Author
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Topic: How to get more RAM access in SP-89 to run other programs
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David Burch
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posted June 24, 2004 01:10 PM
Yes the StarPilot is a RAM hog. This is done on purpose for performance reasons. There are a few things you can do to help you with your memory management issues.
Before I start let me state for the record that purchasing a ti Voyager or a TI-89 titanium will not solve your problem. All 3 calculators have exactly the same amount of RAM. The Voyager has a bigger screen and 1.5 Mb of ROM and the Titanium has the same screen as the 89 but 2.5 Mb of ROM. All the calculators have about 198K of RAM.
To free up RAM for your non StarPilot computations you can do one of the following.
a) use spuninst() to delete the RAM image of the StarPilot. The StarPilot will stop working after you have done this. You can easily reinstall the StarPilot by running spsetup() which will restore the RAM image from the stored ROM archived version of the StarPilot. Check the manual for instructions on the use of spuninst() and spsetup().
b) You can copy all the StarPilot programs from RAM to ROM. This will free up TONS or RAM and still allow you to run the StarPilot. The StarPilot will run slower since access to ROM is about 5 times slower than access to RAM. The TI does a fairly good job caching programs so the performance hit is not as bad as you might expect.
To copy the StarPilot programs in to ROM do the following.
1) exit the StarPilot by hitting the "on" key 2) [2nd][VAR-LINK] 3) push [F2] and set the variable type to "program" then hit [ENTER] 4) push [F5][ENTER] to select all the programs 5) [F1][8] to archive all the programs note that this takes a while 6) now hit [ESC] to get back to the home screen and invoke the StarPilot in the usual way.
If you still need more RAM you can follow the procedure above but select "Assembly" for the variable type.
You will take a performance hit by archiving the programs. You will take an additional performance hit when archiving the ASM programs. But... your StarPilot will still preform well albeit a little slower.
To unsinstall the StarPilot you will need to reverse the steps in (b) or simply wipe out all the memory using [2nd][MEM][F1][3][ENTER]
Note that the [2nd][MEM][F1][3][ENTER procedure will remove EVERYTHING in RAM and ROM and you will need to reinstall the StarPilot from a PC using a TI Link cable.
-- Luis Soltero
From: Starpath, Seattle, WA
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