Using A Flash Drive To Boost RAM

SoundMind76:

My system as far as I know is maxed out on available RAM, all three slots have a 512MB, totaling 1.5GB or so.

Your RAM is, indeed, maxxed out. That is as much as the QuickSilver will support. However, it will be plenty enough to support Tiger, and even Leopard, if your processor upgrade allows the installation of Leopard. As noted by earlier posters, you cannot use a USB flashdrive as RAM. Here are the technical specifications for Leopard and the minimum system requirements for Tiger.

I'm looking at purchasing a 1.8GHz processor to upgrade from 800, and as far as I know my RAM is maxed out at 1.5GB.

I am not familiar with the processor upgrade to which you refer, but if you can do that it will give you a very powerful computer. The processing speed comes from the processor, and RAM and a minimum of 15 GB available disk capacity (free space) will improve efficiency.

😉 cornelius

Is there any way to boost the RAM on my Mac by using this flash drive

Not as far as I've ever heard. As far as the computer is concerned the flash drive is a disk drive, and can't be accessed as RAM.

Are there any other ways of boosting the RAM?

No. Please see my other post to you.

SoundMind76

Your Mac will automatically use virtual RAM from your hard drive when it needs it. It is slower than Installed RAM but does help. You need to have free disk space on your hard drive for virtual memory and working space I try to keep 20 GB available. Have you checked to see if you can swap out a 512 MB for a 1 GB. Check your system profiler; check memory it will tell you the type of RAM and all the RAM slots don’t have to have the same size chip. I have two 256 MB and one 512MB and one empty slot totaling 1 GB.

A Flash drive is a USB 2.0 with a transfer rate of 480 Mbps but uses your processor and rarely reaches that maximum rate. It would not come close to the transfer rate of a 7200 rpm hard drive using virtual Memory. The best solution would be swapping out and installing Larger RAM chips.

Old Jarhead

Message was edited by: Old Jarhead

SoundMind76

About upgrading your 800 MHz processor, it is about minimum run speed for the new Mac OS 1.5 and taxing for later versions o Mac OS 10.
I went through that processor upgrade once it was fine with OS 9 but not good with OSX. Apple will not support these processor upgrades even though they may work. A newer Mac would be a better choice. One of the new iMacs with intel dual are mighty fast and some come with 2GB of RAM. you will have to take into consideration the software you are using and if they will be useable on a new Intel Mac. When our old machines die we have to move on

My daughter bought the 24 in. dual layer 3.02 MHz with the fast video card. I installed a version of CanvasX which is not written for the Intel chip and it performed amazing on Rosseta. I was surprised I worked with several very large image files and it worked as well and maybe better than my Dual G4. I tested CanvasX because ACD who owns Canvas does not plan to release a Mac Intel Version. I have not found as replacement for this all in one Drawing, Page layout, Image editing and much more application. As long as Apple supports Rosetta I can still use this great application on an Intel Mac.

Old Jarhead

Old Jarhead:

Actually, processor upgrades can breathe new life into many an old computer. I have a G4/550 on my old G3 Pismo and it runs Tiger like a charm. Many Pismo users have done the same with excellent results. I am not familiar with the processor upgrade the OP plans to use, but I see no reason why it should not work well.

😉 cornelius

SoundMind76,

First things, Only Windows Vista 64bit (aka x64) can actually address 4GB of RAM. And only if you have 64bit hardware (Mac Pro / new MacBook Pro). All Windows users and all other Mac users are limited to about 2.5GB or 3GB. That's just the nature of 32 bit hardware - only 4GB memory is available but that includes video memory, ROM and other overheads.
There's going to be an awful lot of Windows users upset that they're currently buying obsolete kit as new. There's already an enormous line of Windows users having bought 4GB RAM and finding they can only use 2.5GB of it.

Next, the speed of economy RAM sticks is truly painful, even as a hard disk extension. You may get 25MB/s transfer rate (advertised as 80x - 100x SD), this is about 1/4 of the speed of a slow hard disk, and 1/200,000th the speed of real RAM. Windows or Mac, no difference. Pen and paper would feel quicker.

The 4GB stick you have will still be extremely useful, it's big enough to act as a portable backup of all your documents.

A 1.8GHx G4 without a DVD drive on OSX 10.3.9 is an awesome piece of kit. A new DVD drive would help, but I can't understand what software you would need to run that needs more RAM ?

Hello Simon,

...but I can't understand what software you would need to run that needs more RAM ?

I agree with your query. On my eMac running 10.3.9 I did not see an improvement when the RAM exceeded 640 MB, and I judged that from swapfile page ins/outs. Currently with 1 Gb it has zero pageouts, so the current amount is excessive to its needs.

I have 2GB in my OS 10.3.9 MDD, but I'm greedy, running Oracle 10g alongside all my other memory hogs. I could blow the whole 2GB just on Oracle (again, with my 32-bit hardware my SGA in Oracle is limited to 1.5GB).