#: 6055 S1/General Interest
    12-Aug-90  19:41:29
Sb: #6009-Sound Master
Fm: Bill Dickhaus 70325,523
To: Gerry herring 71477,667

Gerry,

Error 237 signals a shortage of "system space" ram, NOT overall available ram
(which is what MFREE reports.)

In OS9 LII on the CoCo3, each process is limited to 64K, this includes the
"system" process. Included in the 64K for the system process is the boot file.
You may be able to make some changes to your system setup that will free up
some more room within your system space. Unfortunately some of these changes
might require removing something that you want! And remember every little bit
helps, sometimes all you need to do is free up 256 bytes. You can use Kevin
Darlings SMap utility to show used and available system space, sometimes his
PMap is also handy. This is a partial list of things you can do:

1. Remove something from your boot file. At first this may sound drastic, but
analyze what is in your boot file, and think about what you actually use. Do a
"ident -s OS9Boot" to see what is REALLY in there, sometimes there are
duplicate modules, which take up extra space! Someone here can help you out
with what you might be able to remove, include the output of an ident (-s
please!) of OS9Boot or a "mdir e" in a message.

2. Reduce the number of active processes. I used to run 4 or 5 shells all the
time, this ate up precious system ram, so now I've cut it down to 3. Each
process takes up at least 512 bytes.

3. If you really don't need VDGInt, then boot into an 80 column "window" and
remove VDGInt from your boot file (if you want to do this, ask how). Some games
and programs require a VDG screen, so make sure you really want to do this.

4. Don't INIZ any device unless you really have to. This way (hopefully) each
device will only use system ram when its being used (this isn't always
practical, and doesn't always help, sometimes Kevin's DDir and Paths utilities
help figure out what is going on as far as open devices and system memory
usage.

I hope these suggestions help, feel free to ask any questions. Most of the OS9
gurus are busy working on software for the MM/1, so don't feel slighted if it
takes a while to get an answer!

Bill