“There isn’t enough memory to work with another disk”

[TweedyF]

Hello all - new member here!
 

I picked up a 128k about a week ago which seems to be in good working order. The previous owner reports having rehabbed the disk drive and replaced some of the ram chips (with sockets added). I haven’t opened it up yet, as I’m still waiting on my long T15.

I have a repro startup disk with Finder 5.3/System 3.2, and another disk that has some games but no system files. 
 

Until today, I had been able to swap the games disk in and (after some more swapping) run Missile Defense. Today, it won’t let me mount the games disk. I get the error, “There isn’t enough memory to work with another disk.” I did see this intermittently in the past few days, but a restart always resolved the issue. Today, no longer.

I haven’t been able to find anything out about this error - here or elsewhere online. I’m wondering if anyone knows what it’s about? Do I need to worry about a bad RAM chip? About the Finder shows 128k of RAM, so I guess it’s registering all the chips?

 

[mraroid]

What kind of Mac are you using?  I put a 128 MB ( no typo- 128 MB)   memory stick in my color classic.  The only down side, is that it takes a loooooooong time to boot.

Mraroid

 

[TweedyF]

Ah sorry if I wasn’t clear, this is a 1984 Mac 128k I’m talking about!

 

[Crutch]

Does this error occur with any other disks?

 

[TweedyF]

Good question. I (stupidly) hadn’t really considered that the problem might be with the second floppy itself. I only have the two disks right now, but I’m picking up a lot of old floppies tomorrow that seems to have some 400k’s in it. I’ll let you know once I can try out some others. (I also ordered a bmow floppy emu, so I’ll have that to troubleshoot with sometime soon.) 
 

It’s just odd that this error was occurring intermittently before and now suddenly it’s persistent. 

 

[Crutch]

Yeah that makes sense.  However this is a pretty “clean” looking error ... it’s not a DS System Error but looks like the Finder itself is trying to allocate memory to deal with the new disk and catching an out-of-memory error from NewPtr or NewHandle or whatever.  This suggests that that OS knows it is running out of memory, which suggests that the issue isn’t a hardware probably with memory, but rather that the heap is actually too big and bumping into the stack, or whatever.  Which makes me wonder if there is something weird with your disk where the Finder is trying to allocate space for a large number of files or folders or ... whatever.

This is a lot of conjecture I admit but I am guessing it’s the disk not your memory.

 

[Dog Cow]

Yeah that makes sense.  However this is a pretty “clean” looking error ... it’s not a DS System Error but looks like the Finder itself is trying to allocate memory to deal with the new disk

Yes, it's a Finder error.

I have a repro startup disk with Finder 5.3/System 3.2, and another disk that has some games but no system files. 

I have highlighted a likely cause of your memory problem. That System/Finder combination is not ideal for a Mac 128K. I recommend Finder 4.1 and System 2.0.

Here is an alternate, possible solution: hold down the Command and Option keys while you insert your games disk. You should get a dialog asking if you want to rebuild the Desktop File. Do it. Rebuilding the Desktop File may reduce the amount of memory that the Finder needs to work with your games disk.

 

[Crutch]

Those are great points!  I should have noticed those version numbers.  Yes, do what @Dog Cow said!

 

[Dog Cow]

Those are great points!  I should have noticed those version numbers.  Yes, do what @Dog Cow said!

By the way, all your reasoning (or conjecture, as you called it) was correct!  bw

 

[TweedyF]

@Dog Cow and @Crutch you’re geniuses. Rebuilding the desktop for the disk worked. Thanks!
 

I did wonder if the system version was part of the problem, since I know this isn’t the best version for the 128k (it’s all I have at the moment), but I figured that wouldn’t explain the sudden persistent onset of the error. But I suppose if the machine has less to work with in the first place on 5.3/3.2...