Spice Notes: 6/26/90 Updated 12/14/90 I have heard from several people who have had difficulty getting Spice to run on an Amiga with 1 Meg of ram. The problem is traceable to the fact that Spice is extremely memory hungry. It need a continuous block of memory 444392 bytes long just to load. I will assume here you have Spice version 5.3 as available on Compu$erve or Genie or on many of the BBS. An Amiga with 1 meg of ram does have enough room to run Spice, but it is right at the very limit of it's memory. If Workbench is loaded, there isn't enough room left for Spice to load. Even if there is more than 1 drive connected, the extra drive eats up enough memory that Spice won't load. The way to run Spice is to make a disk without Workbench on it, but with all of the Spice files and a few of the commands needed to run Spice. I will assume you have only 1 disk drive (df0:) for the following procedure: 1. Start you computer up as normal, using Workbench. 2. Format a new disk, you can name it whatever you like, I usually use "Work Disk". The procedure for doing this is in the manual that came with your Amiga. 3. Make sure there are no external drives connected to the system. For those of you with A2000's, 1 meg ram and 2 drives, see the notes at the bottom before going any farther. 4. Open a CLI window, by double clicking on the CLI icon. This is usually in the system drawer. 5. From CLI, type the following, one at a time, followed by hitting return: makedir ram:c copy df0:c/copy ram:c/copy copy df0:c/cd ram:c/cd copy df0:c/stack ram:c/stack copy df0:c/install ram:c/install copy df0:c/ed ram:c/ed copy df0:c/avail ram:c/avail copy df0:c/dir ram:c/dir copy df0:c/makedir ram:c/makedir assign c: ram:c cd ram: 6. OK, now we have put the commands you will need in ram, and have set ram as the current directory. With the new formatted disk in the drive, type: install df0: cd ram: makedir df0:c cd c: copy all to df0:c 7. Now put in the disk with the Spice files on it. On the Fred Fish disk, All of the Spice programs were in a drawer called ASPICE. Drag the icon for the ASPICE drawer over to your new, formatted disk. This will copy all of the Spice files to the new disk. You will probably have to make several disk swaps. Just follow the instructions as the appear on the screen. OK, now your work disk in has all the files needed to start up the Amiga, and run Spice. Here's how to do it: 8. Turn off your computer, let it sit for 30 seconds or so. This is always a good idea when restarting it anyway. 9. With your new work disk in the drive (and no other drives connected, printers are ok though) turn on the computer. 10. After a short time, you should see a screen with AmigaDos at the top, and a CLI type prompt (1.>) If you don't see this, you have something wrong, and if that's the case, you better stop here. 11. type the following command: avail 12. You should see a display of the absolute memory maximums and what is currently in use. The last column is "largest available" the number at the bottom of this column is the largest single block of memory available. This number has to be more than the size of the Spice file, or Spice will not load. This number should be greater than 447284 but probably not by much in a 1 meg Amiga. A test system showed 460,132 for this number. Ok, providing there is enough memory in 1 big chunk to allow Spice to load, type the following: Stack 30000 Spice 741.inp Now the Spice program should load, and run the example file named 741.inp on the disk. Remember, this is a big program, so it takes a while to load. If you get any errors at this point, double check to see if the input file is on the disk, and that you typed the name in exactly as shown above. If all goes well at this point, Spice will load, start running, read the 741.inp file, process it as required, then write the results to the same place the original data file (741.inp) came from, df0: in this case. The output file has the same name, but with .out on it. So after Spice is done, there should be a file named 741.out on the disk. By typing "DIR" you can verify this. Ok, Spice is finished, but we need to see the output, right? Ok, type: ed 741.out The editor that came with the Amiga (ed) is crude as hell, but it works. Ed should start up, and read the 741.out file. By hitting cntrl and V you can page down through the output file. At the top of the file, Spice usually (unless you set it otherwise) echos the input file, so you can see what was entered. Now that the output file is on the disk, by using a word processor, (there are lots of ways to do this, most require resetting the machine with Workbench) you can load and print at the output file "741.out". You may be wondering about the memory if Spice itself is such a tight fit. It turns out Spice manages it's memory very efficiently, and dynamically, which means it knows if there's enough room, and what to do about it if there is limited room (like on a 1 meg Amiga). I could chop some of the program off, but there would be something left out in that case. I know running Spice like this is not easy, but it does have all the features of the Mainframe Vax version, with nothing left out. If there is enough call for it, I will release a smaller, less powerful version, which should be easier to load and use. Let me know if you are interested in this, and what features you think I should leave out (transient analysis, distortion, mutual inductance, whatever...). I have been thinking about releasing a maximum memory version also, probably would require at least 3 megs of ram, for people with expanded memory. NOTE: The people that have A2000's with 1 meg of ram and 2 drives (internal) will not be able to use Spice, without disconnecting df1:. The limited version would run ok, let me know if you want it. I am still working on a Probe type program, in what little spare time I have. Below is a list of things I would like to get more information on. If anyone can help me out, I would appreciate it. Please check out the other changes.txt file for info on the new Probe type program called splot which is included here in the archive. Some things I am looking for: 1. 68000 machine code matrix routines (for Spice). These would have to be relocatable, n-dimensional, possibly double precision, and/or complex (What a mess!) 2. information on data file formats, like Cad, IFF, HPGL, AutoCad, etc 3. any intuition interface setups, something I can learn from , to use with Spice and Probe 4. Any graphing programs in Basic, C, Assembler which I can adapt for Spice. Well, that's it for now. I hope this removes some of the problems with getting Spice up and running. If you have any problems, don't hesitate to contact me. Dan Warns 2704 32nd Street Lubbock, Texas 79410 806-792-8266 Genie: D.WARNS Compuserve: 72060,101 (not very often, costs too much)