PBI/ECI memory upgrades vs cart based memory upgrades

[carmel_andrews]

Just interested in what would be more effective and easier to upgrade (i.e adding more memory)

 

PBI/ECI (as in the 1064/yorkie upgrade)

 

Cart based ram upgrades like args and lothareks proposed cart based ram upgrade (and possibly others that i havent't looked into)

 

Could you use the STe simm style memory modules with a cart or pbi/eci memory upgrade or are you limited to just using that types of ram chips the A8 already uses

 

An idea for those considering making (as in designing) cart or pbi/eci memory upgrades (esp. higher memory req's..i.e 1meg plus) as well as internal memory upgrades

 

would it not be possible to program a memory config routine within the upgrade that allows the user to 'splitting' the available total memory (i.e base memory plus extended memory) into two area's of available memory, 1 area being the system memory (i.e holding the o/s or various o/s's, i/o and device drivers as well as hardware access memory, basically giving antic/gtia and pokey a hunk of memory to use for it's own purposes, the other area of memory would be user memory (i.e all that memory in user memory is available to the user and you could configure user memory (depending on how much you have) to acting as several 'virtual' machines...i.e lets say you have 768k of user memory, you could configure that to being 1x128k machine, 2x256k machines or and so on and have a system in place to switch between virtual machines

 

The idea of system memory holding more then one o/s means that you could have various rom based o/s's (like drac o/s, qmeg, diamond, old 800...which negates the need for a translator disk..etc etc) and disk based o/s's (like GOS/GOE/MTOS/Turbo o/s etc) just running from system memory

[Rybags]

PBI = better because RAM can be mapped anywhere.

 

Cart, much less support, the RAM can only appear in $8000-$BFFF area.

 

We already have RAM320XL and the XE version imminent. And candle's MegaRAM upgrade for those who care to tinker with the insides.

 

That covers most of the bases. As attractive as SIMM based upgrades might be, it means more space and I doubt that the connectors can be bought anymore.

Even then, the price would probably be the same as using modern surface-mounted alternatives.

 

Multiple OSes based in a seperate RAM upgrade - I don't particularly see much point, there's flashable alternatives and you don't need to worry about battery backup.

 

Seperate RAM for Antic - can't really be done beyond schemes similar to the existing 130XE style. Antic shares the main bus with the CPU and there's no getting around it. So it doesn't make any difference if the CPU can or can't "see" RAM that's available to Antic.