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ROM Accelerator - Reader Feedback
Last Updated: 3/31/99
Rom-in-Ram for older Macs?: Derrick Yamaura wrote with a URL to a ROM Accelerator page that has a (now $10 Shareware) utility called ROAM to allow copying ROM to RAM for a performance boost (the iMac/B&W G3s do this already). RAM is much faster to access than ROMs, and PCs for many years have 'shadowed' bios and video card ROMs to ram for increased speed. The page claims it has been tested on a G3/233 (beige) and an 8500.
Below are reader experiences with the utility. If you've tried the ROM Accelerator I'd like your comments. (Read the disclaimer on their page and I'd backup any data before trying it just to be safe). Latest reports are listed first. Real-World Tests (timed tests in applications, the finder, scrolling, etc.) are needed to show the actual performance boost (if any). Macbench and other CPU/FPU tests are not the best indicator of any benefit that this util. may provide. 'Feel' is very subjective and is subject to the 'placebo' effect ;-)
Latest Reader Reports/Information (newest first):
Update from ROAM's Author: The author writes with notes that ROAM is no longer freeware ($10 shareware) and has some other corrections and comments to make regarding earlier reports here:
"Hi Mike,
I just was directed to your page on ROAM. I have a few corrections and clarifications I'd like to make.
ROAM is not freeware any longer. Only the first 2 releases were.
I'd like to discredit one report:
there is no way to make an application load as an extension as one report implies.
The ROM Acclerator extension has always been a "scri" extension.
There are some benchmarks at http://www.macinfo.de/
For people using Macsbug, they should notice big speedups in disassemblies of ROM code, and symbol lookups that search the ROM for symbols.
ROAM fractionally speeds up benchtests like MacBench. For many users of ROAM, the speed up that is "felt" is not a placebo effect... it is real. There are just some aspects you cannot test other than just by using the machine.
DriverServicesLib errors are gone.
RAM requirements are a lot lower than initial versions.
Some machines that were made slower by ROAM in early versions, should not be drastically slower anymore.
Some incompatible machines are now compatible. I believe 6400s & umax 500's work now, but cannot confirm it myself. NuBus Macs still are not, but might be in the future. Blue & White G3's and iMacs obviously do not need ROAM.
Please do not link to actual files you can download.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to mail me.
Thanks,
--Steven Bytnar
(Author of ROAM)
"
I noticed there is a ROAM Compatibility page posted as well. [3/31/99 Update]
Ryan Tanaka reported he had problems with ROAM 1.2b2 (Rom in Ram Utility):
"
ROAM 1.2b2 crashed at startup no matter what I did (ie. with & without G3
s/w). Running a 7500 with a PowerForce G3 (300/120/512k clocked to 350/116)
and 8.5.1.
-Ryan
"
ROAM Update: The ROAM web page has a updated version.
More comments on 'snappier feel' with ROAM:
"
Hi Mike,
I have tried both 1.0 and 1.1 of the ROM accelerator and have had no
problems at all. I haven't run any benchmark programs, but my Mac feels
snappier. It appears that window drawing is improved. System RAM usage is
WAY up, but I have only run ROM accelerator after my usual startup
applications have launched so it's probably a bad case of memory
fragmentation.
I have a SuperMac J700 with a RailGun 315/315 1MB upgrade, 144MB RAM (145
with VM), and the following PCI cards: Ultimate Rez, JackHammerSE UW SCSI,
Asante 10/100 ethernet. I am running 8.5.1 with all my extensions including
Virex 5.9.1, ActionFiles 1.2 (demo), ATM Deluxe 4.03, CD-ROM SpeedTools
3.9.3 and Stuffit Deluxe TFI 5.0.2 enabled.
David Walker"
I'm not sure how to read these results (which are with and without since there
are 3 times included, unless he did not list the w/o ROAM times.
"
Mike,
I did some tests on scrolling as well as finder file copy (before read your
mail, so I use "small" files instead of large file like you said..
Here's my results:
Normal ROM in RAM
Finder file copy 21MB (around 1900 files)
1 RUN 57"17 56"98
2 run 54"26 53"05
3 run 54"46 54"25
Scroll 160 k file in tex-edit 2.5.4
1 RUN 1'01"70 1'00"74
2 run 1'00"58 59"53
3 run 1'00"39 59"74
So, basically this agree with what I got from MacBench 5... around 1%
increase in performance...
One caveat in my test though: I have slow HD... I mean really slow!!! So
finder copy might not represent what the system might have gained.....
One thing I notice that this utility doesn't cause my system any trouble so
far... ( I think!! 'cause I was trying out iCab last night also... freezed
several times on me... I believe that's from iCab instead of this
rom-in-ram toy! By the way, iCAB is cool!!)
Yen
"
Another Apple G3 owners reports a faster 'feeling' system (I keep asking for timed tests but..):
"
I've used ROAM for a few hours now and it is running fine on my PowerMac
G3/233MT. The UI feels more 'snappy'. I attribute this to the fact that
because many of the ToolBox calls are making calls to the ROM the computer
has quicker access to the ToolBox when the ROM is in RAM thus speeding up
the UI.
Avelino(A.J.)Santa Ana Jr.
"
"
Mike:
used the norton system profiler to run a casual
comparison using the full battery of tests........
results:
on a 8500 with Power Logic 233 card and usual compliment of assorted extensions there was a '10 point' overall difference using the ROM accelerator and my original
system results.
more specific:
CPU: with- 749 without- 716
FPU: with- 667 without- 667
Video & Disk were about equal.
a 'lil bit o zip' in the way things 'feel'
ej"
A PB G3 owner writes:
"
Hi mike!
I installed the rom accelerator on my PowerBook G3 233/14.1/512kl2/160meg
ram - using Mac OS 8.5.1 and Speed Doubler.
Subjectively the machine has a quicker 'feel' - The game Unreal plays more
responsively - IE4.5 feels quicker - Finder menus and FinderPop respond more
quickly.
However, I attempted to install rom accelerator on my wife's PowerBook
1400cs/117/64meg ram - using Mac OS 8.5.1 and Speed Doubler, only to be
greeted by an error message whenever I try to load rom accelerator
"DriverServicesLib not found" and the progam refuses to load - even after a
shift boot.....
So to round up, one positive response and one nonstarter :-)
Rob Davies"
9500/G3 Upgrade owner comments:
"
Hi:
Here's my experience with ROM Accelerator on a PPC 9500 upgraded with a
300Mhz G3 and 240 MB of RAM :
When I tried to run it with my extensions (lots) enabled it would crash
at about the fourth line. When I escaped (through MacsBug) the system
'felt' faster when I came back.
Rebooting with extensions off would allow the thing to run and seemed
faster but all my favourite tricks and shortcuts were unavailable.
Placing it in the startup items folder caused the system to lock up and
even MacsBugs couldn't get me out of it.
Finally I used ResEdit to chang the type code to an early loading
extension (scri) and it loaded and ran fine. The Benchmarks I did with
Norton seemed to indicate that my system was actually slower with it
installed. About this time I began thinking about the existence of free lunches
Best, Dale Craddock"
I've asked for more definitive tests on this one:
"
7600/120, 112Mb RAM, OS 8.5.1, Speedoubler etc CPs.
No stability or boot problems so far. Prog loaded from startup items.
Conclusion - Seems sparkier in the finder, maybe apps load and unload
quicker, maybe OT2 is a bit quicker.
-Cyber CDP"
A 7300 owner reports benefits:
"
Liong Lie from the Netherlands
PowerMac 7300/166 with 144 Ram
It works fine with me; the first thing I notice was how quick the
graphics appear with Communicator 4.5, a real diffrence (or was I
surfing on a quiet time of day :)
I don't know how much faster the ROM accelerator really is but it's sure
is an improvement on my Mac, it's the little things that goes faster; you notice the
diffrence when it's turn off ! It ran the whole day and no problems so far.
Thanks Steve !
"
This (beige) G3 owner reported a noticable boost (I've asked for timed
comparison tests in apps):
"
Mike,
Very quickly, I have installed the ROM accelerator software on a beige G3
400Mhz, (Mac CPU Powerlogix ZIF) 512 Meg Memory, running system 8.6a5 and
it has worked flawlessly for several hours. I notice the computer is much
snappier, if that's possible, than before. I'm not an expert on bench
marks, but rather appreciate real world performance [Real world apps are the best test-Mike] and I would have to say
whatever this this does, I realize a noticeable improvement in performance.
I also happen to have a blue Mac 400 Mhz computer and I would say the ROM
accelerator makes my beige Mac more competitive with the Blue Mac, with the
difference in performance now being the difference in bus speed. Keep up
the great work on your most useful site.
Houston Hall"
Std Macbench CPU/FPU tests would probably not show any benefit, as this
reader reports. I did hope the video tests would have gotten some boost however.
"
Mike,
Here's the score from MacBench 5... Test machine is: 7500/powerlogix
220--> (up to 337/135/45 Mhz) with 192MB ram (interleaved), speed
doubler 8.1.2, with a lot of extensions... System folder grows from
around 29MB to 35MB. Video card is the cheap ultimate Rez I got around
a month ago!
Generally speaking, the improvement is minimal. With only one run, it's
probably within the error!! [variation] Video test is about 1% faster except the
text part. The ROM-in-RAM test ran immediately after the Normal test
without restart!!
By the way, great great site!!! Keep going!!!
Yen
"
"
Mike
I loaded it on my G3/300 MT - Macbench was up 6 points. I removed it
because it seemed my harddrive was being access much more than normal.
I.E. - if I used spring loaded windows - my HD would access every open
and close - don't notice it with ROAM turned off.
Dan"
With ROAM using more ram perhaps that is the reason for more disk accesses,
I can't say for sure.
I've asked for timed tests (scrolling in photoshop, etc.) from this 7500/G3 owner:
"
Hi Mike,
I've been using the ROM in RAM trick on my 7500/G3 for several hours
with no problem. I've surfed the net using Internet Explorer, I've
been sending/receiving email with Eudora, I used Virtual PC for a few
minutes, I used Word98 with no problems, I backed up some junk with
Retrospect Express, and I did some Photoshop work.
OS 8.5.1, 256 MB of interleaved RAM, G3/333 MHz NewerTech daughter card,
IXMicro Ult Rez, 3 drive striped array in concert with an Initio Miles UW PCI SCSI
card, and the array is the boot volume.
Mychailo Toloczko"
G3 Upgraded PowerCenter Owner writes:
"
Mike,
I have a PowerCenter w/Newer G3 250/125, 160 MB RAM. I ran the ROAM program
and it froze on the fourth line of feedback. Per instructions, I attempted
it on a shift-boot. That worked fine. But since the backside cache wasn't
enabled, not to mention all the lost functionality, any improvement in speed
was not too meaningful. I played around with some minimal Extension
configurations, down to about four which included the Backside Cache
software, Appearance manager, Extension manager. These again resulted in a
crashed system. Oh, well...
Cheers,
Richard Stamm
"
Report from an Apple G3/333 owner:
"
Hi,
After reading info on ROM accelerator I went to the web site to get
more info. I read through the whole page because, let's face it, it
seems a little wierd. After reading all the warnings and other info on
the page I decided to give it a try. I downloaded it and put it in my
startup items folder. After restarting a window appeared with some text
showing what the program was doing. I then checked my RAM usage under
about this computer and my Mac OS is running 24 MB. Normally it runs
around 18-19MB, so it does look like the program put my ROM in RAM like
advertised. I haven't been using it very long so I'm not too sure on
what the overall speed increase is yet. First impressions seem good
though, finder windows seem a little faster (even with Speed Doubler). I
am using a G3 333 with 128 MB RAM (129 w/ VM) on Mac OS 8.5.1. I'll let
you know if I find out anything more....either good or bad.
Wade Cosgrove"
A positive report from a 8600 owner:
"
Mike,
I downloaded ROM accelerator 1.0 and gave it a try on my 8600-224MB RAM with
Newer G3 upgrade running 266/177 512k 44.5MHz bus and an IBM9LP drive and
Jackhammer SCSI card. Before launching ROM Accelerator my system took up
26.4 MB with all my extensions loaded. I ran MacBench 5 and got a processor
score of 790, floating point 888 and disk 974.
After launching ROM accelerator my system grew to 33.5MB. I ran MacBench 5
again and got a processor score of 803, floating point 888 and disk 985. I
have had no crashes or ill effects while running with ROM Accelerator for
about and hour. If it is released as an extension and causes no stability
problems it would seem worth using on a system with plenty of RAM.
Bob Snow"
Another 8600 Owner reports different results:
"
I tried out the ROM accelerator program and used macbench and "real-life" tests
on it. I didn't have a ton of time, but here is what I came up with:
Macbench 5.0 scores
(This is the base system Macbench uses)
G3/300 - CPU - 1000
G3/300 - FPU - 1000
G3/300 - Disk - 1000
(Without ROM accelerator)
8600/200 - CPU - 365
8600/200 - FPU - 720
8600/200 - Disk - 422
Copy 73.9mb 441 item file - 36.3 sec
Launch Netscape - 5.5 sec
(With ROM accelerator)
ROM -> RAM 8600/200 - CPU - 368 [+3 points (not significant)]
ROM -> RAM 8600/200 - FPU - 721 [+1 point (not significant)
ROM -> RAM 8600/200 - Disk - 412 [-10 points (not significant)]
Copy 73.9mb 441 item file - 35.4 sec [0.9 sec faster]
Launch Netscape - 5.2 sec [0.3 sec faster]
Note that I tried to do Video/Graphics tests but Macbench kept crashing
(sorry). I know this isn't a large ammount of testing, nor does the ROM really
effect this stuff that much, but I saw no improvement. I didn't feel any
improvement either.
These tests were all done with No Virtual Memeory, and all but the base
extensions turned off. The 8600 has 32mb of ram, and a 2gig hard drive.
--Charles Ruggiero
"
Another 8600 owner (Mach 5 system) reports:
"
I tried it in my 8600/250 (mach5) OS 8.5.1 and could not see any
measurable improvements. Did benchmarking in MacBench 5.0 and Norton System Info.
Christian Celius Bjørvik"
This reader reports lower performance with the utility enabled:
"
Hi Mike,
I was daring & installed this in my Starmax 4000/160 (OS 8.1 w/ 4400 update, 80
Mb RAM). The first time out it launched a window in which it appeared to
benchmark my ROM speed & then died and locked up the whole system. I performed a
hard reboot & afterwards everything seemed to work OK. I then ran the processor
test in MacBench 4 and was surprised to learn that my 'Mac' was actually 4%
slower with the ROM accelerator enabled. I realize that my simple test should
not be used to pass judgement on this program but I was surprised by the
negative result.
Steve Johansson"
Another reader notes video oddities from use:
"
Wanted to give you my experiences with ROAM... I loaded it up, and noticed
no ill effects in the Finder, but the first application I launched I noticed
that buttons weren't being drawn, the standard save dialog box was blank,
and dialogs in general refused to draw correctly. It seemed to be drawing
the buttons as a garbled mess at the top of the screen. This was with
Speedometer 4, admittedly not the most recent of programs, but it was enough
to get me to turn the utility off.
Machine: PMG3/266 (oc 300), OS 8.5.0
- Jared Buttles"
A 6500 owner reports problems:
"
Hello, my name is Christopher Corwin, I am a technology education
graduate from Oswego State University of NY. When I read your page
today, (I read it on a daily basis) I noticed the Rom-in-Ram section. I
own a 6500/225 so I jumped on the chance that this could improve the
speed by any amount. Listed below are the results of my tests:
6500/225 MacOs 8.6a4c2 ROM revision: $77D.35F2M
Extensions on: Does not work- Freezes
Extensions Off: Does not work- Freezes
6500/225 MacOs 8.5.1 ROM revision: $77D.35F2
Extensions on: Does not work- Freezes
Extensions Off: Does not work- Freezes
Conclusion:
Rom-in-Ram does NOT work with the 6500 series or at least ROM revision:
$77D.35F2.
Thanks for offering an extremely great practical page on the Mac.
Cheers,
Christopher Corwin"
A 9500 also reported problems:
"
Hello Mike,
Just tried the Rom in Ram trick and for me it was lockup every time,
even with a shift boot.
My system:
9500/PF G3 (220/110) @ 350/50 and a 3-2 cache ratio.
128 MB Ram, Interleaved
System 8.5.1
Miles UW card with RAID 0 boot volume.
Thanks for the info, I look forward to the next revision of the
software, maybe it will work for me then. It would be really awesome if
it was an extension for loading as soon as possible.
Blaine Z.
"
Finally some positive results from a G3/300 MT owner:
"
I just tried ROAM on my beige G3/300 Minitower. I ran Norton SystemINFO
before trying ROAM and I got a CPU score of 832, after running ROAM I
recieved a score of 837 (quite an increase for a software hack!). Things
seem faster (ie: opening Netscape, etc.) but maybe that's just my
imagination. I didn't even think to back up anything before trying this
out. I think I will wait until some more results show up on your page
before I put this into fulltime use.
Thanks,
Michael Maysmith
Programming Consultant"
No-Go on a Umax C500:
"
Hi, I just wanted to tell you that I tried out the new ROM accelerator
listed on your news page and was unable to get it working on my Umax c500LT
(it freezes). Following the instructions on the author's website
(shift-boot) didn't work either. My machine is a Umax c500LT (603e/200) with
32mb of RAM 8.5.1 and I believe a 4mb ROM.
Sermed Naaman
University of California, Berkeley"
A 6400 owner reports no luck:
"
Hi Mike
I tryed running ROM Accelerater on my 6400/180 . I had no success even with
all extentions off. My machine froze during the opening rom in ram speed tests.
My machine configuration:
6400/180
72mgs of ram
ATI Exclaim 3D 8mg
Stock HD 1.6 Gig
External 56K modem
Bill Camillo"
I welcome other feedback on the utility. Please include your Mac model, OS version and and any CPU Upgrade that may be installed. Tests in real world apps or benchmarks are also wanted (timed tests for file copies, scrolling, etc.).
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