Snake Oil Software: How SoftRAM Hoodwinked The World

Megalith

Megalith

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Do you know anyone who actually fell for this? SoftRAM 95 was software that could supposedly double your memory without an actual hardware upgrade, and it managed to be a pretty big hit, being the only software specifically written for Windows 95 when the OS launched.

“There were two parts to SoftRAM,” explained Seltzer. “One of them was the device driver, the kernel mode software, which supposedly did the memory management and the compression. And then there’s this program that you run to see how much memory it’s compressing, and it shows dials and stuff.” “It turns out that even if you don’t load the device driver at all, the program that shows you how much memory it’s compressing does exactly the same thing,” Seltzer laughed. He describes the interface as a “fabrication”— but it was enough to coerce thousands into parting with the software’s asking price of $79.95.
 
Memory was insanely expensive back then. I can see why something like this would sell like crazy. Even if its a fake.
 
Galvin said:
Memory was insanely expensive back then. I can see why something like this would sell like crazy. Even if its a fake.
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Yeah the funny thing is nowadays actually doubling your RAM would be cheaper in most cases. :) Actually using all of your RAM was a very real possibility back then too. It's pretty hard to use 8 or 16GB browsing Facebook.
 
I like the iOS part in there- "The first virus scanner for iOS, for example, came from Avira. It did nothing."

"Whether it’s a phony memory booster, a phony virus checker, or a phony version of the latest game to top the app store charts, these placebo products all share one common trait. If there’s no real function to the software, there must be an ulterior motive in play."
 
Even tho this is complete BS , i remember having Freespace space sim , and it would not run with less than 32mb ram (gave a warning and shutdown) , using QEMM software allowed you to bypass that limit by emulation more run using HDD.
 
I remember see this back then and laughing...you never get something for nothing...

I also remember the one that doubled your hard disk...I loaded a custom bootstrap and compressed everything on the hard disk into 1 giant zip!

BTW you also got the added bonus of making your whole machine run like molasses because of the enormous overhead that compression caused. YAY
 
It makes sense in theory, compress memory like you can compress a file. Memory is the fastest storage in a computer is it doesn't seem slow doing it. I never bought this so I never had to worry if it actually worked or not. Even back then I was pretty close to the bleeding edge, I haven't had too little memory since my 386 had 2MB and Wolfenstein or Doom (I forget which) needed 4MB.
 
EODetroit said:
It makes sense in theory, compress memory like you can compress a file. Memory is the fastest storage in a computer is it doesn't seem slow doing it. I never bought this so I never had to worry if it actually worked or not. Even back then I was pretty close to the bleeding edge, I haven't had too little memory since my 386 had 2MB and Wolfenstein or Doom (I forget which) needed 4MB.
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It makes sense until you consider something called latency.
 
Powerage said:
It makes sense until you consider something called latency.
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Doesn't OS X do some sort of memory compression though?

I'd imagine it is probably OK these days with faster CPU's that can compress and decompress stuff more quickly, and if you only do it on less used stuff in RAM.

That being said, if you only do it on less used stuff in RAM, this content is probably a decent candidate for swapping to the drive instead.

So now you have to determine which results in the lesser latency. Compressing it in RAM or swapping it to a drive?

If all you have is a tiny SSD (like some of the systems that ship with only a 128GB SSD, it might actually be useful at the margins. Of course, having more real ram would be orders of magnitude better but...
 
Reminds me of this little gem, the DVD Rewinder...and yes, people bought it.


IMjrken.jpg
 
Didn't quite fall for that but I did by an Uninstaller package that supposedly cleaned up better than Add/Remove Programs of old (95 era).
 
RamDoubler did help though. It was amazing on the Mac. The PC was beyond hope back in those days.
 
NiViK said:
I remember see this back then and laughing...you never get something for nothing...

I also remember the one that doubled your hard disk...I loaded a custom bootstrap and compressed everything on the hard disk into 1 giant zip!

BTW you also got the added bonus of making your whole machine run like molasses because of the enormous overhead that compression caused. YAY
Click to expand...

Yeah you're probably thinking of stacker. It actually worked though as you said, it could be pretty slow.
 
Term-X said:
Didn't quite fall for that but I did by an Uninstaller package that supposedly cleaned up better than Add/Remove Programs of old (95 era).
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This actually have some merits as some programs back in the days didn't clean up all of it's files or changes to the system where disk space were at premium.
It works by comparing and/or monitoring the changes before and after install.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Doesn't OS X do some sort of memory compression though?

I'd imagine it is probably OK these days with faster CPU's that can compress and decompress stuff more quickly, and if you only do it on less used stuff in RAM.

That being said, if you only do it on less used stuff in RAM, this content is probably a decent candidate for swapping to the drive instead.

So now you have to determine which results in the lesser latency. Compressing it in RAM or swapping it to a drive?

If all you have is a tiny SSD (like some of the systems that ship with only a 128GB SSD, it might actually be useful at the margins. Of course, having more real ram would be orders of magnitude better but...
Click to expand...

I'm not sure about os x, but windows 10 has it, and Linux has it too. Mostly it's done as a step before swapping to disk; if it saves enough space that you don't need to swap out, great. If you still need to swap, it's less I/O, usually the compression is chosen to be pretty quick, so the decrease in I/O pays for the CPU cost.
 
I remember this on the Apple Performas and LCs. RAM we so damn expensive and they had so little to begin with.
 
TechLarry said:
RamDoubler did help though. It was amazing on the Mac. The PC was beyond hope back in those days.
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Nah. The PC was always the better platforms.


Mac's were cute and all with their pretty GUI, but everything worth running back then was still in DOS :p

I refused to even have any Windows on my machine until Windows 95. I felt it was just a waste of disk space.
 
travbrad said:
Yeah the funny thing is nowadays actually doubling your RAM would be cheaper in most cases. :) Actually using all of your RAM was a very real possibility back then too. It's pretty hard to use 8 or 16GB browsing Facebook.
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Just use firefox for a few hours and you can hit your 8 or 16 GB ;)
 
I bought one of those as a gag gift for christmas one year. Gave it to the same guy I gave a manual hand drill that I put into a box marked 'cordless drill' a few years before that. Some people will fall for anything.

As far as the ram software, after using Stacker to compress a drive, I wondered what would happen if I compressed the compressed drive. So I tried it. I wound up with what seemed like nearly 80 mb of hard drive space on a 20 mb hard drive. So weird. It seemed to work just fine. Also weird.
 
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nightfly said:
I bought one of those as a gag gift for christmas one year. Gave it to the same guy I gave a manual hand drill that I put into a box marked 'cordless drill' a few years before that. Some people will fall for anything.

As far as the ram software, after using Stacker to compress a drive, I wondered what would happen if I compressed the compressed drive. So I tried it. I wound up with what seemed like nearly 80 mb of hard drive space on a 20 mb hard drive. So weird. It seemed to work just fine. Also weird.
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The catch was it would wear out the drive 2x to 4x as fast.
 
nightfly said:
I bought one of those as a gag gift for christmas one year. Gave it to the same guy I gave a manual hand drill that I put into a box marked 'cordless drill' a few years before that. Some people will fall for anything.

As far as the ram software, after using Stacker to compress a drive, I wondered what would happen if I compressed the compressed drive. So I tried it. I wound up with what seemed like nearly 80 mb of hard drive space on a 20 mb hard drive. So weird. It seemed to work just fine. Also weird.
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i asusme that was jstu he predicted numbesr. o nce you started filling up the drive you owuld notice a quick reduction in avaiable free space as the data compression did not hit the predicted double compression measurements
 
EODetroit said:
It makes sense in theory, compress memory like you can compress a file. Memory is the fastest storage in a computer is it doesn't seem slow doing it. I never bought this so I never had to worry if it actually worked or not. Even back then I was pretty close to the bleeding edge, I haven't had too little memory since my 386 had 2MB and Wolfenstein or Doom (I forget which) needed 4MB.
Click to expand...

not only does it make sense but windows are doing it, but back then you just didnt have the spare cpu cycles to do it without a performance loss. Today different story.
 
I remember having as RAM tool called BlueMax or something that was really good at tweaking and managing the HIMEM and AUTOEXEC really well in DOS. Just made it easier. I got fed up having to adjust them every time I wanted to play a certain game.

RAM was so crazy expensive in the mid late 90's, I remember my company would seal every new PC in a steel cage with a padlock under the desk to make sure the RAM stayed in it. By around 1998 though prices dropped and we no longer bothered. However, it could have been that as I was one of the support guys there and one day we had to move a machine for some urgent reason. The guy with the padlock key wasn't around. We found a pair of pliers bent the edges of the cage so easy it took about 3 minutes to get the PC out.
 
SvenBent said:
i asusme that was jstu he predicted numbesr. o nce you started filling up the drive you owuld notice a quick reduction in avaiable free space as the data compression did not hit the predicted double compression measurements
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That was back in the day of saving months of work data on one floppy. I never filled up the drive, so I never noticed. The first sign of any problem was when I installed DOS 6 and doublespace mixed with stacker. What a mess.
 
nightfly said:
That was back in the day of saving months of work data on one floppy. I never filled up the drive, so I never noticed. The first sign of any problem was when I installed DOS 6 and doublespace mixed with stacker. What a mess.
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ouch....
i remember playing around with double space and you could set the actual compression estimate yourself. i put it to x16.. suddenly my hdd was HUGE :D but whenever i put in 1mb of data around 12 got remove fromthe free space estimate
 
travbrad said:
Yeah the funny thing is nowadays actually doubling your RAM would be cheaper in most cases. :) Actually using all of your RAM was a very real possibility back then too. It's pretty hard to use 8 or 16GB browsing Facebook.
Click to expand...
Not if you are using Chrome :LOL::LOL::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 
I recall there was a software that doubled your disk space. Can't remember its name.

Aaah doublespace, just noticed it.
 
I remember this and tried it out, found no difference and didn't recommend it to anyone. I had a whopping 12MB of RAM, back then, so what did I care?

I did use Stacker for a brief period of time, then upgraded my drive because I didn't like the overhead. Remember the Stacker hardware card? Was too expensive for my taste or I'd have tried it. hehehe
 
I never even tried double-space, stacker and the like back then. To me it seemed like they would just result in too much of a performance drop, particularly since I was not exactly running at the top hardware of the time.

I had a tiny hard drive, but I just dealt with it, frequently installing and uninstalling stuff as needed.
 
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