This is a demonstration version of a commercial product. It will cease to function on March 15, 1994. For details on ordering a fully-operational version of Maxima, contact Connectix by phone at (800) 950-5880 or via AppleLink at “CONNECTIX.CS.”
COMPATIBILITY
Maxima 2.0.4 provides memory extension for 24-bit addressing mode and a non-volatile RAM disk for 24-bit and 32-bit addressing mode on the following machines: II, IIx, IIcx, IIci, IIsi, IIfx, and SE/30.
Maxima 2.0.4 provides a non-volatile RAM disk for 32-bit addressing mode on the following machines: IIvx and IIvi; Quadra 700, 900, 950, and 800; Centris 610 and 650; PowerBook 140, 145, 170, 160, 165c, 180; Duo 210 and 230; Classic II; LCII and LCIII, Performa 200, 400, and 600.
Maxima is not compatible with the Plus, SE, Classic, LC, and PowerBook 100.
WHAT'S NEW IN VERSION 2.0.4?
• Maxima's switch-launching capability now operates on machines which require system enablers under System 7.1.
• Maxima is now compatible with Apple's 32-bit System Enabler(v1.03).
• On the Mac II, IIx, IIcx, and SE/30, Maxima now recognizes banks of memory which are of unusual sizes (i.e. not 1MB, 4MB, 16MB, or 64MB).
• The Maxima control panel grays out the 24-bit radio button and the Protect Ram Disk check box for machines on which those settings cannot operate.
• In 24-bit mode, opening a driver (such as WordMaster) in extended memory could occasionally cause a crash in earlier versions of Maxima. This has been fixed.
VERSION 2.0.3:
• The Maxima 2.0.2 control panel would not open on machines without a NuBus card in slot E (farthest from power supply on II, IIx, IIfx; closest to power supply on IIcx, IIci). This has been fixed.
• When using the RAM disk in 32-bit mode Maxima can use a lot of memory which is normally available to startup documents (INITs & cdevs). To accommodate startup documents that require large blocks of high memory, Maxima 2.0.3 provides more breathing space by moving some memory structures.
VERSION 2.0.2 :
• Maxima has an installer which replaces the old Maxima cdev on your startup volume and keeps your previous settings. PLEASE make sure that you copy the newly installed version of Maxima to all of the System Folders that are on other partitions or volumes. Failure to do so could result in Maxima using the wrong settings and lead to data loss.
• Maxima now uses a preference file named “Maxima Preferences” to store its settings. You can find the preference file in your System Folder in the folder named “Preferences.”
• Maxima is compatible with the Quadras in 32-bit mode only. Maxima disables itself when the Quadra is booted in 24-bit mode. Extended memory support for 24-bit mode might be built into future versions of Maxima.
• Maxima 2.0.2 looks for the RasterOps 801 video accelerator and the ComputerEyes video digitizer and automatically skips over these NuBus cards when allocating extended memory. Since these cards are not seen by the Slot Manager or previous versions of Maxima, machines with these cards installed previously required the user to indicate the location of the board manually.
• When using the Radius Rocket and Maxima, a small portion of the RAM disk was damaged when the computer was restarted. This is fixed with version 2.0.2 of Maxima and version 1.3 (or later) of the Rocket software. Both are required to fix this problem.
• Version 7.0 of Apple’s 8•24GC video accelerator software was released in December ’91 and is mostly compatible with all versions Maxima 2.0 and greater. If you are using Maxima in 24-bit mode to create more memory for running applications, the 8•24GC might display some garbage on small portions of the screen. Apple chose not to translate the addresses directly above the ROMs and below slot card 9 during its DMA transfers from memory to the video board. The effect of not translating all of the addresses is the displaying of the wrong information on the screen. To prevent the 8•24GC from making this mistake, Maxima 2.0.2 looks for an 8•24GC card installed and automatically prevents the use of the extra address space just above the ROMs. Unfortunately, this means is that machines with 8•24GCs installed get a megabyte less of memory for running programs.
OTHER FEATURES WORTH NOTING
• MAXIMA can now be used to create a RAM disk while running OPTIMA. Remember to install MAXIMA before switching to 32-bit mode under OPTIMA. Refer to your OPTIMA manual for details on using MAXIMA and OPTIMA together.
• Balloon help is implemented if you are using System 7.
• Many new features have been added since version 1, including full 32-bit RAM disk capability, MMU write protection of the RAM disk, and even capability to work with virtual memory. Please see the manual or manual addendum for more specifics, or turn on balloon help for on-line hints.
KNOWN INCOMPATIBILITIES
• There are a very few hard disk drivers, whose current versions are incompatible with MAXIMA. Such drivers allocate memory from BufPtr during their open call, which takes specific memory zones used by MAXIMA. The only currently known examples are the SPOT-ON drivers from MacPeak Research. A fix is in the works.
• When using MAXIMA in 32-bit mode with virtual memory turned on on any old-ROM machine (applies to the Mac II, IIx, IIcx and SE/30 — i.e. when using MODE32, MAXIMA, and virtual memory together simultaneously) we have found that very large RAM disk sizes (leaving less than 4 MB application memory for swapping) can cause machine hangs at startup. Leave at least 4-8 MB for applications and the System on old ROM machines using virtual memory in 32-bit mode.
PLEASE NOTE
• RAM disk “Image Method” users should note that while a smaller image can be loaded into a larger RAM disk, a larger image can not be put into a smaller RAM disk area. Whenever an image smaller than the RAM disk is loaded, the RAM disk will become the same size as that smaller image and the rest of the disk space will not be accessible. To recover the full disk size, drag all of the RAM disk items to a hard drive, uncheck the "Load Disk at Startup" feature in the Maxima control panel, select the RAM disk and choose "Erase Disk" under the "Special" menu and then “Restart.” The RAM disk created should be the full size possible.
• If you are a user who does not have a “programmer’s switch” installed on your machine, we strongly suggest you do the installation. Every Mac originally comes with a set of these small plastic switches, which can be used to “RESET” your Macintosh without turning the power off and back on. Not only is this easier on the machine, but it also means that your RAM disk’s contents will be much less likely to suffer damage from an unexpected loss of power. If you press the RESET switch to make the machine reboot the RAM disk’s contents will always be preserved, while if you cycle the power they will be lost entirely or corrupted. If a RAM disk corrupted by power loss is used (or worse yet, if a corrupted RAM disk is copied back to the hard disk) this can lead to crashes or permanent loss of information. RESET the machine, and don’t cycle the power. If you must cycle the power, be VERY suspicious of the RAM disk’s contents after such a power loss.
• Some users have been confused by exactly when the “command” key would be depressed to force a RAM disk save at shutdown. To force a copy, the command key must be depressed BEFORE “Restart” is selected from the special menu, and should NOT be held after the machine ‘chimes’ during the restart. Holding the command key down AFTER the chime (i.e. when the machine is in its startup phase, not its shutdown phase) indicates that the RAM disk is to be re-initialized and then be filled up again from the “Volume Folder.” Again please remember that under normal circumstances, the RAM disk should know the times it is necessary to copy itself to or from the disk, and most users should never have to worry about tricks to force a copy.
• While MAXIMA always tries to anticipate any loss of the RAM disk due to a context switch (e.g.: an upcoming shutdown, a switch of addressing modes, or a request to load a new image), there are some situations that MAXIMA can not foresee, like doing a “Restart” from another volume (a floppy, for example) on which MAXIMA is not installed. If you do a restart and boot up on a different volume on which Maxima is not installed, the MAXIMA RAM disk will (of course) not appear. If you restart again on the volume containing MAXIMA, the unaltered disk should re-appear (this applies to 24-bit operation only), but if instead you shutdown while running from the alternate volume, any changes you have made to the RAM disk will not be saved (since the software never got loaded). The simple solution is to make sure that MAXIMA is installed on all your standard boot volumes. If you have to boot from a floppy, and wish to save the contents of the RAM disk as well, either try holding down the option key during the Restart BEFORE you boot from the floppy, or (if this is impossible) restart again from your standard boot drive AFTER having booted from the floppy and BEFORE doing a Shutdown.
• Another very obscure problem that can pop up occurs when the PRAM of the machine is set up to boot in 32-bit mode, but for one reason or another the machine actually only boots in 24-bit mode. This can happen if MODE32 or OPTIMA have been used, but are no longer present (perhaps again due to booting from an alternate volume (like a floppy) which does not have MODE32 or OPTIMA installed, or due to unexpected software removal). The symptom is that the RAM disk will always get written to the hard disk at every shutdown if the “Save Files At Shutdown” option is selected, or will not be preserved at all if it is not selected. To fix this, either reset the entire PRAM settings or re-install MODE32 or OPTIMA and use them to ask the machine to start in 24 bit mode (which will properly update the PRAM).
