<b>Virtual memory slow down in Mac OS 7.6.1: more info<br>

(and a PGP conflict?) We have previously described a slow down in performance in some machines running Mac OS 7.6.1 that seems to be linked to having virtual memory (VM) active. No solution was reported. Of relevance to this, reader Kramer sent me the following note that he picked up from a posting on AOL:

"There's also a problem with the ATA Manager performance (the software that controls IDE hard drives like the internal drive in your 6400) when Virtual Memory is on. VM's code is not the problem, but the only way to work-around the problem (until Mac OS 8 is available) is to turn VM off."

Steve Melemed claims that installing either RAM Doubler or virtual memory counter-acted the speed up associated with Speed Doubler on his 6400.

This all seems to suggest that the VM slow down will only occur on Macs with IDE drives. However, I know that users with SCSI drives have also reported this symptom, so there may be more to this issue.

PGP 5.0b and extended memory In a possibly related matter (not specific to Mac OS 7.6.1), using extended memory (RAM Doubler or virtual memory) causes a startup crash for Robert Morgan when PGP 5.0b is installed.