Texas Instruments TI-84 PLUS SILV Guidebook - Page 347

The Garbage Collect? message lets you know an archive will take longer than usual. It also alerts you that the archive will fail if there is not enough memory. The message can also alert you when a program is caught in a loop that repetitively fills the user data archive. Select No to cancel the garbage collection process, and then find and correct the errors in your program. When YES is selected, the TI-84 Plus will attempt to rearrange the archived variables to make additional room. Responding to the Garbage Collection Message • To cancel, select 1:No. • If you select 1:No, the message ERR:ARCHIVE FULL will be displayed. • To continue archiving, select 2:Yes. • If you select 2:Yes, the process message Garbage Collecting... or Defragmenting... will be displayed. Note: The process message Defragmenting... is displayed whenever an application marked for deletion is encountered. Garbage collection may take up to 20 minutes, depending on how much of archive memory has been used to store variables. After garbage collection, depending on how much additional space is freed, the variable may or may not be archived. If not, you can unarchive some variables and try again. Why Is Garbage Collection Necessary? The user data archive is divided into sectors. When you first begin archiving, variables are stored consecutively in sector 1. This continues to the end of the sector. An archived variable is stored in a continuous block within a single sector. Unlike an application stored in user data archive, an archived variable cannot cross a sector boundary. If there is not enough space left in the sector, the next variable is stored at the beginning of the next sector. Typically, this leaves an empty block at the end of the previous sector. variable A variable B Sector 1 Empty block variable D Depending on its size, variable D is stored in one of these locations. variable C Sector 2 Sector 3 Chapter 18: Memory and Variable Management 340