ever thought anyone would need more than 4GB of memory... and the highest amount that can be accessed by a 32-bit number is 4,096,000 bytes (4GB). But you can't use it all... all of the hardware adapters in your PC (video, network, etc.) use a part of the top end of the 4GB space, so, in essence, you only have access to 3.25GB. When Vista was first released, it reported the real memory accessible... people screamed because they had 4GB and it only showed 3.25 so, in a later patch, Microsoft actually started reported it as 4GB (technically incorrect, but great marketing).

64-bit operating systems can access something like petabytes of memory, but are usually limited (by design) to like 256GB, which nobody can afford anyhow.

In either case, though, the system will work better with more memory because it can keep the OS and running programs in memory rather than swpping them out to (slower) disk, or "Virtual Memory" as they call it. Most OSes (Windows, Linux, UNIX. Mac OS X) use this "swap space" to enable multiple programs to run simultaneously, even if there is less memory than is needed.

I guess some people here have been reading and believing in Wikipedia or are too young to know that the first commercially available personal computer was the TRS-80 from Radio Shack. Or remember anything from Sinclair computers. 640 mb wasn't even the first available memory configuration. It was much smaller than that and the only available storage was cassette tape. That was before the eight-inch floppies got popular.

48 K was luxury. My still running TRS 80 had 4K (later larger) of ROM and 16K of RAM...to get 64K required an external $299 box + about the same cost in RAM to populate it.

Hah! My VIC-20 only had 5k! And only let me use 3.5k as I recall. Talk about uphill both ways!

It sounds like you and I had the same computer company to start with, except I think my model was earlier than yours. The MITS Altair 8800, where you had to read the LED lights as binary and convert them manually to base 10 numbers for results unless you flushed out the computer with $1,700 of optional components which I didn't see as cost effective. Math that way was hard, especially using toggle switches to make entries in binary numbers.

My boss and I had assembled it from a kit just for fun and I did the soldering. I had to take it back for repair though because the assembly instructions didn't do a good job describing how to ground everything. At the repair shop I saw the first Commodore PET for sale and sold the MITS on consignment before waiting for something even better or cheaper to come out. My boss and I bought the MITS partly for the novelty of assembling it from a kit. I kind of wish I still had that computer just as a display novelty, but I sold it when the Commodore PET computer came out obviously a much better value for the home user. The Commodore PET, then Commodore 20 and Commodore 64 were much more user friendly, and I think I still have a Commodore 20 in storage. Radio Shack (Tandy) popularized the TRS-80 but I never bought one, although I think it made some inroads in schools and I know a co-worker who bought one.

The only thing good I can say about the early computers was programming was more fun and less work in those days, but having so little computer memory and unreliable tape storage was not fun at all. All of the pocket calculators today can do math easier without worry about the number of bits in a register and trying to put too many into a register.

The "Good Old Days" are usually exaggerated in nostalgia, but I can honestly say I would not voluntarily go back to them.

According to http://oldcomputers.net/altair.html the Datapoint 2200 was the first computer, although it was actually a programmable terminal dating back to 1970. The Radio Shack TRS-80 came out in 1977, the same year the Commodore Pet came out, while the Mits Altair 8800 came out in 1975. What Radio Shack and Commodore did was popularize home computers, while the IBM PC in 1981 legitimize small computers for business and home use in general.

[SOAPBOX]
I started in domestic computing when 4k was 'standard', 16k was 'luxury' and 64k was a "programmers' dream". Code had to be tight and specific.

When the basic IBM PC/XT was released, it frequently only had 256k installed because, as quoted elsewhere, Bill Gates said "No one would ever use 640k of memory."

It would seem that from that very moment on, MS set out to fill up as much memory as possible. When a new driver was installed in MSDOS, it did not REPLACE the original, it was loaded ABOVE the original which still sat in (now wasted) memory.

I had a simple BASIC word processor (self-written), which ran on my Trash-80 quite nicely at a blazing 1.7MHz. Porting that program to the PC's GW Basic, the program could not even keep up with the keyboard (and this is a machine running FOUR times faster). Compiling it improved the speed, but at a huge memory sacrifice (all the JUNK code embedded in the compiled version that is never going to be used).

Take a DOS Word document, and load it into any version of WIN Word, then look at the huge increase in file size when you save it. Most of that extra information is unnecessary JUNK.

The argument for JUNK code is "Well, by the time I've trimmed it down, there's a CPU that runs it faster anyway." This philosophy is now rampant in the programming community, with 90% of programmers out there relying on users having extra memory, hard disc space and CPU speed--rather than honing their own skills to keep their resources to a minimum. For those that do trim their code, the compiler of choice probably results in a sloppy translation anyway.

With multiple layers: BIOS, OS, GUI, Compiler/Translator, Proprietary hardware drivers that have to negotiate several of these layers simultaneously and with every one of the above containing at least 50% junk code, it all conspires to chew up your computer's resources at an exponential rate.

You will also notice this phenomenon on Web pages--ever-increasing graphic content aside, it can take 25k of data to transfer a fairly simple page from a server to your browser, which a competent HTML coder could reduce to about 2k.

Therefore, when it's no longer worth your own time to write your own program, when you can purchase someone else's, I always recommend the maximum affordable memory up to the capacity of the Motherboard/CPU/OS combination (there's no point installing unaddressable memory).
[/SOAPBOX]

I can't speak for other platforms, but for PC's, as long as labor cost exceeds hardware cost, on the average you will not see software efficiency. I've been working with PC for more than 25 years. As hardware price goes down, the software efficiency goes down with it.

PS: Some of you may still remember Turbo Pascal, the entire compiler and editor fit into a 360k floppy. I don't think we will ever see this type of efficient applications again in our life time.

there was even hype of RAM with heat spreaders. But the heat spreaders do work. Memory that has heat spreaders installed are intended for gaming and ultra high memory usage and overclocking; meaning (making a pc run faster than the original design, which causes a great deal of heat)
For the normal PC user who surfs the web and plays an occasional game and does spreadsheets and the like, heat spreaders are not necessary but if the spreaders are installed it would be just an added benefit that you wouldn't notice under normal usage.

There seems to be a huge problem with techs that have been doing this since the invention of computers. They don't want to grow with the technology nor do they want to learn about it so it can be utilized its best possibly functionality for all.

20 years from now when they are all retired maybe we'll get somewhere with the new generation that expects fast or they don't touch it, and will find out how to get it. There will be no cost issue or size issue involved.

I became certified because every single technician that I would take my computer to would do something else to my computer that wasn't there before and didn't help a thing. Most people don't want to learn about computers they just want them to work.

As for RAM there seems to be a huge discrepancy between whether 32 will use anymore than 3 GB - it doesn't. 64bit uses 4 GB

The questions that weren't answered were in the threat addressed to SOAPBOX from "msgale"

Mr. Johnson: I appreciate your knowledge but you have admitted, unwillingly for some reason, that most tech professionals close to retirement do not want to learn anything new and want to deal with everything "the way they used to" (the quote from same that I now personally know from taking the certification courses in order to build my own as well). I live in a small town where the median age is 68 so that ought to give you a clue.

I am not disagreeing with anything that you said except that "msgale" had a few valid questions but no one agrees on the answers which is why he is so confused. If you've read the thread I am sure you would agree. I am also running 4 GB on a 32 bit and I do NO gaming at all but my system resources are taxed because of the number of programs that I need open to work on at one time and the reality that 4GB are not available to me.

I do not miss working in I.T. anymore - as a matter of fact most employers have no knowledge of what is needed and I.T. is the bain of their existance (they don't want to spend any money but everything must run at maximum speed/level/quality - and NOW).

For those who are trying to get answers on the fly on this website, there are so many conflicting answers, most of them are over their heads but they are just trying to get a firm answer on questions that (as you well know)if you do not do this for a living or have not attended the expensive classes for certification can be mind-boggling. They just want their computers to work and work right without maintenance, updates or additions (not possible).

Computers are not magic but they are advertised as such. The worst of it is that the very programs that protect novice users from viruses and accidentally ruining their computers are the same programs that slow their new beautiful fast machine down to a crawl (McAfee being the biggest legal virus and until recently, hopefully due to educating the consumer, cost a fortune.)

I got careless and accepted the number given elsewhere in the discussion without calculating the value, which is actually 2 to the power or 31, presumably with one bit still to keep the sign of the number.

As to the CDC it was just to make a point. You are right about the 60 bit, but the choice of six or eight bits to make a character depends on the use of ASCII (64 characters) or Extended ASCII (255 characters) character sets. Today there are even more choices, but the CDC 6400 ran with ASCII.

What was most annoying about the CDC 6400 (6500 and 6600) is that they were so slow to print a graphic I wrote it to a monitor and the monitor was filmed on microfilm which could then be printed. There was a CalComp plotter but it would take a half hour per graph. Back then the earlier IBM 1401 Computer was used as a card sorter at the computer center I used.

My boss had an even rougher introduction to computers by hard wiring computer programs with plug in cables.

An error messages for any possible error has to be included. If an error can happen proper design requires it, how else would the user know what to do if the program fails?

sorry i just realized i repeated what msgale just said above me... Well at least this way I know someone agrees

I never liked getting error in programming, but it seems harder now to diagnose errors with windows than it took to diagnose mainframe computer errors. IBM described basically every possible error code and in enough detail no one had to guess what system was involved. I once even diagnosed a floating point processor error that was due to a hardware failure the computer center didn't know about because only a few users used that component.

Now it seems that unless Microsoft has experienced an error and added it to the knowledge base decoding errors is a guessing game. Let me know if you know of a comprehensive error code manual as IBM had.

Even today you always have to start with the first error and work your way through the others, that aren't obvious in retrospect, one at a time until all are gone, as wasyed states. Each programming language is prone to different kinds of basically similar error. The logic ones are by far the hardest to fix and are rare among great programmers.

http://www.vintage-computer.com


jonah "first computer was the 'rubber keys' Spectrum with a cassette player and B&W TV" jones

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