RAM disk in Mydos 4.53/4

[walter_J64bit]

How do I setup a RAM Disk in Mydos to emulate a disk drive that can do SD,ED and DD formats? I have 256k to play with. In Super Dos I can emulate a disk drive with ease but Super Dos isn't compatible with the SIO2PC Yes Super Dos has spoiled me I just wish it had Hard Drive Support.

[drac030]

AFAIK, the ramdisk in MyDOS only supports 128 bytes per sector. I guess the other setup information you require may be written in the FM.

[walter_J64bit]

AFAIK, the ramdisk in MyDOS only supports 128 bytes per sector. I guess the other setup information you require may be written in the FM.

I have no idea on how to do that.

[walter_J64bit]

Anyone?

[+CharlieChaplin]

Anyone?

 

Well,

as Drac030 said, the Ramdisk in MyDOS is always Single Density. In older versions of MyDOS (e.g. 4.50) you had to setup the ramdisk manually by typing in some hex bytes (for the rambanks). Of course therefore you had/have to know what ramdisk type you had/have (e.g. XE types like Rambo/Newell/TOMS or Compyshop/Megaram or 400/800 types like Axlon). In the manual for MyDOS you then found (and still find) the appropriate hex numbers you have to type in...

 

If I remember correctly the new version 4.55 and/or its Ramdisk driver (by Lee Barnes) autodetects mosts Ramdisks, so all you have to do is choose option "O" to configure, when it asks for a drive number just type Return to configure the DOS itself and a few questions later you will be asked if XE or Axlon type (type in/confirm what you have) and when you answered this it will display the size of your ramdisk which (when true) you simply answer with "Y"es. When done you finally save the new configured DOS to disk (by choosing the "H" command) and you are done. Well, thats how I did it, because my RD was detected automatically - if your RD isn`t detected correctly or you want to use a smaller RD than you have (e.g. only 128k of the available 256k) then you still have to type in the appropriate hex numbers...

 

Attached you will find both MyDOS versions 4.50 and 4.55 - they are afaik configured to my 512k ramdisk, so for sure you have to make a new configuration which matches your ramdisk type and size. Luckily you only have to configure once (and write the configured DOS to disk!), all future "copies" of this DOS, created with the "H" command will then have this configuration...

 

Good luck - Andreas Koch.

 

P.S.: If you want the RD to perfectly match single (90k), medium (130k) or double (180k) density of a floppy drive, then sorry this is not possible under MyDOS (you can only have RD sizes that are a multiple of 64k, e.g. 64k, 128k, 192k, 256k, 320k, etc.). Afaik XDOS and a few other DOS versions do simulate floppy sizes via XRAM or ramdisk (but I have never used them), also some OS versions, like QMEG-OS and others do...

Edited September 13, 2009 by CharlieChaplin

[walter_J64bit]

Anyone?

 

Well,

as Drac030 said, the Ramdisk in MyDOS is always Single Density. In older versions of MyDOS (e.g. 4.50) you had to setup the ramdisk manually by typing in some hex bytes (for the rambanks). Of course therefore you had/have to know what ramdisk type you had/have (e.g. XE types like Rambo/Newell/TOMS or Compyshop/Megaram or 400/800 types like Axlon). In the manual for MyDOS you then found (and still find) the appropriate hex numbers you have to type in...

 

If I remember correctly the new version 4.55 and/or its Ramdisk driver (by Lee Barnes) autodetects mosts Ramdisks, so all you have to do is choose option "O" to configure, when it asks for a drive number just type Return to configure the DOS itself and a few questions later you will be asked if XE or Axlon type (type in/confirm what you have) and when you answered this it will display the size of your ramdisk which (when true) you simply answer with "Y"es. When done you finally save the new configured DOS to disk (by choosing the "H" command) and you are done. Well, thats how I did it, because my RD was detected automatically - if your RD isn`t detected correctly or you want to use a smaller RD than you have (e.g. only 128k of the available 256k) then you still have to type in the appropriate hex numbers...

 

Attached you will find both MyDOS versions 4.50 and 4.55 - they are afaik configured to my 512k ramdisk, so for sure you have to make a new configuration which matches your ramdisk type and size. Luckily you only have to configure once (and write the configured DOS to disk!), all future "copies" of this DOS, created with the "H" command will then have this configuration...

 

Good luck - Andreas Koch.

 

P.S.: If you want the RD to perfectly match single (90k), medium (130k) or double (180k) density of a floppy drive, then sorry this is not possible under MyDOS (you can only have RD sizes that are a multiple of 64k, e.g. 64k, 128k, 192k, 256k, 320k, etc.). Afaik XDOS and a few other DOS versions do simulate floppy sizes via XRAM or ramdisk (but I have never used them), also some OS versions, like QMEG-OS and others do...

WOW, this should do the trick I have the Rambo XL install in my 1200XL and the INOVATIVE RAM upgrade for the XEGS but I use the 1200XL more. Thanks I'll jump on this and try out that autodetect Ramdisk.

Edited September 13, 2009 by walter_J64bit

[walter_J64bit]

My 1200XL is freaking out on me but way I've ran MyDOS 4.55 on the XEGS it's going to do what I need it to do. Thanks!

[+Larry]

How do I setup a RAM Disk in Mydos to emulate a disk drive that can do SD,ED and DD formats? I have 256k to play with. In Super Dos I can emulate a disk drive with ease but Super Dos isn't compatible with the SIO2PC Yes Super Dos has spoiled me I just wish it had Hard Drive Support.

 

Interesting... I didn't know that SuperDos was incompatible with SIO2PC. I can successfully boot SuperDos 5.0 from APE, but SD refuses to recognize any APE drive other than D1:. It would be interesting to know why it fails with other than D1: . Off the top of my head, I would suspect that APE responds too quickly, but that wouldn't explain why it recognizes D1: (?) But since SD doesn't support hard drives, that limits its usefulness for many users these days.

 

Anyway, to your original question. If you want a MyDos ramdisk to *exactly* represent a 90K or 180K drive, then you would need the CSS Ultra Speed Plus OS. They may still have them for sale. I used that OS in a 320K XE for years. But I don't know about it supporting the 1200XL or XEGS. From memory: the default ramdisk for USP+ is D4: as a 720 sector SD disk, but it can be changed to D9: (or other) and/or changed to DD provided you have the ram to support it. It is a proprietary OS module and must be installed with several solder points. Not terribly difficult to install, but not "plug and play" either.

 

Here's the link, if you find the USP+ of interest:

http://www.nleaudio.com/css/

 

-Larry

[walter_J64bit]

How do I setup a RAM Disk in Mydos to emulate a disk drive that can do SD,ED and DD formats? I have 256k to play with. In Super Dos I can emulate a disk drive with ease but Super Dos isn't compatible with the SIO2PC Yes Super Dos has spoiled me I just wish it had Hard Drive Support.

 

Interesting... I didn't know that SuperDos was incompatible with SIO2PC. I can successfully boot SuperDos 5.0 from APE, but SD refuses to recognize any APE drive other than D1:. It would be interesting to know why it fails with other than D1: . Off the top of my head, I would suspect that APE responds too quickly, but that wouldn't explain why it recognizes D1: (?) But since SD doesn't support hard drives, that limits its usefulness for many users these days.

 

Anyway, to your original question. If you want a MyDos ramdisk to *exactly* represent a 90K or 180K drive, then you would need the CSS Ultra Speed Plus OS. They may still have them for sale. I used that OS in a 320K XE for years. But I don't know about it supporting the 1200XL or XEGS. From memory: the default ramdisk for USP+ is D4: as a 720 sector SD disk, but it can be changed to D9: (or other) and/or changed to DD provided you have the ram to support it. It is a proprietary OS module and must be installed with several solder points. Not terribly difficult to install, but not "plug and play" either.

 

Here's the link, if you find the USP+ of interest:

http://www.nleaudio.com/css/

 

-Larry

There are other bugs in SD if you have a XF551 with a HyperX mod you can't use SD and SD can't read a 360k formatted disk by Mydos even though they have the same numbers of sectors MyDos can't read a SD 360K formatted disk! I wouldn't be mad if someone made mods to SD.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

There is no MyDOS 4.55, just a MyDOS 4.55 beta 3. Meaning it's a beta version, not a finished piece of software. Please do NOT refer to MyDOS 4.55 beta 3 as MyDOS 4.55 as this will cause a lot of confusion later on!!!

 

If you really want to emulate a floppy, buy the UltraSpeed Plus OS by CSS as suggested before. The latest version (1.5 IIRC) might already use D9: as the drivenumber for the RAMdisk. The 1200XL uses two chips for it's OS IIRC, so you'ld have to do Bill Woolley's "1200XL to 800XL OS upgrade" first. And the XEGS has OS and BASIC in the same chip (along with Missile Command). You'ld probably need some kind of reversed "800XL to 1200XL upgrade" to have both BASIC and the US+ in one computer. Problem might be, that the US+ is a bit higher then most chips and will touch your shield. But then again, the shield on an XEGS is higher then on an XL or XE.

 

MyDOS will never ever support DD RAMdisks for 64kB memory expansions, as sector 360 wouldn't even fit inside, let alone the directory that comes after that. But this doesn't seem to concern the topicstarter as he mentions that he has 256kB.

 

What you might try, is Raphael J. Espino's RAMdisk routines. I've used them for a while "way back when".

 

MyDOS has always been able to detect most standard RAMdisk sizes AFAIK. What the latest versions do differently is that MyRD2 (the RAMdisk driver) will check the size of you RAMdisk BEFORE it copies everything from your RAMDISK: subdirectory to you RAMdisk. Which comes in very handy when you go from a computer with more RAM to one with less RAM.

 

If somebody comes up with a good reason why we need to have DD support in MyDOS, please tell me. I have to convince the guy who's working on it that we need it. And he's at least as stubborn as I am. So it's not gonna be easy.

 

greetings

 

Mathy

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hello guys

 

There is no MyDOS 4.55, just a MyDOS 4.55 beta 3. Meaning it's a beta version, not a finished piece of software. Please do NOT refer to MyDOS 4.55 beta 3 as MyDOS 4.55 as this will cause a lot of confusion later on!!!

 

greetings

 

Mathy

 

 

Well,

this MyDOS 4.55 has been beta since many years now - so I doubt there will ever be a new or final version of it... and even if, why not name the new or final version 4.56 or simply 4.6 then ?!? -Andreas Koch.

Edited September 15, 2009 by CharlieChaplin

[sup8pdct]

How do I setup a RAM Disk in Mydos to emulate a disk drive that can do SD,ED and DD formats? I have 256k to play with. In Super Dos I can emulate a disk drive with ease but Super Dos isn't compatible with the SIO2PC Yes Super Dos has spoiled me I just wish it had Hard Drive Support.

 

Interesting... I didn't know that SuperDos was incompatible with SIO2PC. I can successfully boot SuperDos 5.0 from APE, but SD refuses to recognize any APE drive other than D1:. It would be interesting to know why it fails with other than D1: . Off the top of my head, I would suspect that APE responds too quickly, but that wouldn't explain why it recognizes D1: (?) But since SD doesn't support hard drives, that limits its usefulness for many users these days.

 

Anyway, to your original question. If you want a MyDos ramdisk to *exactly* represent a 90K or 180K drive, then you would need the CSS Ultra Speed Plus OS. They may still have them for sale. I used that OS in a 320K XE for years. But I don't know about it supporting the 1200XL or XEGS. From memory: the default ramdisk for USP+ is D4: as a 720 sector SD disk, but it can be changed to D9: (or other) and/or changed to DD provided you have the ram to support it. It is a proprietary OS module and must be installed with several solder points. Not terribly difficult to install, but not "plug and play" either.

 

Here's the link, if you find the USP+ of interest:

http://www.nleaudio.com/css/

 

-Larry

There are other bugs in SD if you have a XF551 with a HyperX mod you can't use SD and SD can't read a 360k formatted disk by Mydos even though they have the same numbers of sectors MyDos can't read a SD 360K formatted disk! I wouldn't be mad if someone made mods to SD.

 

Double sided in superdos is setup similar to enhanced density to make things compatiable with all the dos 2 clones that were around in 1986. Also superdos was set up to use an unmodifyed xf551 and was written to look for it and it's density change bug. At the time, there was no harddrives ,atr8000 etc in australia so no support was written in to it. It would take a major rewrite to support subdirectories, a minor one to support harddrives etc.

I do have the source code which is written in synassembler and next to no comments.

Paul Nicholls was a talanted programmer and he had a working Zmodem protocal till he hit the turps and formatted his floppies.

He also wrote a 8K monintor program for the 800 that resided in 2 banks at $C000 - $CFFF and other projects

 

One trick in superdos is if files have the extention RAM on the boot disk, those files are copied to ramdisk on boot up.

 

James

[Mathy]

Hello Andreas, guys

 

Well,

this MyDOS 4.55 has been beta since many years now - so I doubt there will ever be a new or final version of it...

 

I've had a look at MyDOS 4.55 beta 4 already. (But that's all, have to get my 8 bit system back up)

 

... and even if, why not name the new or final version 4.56 or simply 4.6 then ?!?

 

Because we'ld be at MyDOS 75.67 by the time it reaches "fully stable and 99% bug free" stage.

 

greetings

 

Mathy

[+bf2k+]

Because we'ld be at MyDOS 75.67 by the time it reaches "fully stable and 99% bug free" stage.

 

 

Or maybe MyDOS+ 1.0?

[+Larry]

???

 

I've been using MyDos for at about 25 years -- back to 3.07, and I've had virtually no problems except with (I think) 4.2. Puff killed a lot of the bugs with the release of 4.50. Dunno about these 4.5X versions. I have basically stayed with 4.50. Never have seen the "ramdisk bug" that has been discussed. Perhaps I just haven't stressed it in just the right way, but 4.50 sure seems darned stable in my use.

 

What kind of instability and bugs are you referring to?

 

-Larry

 

 

Hello Andreas, guys

 

Well,

this MyDOS 4.55 has been beta since many years now - so I doubt there will ever be a new or final version of it...

 

I've had a look at MyDOS 4.55 beta 4 already. (But that's all, have to get my 8 bit system back up)

 

... and even if, why not name the new or final version 4.56 or simply 4.6 then ?!?

 

Because we'ld be at MyDOS 75.67 by the time it reaches "fully stable and 99% bug free" stage.

 

greetings

 

Mathy

[Mathy]

Hello Larry

 

What kind of instability and bugs are you referring to?

 

The bugs and instabilities in the beta version.

 

Previous versions have there share of bugs and none working features. Can't remember then all, but something was wrong with the MEM.SAV feature, the memory detection routine got screwed up (that's why there's a patched version of MyDOS 4.50 for the Newell 1MB upgrade), if you change the PERCOM Block and then tell the drive to format, MyDOS will not look at the Percom block but format the drive according to the settings in (or set via???) DUP.SYS, pre-4.55 beta 3 versions don't check the size of your RAMdisk before copying the content of your RAMDISK: subdirectory to your RAMdisk, there was an error in the VTOC building routine, if you don't use a period between filename and extender (possible if the filename is 8 characters long or replaced by the asterisk) the first character of the extender is sometimes chopped off (and the rest of the extender moved forward one character), bugs weren't really fixed but patched, etc.

 

4.2 was never released, you're probably thinking about 4.3.

 

greetings

 

Mathy

[+Larry]

Thought I'd resurrect this topic instead of starting a new one -- about MyDos 4.55 (Beta).

 

When using MyDos, 99.9% of the time I use 4.50, but this morning I got out 4.55 Beta. I had several issues with it, so I wondered if there are any docs for 4.55B? My image is of a MyDos ED disk, but no docs on it for the Dos changes. Anyone aware of any docs/info about what was changed?

 

-Larry

[+Roydea6]

The only thing I noticed was the option to have the size of file be 3 digit or 4 digit. Option 'O' and enter for setup. There probably more, but this is all I have noticed.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

I'ld have to go thrue a lot of emails to find all the fixes, but "::" (or was that ";;") will make the parent directory your default directory. An example: If your current default directory is D4:SUB1:SUB2: pressing "::" (or if I'm mistaken ";;") will make D4:SUB1: the new default directory.

 

sincerely

 

Mathy (who really has to get his system back up and running so I can start being a beta-tester for new versions of MyDOS again)

 

PS the VTOC bug was fixed among other things.

 

[edit: Nope, no docs yet]

Edited August 22, 2010 by Mathy

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

I also do not have full docs to MyDOS 4.55 (beta 3 or whatever I have in my collection). Lee Barnes once was so kind to write several E-Mails to me and described all the changes he made in MyDOS. But this was many years ago, when I was studying at the university and only had internet there (and not at home!). When I left the university my account was closed and thus all E-Mails and all stuff I had in my personal folder were erased...

 

What I have in my collection is a beta version of MyDOS 4.55 (maybe beta 1, 2 or 3) and Lee`s MyRAMD2 driver. The MyRAMD2.TXT describes not only its function but also some of the (corrected) bugs of MyDOS.

 

Last not least, MyDOS had an evil formatting error, think when you tried to format a certain drive (D0: or D9: or something), drive 1 was formatted instead. Lee described how to get rid of this bug by searching+changing some hex-bytes with a disk/sector-editor (think this is also mentioned in the MyRAMD2.TXT)...

 

------------

 

On a sidenote, with MyDOS 4.50 we had only one Autorun.SYS and if we named the Ramdisk driver Autorun.SYS it would not only run automatically (as the first program) - but it would also copy any/every program in the subdir :Ramdisk into your ramdisk, no matter how long it may take (or how many read/write processes are required). So far so good. With MyDOS version 4.53 and all later versions we got multiple Autoruns, ranging from *.AR0 (first Autorun) to *.AR9 (tenth Autorun). And err, imagine you still use your ramdisk driver as first Autorun (*.AR0) and it still copies all files from the subdir :Ramdisk into your ramdisk... This is what versions 4.53, 4.54 and 4.55 should do, but it does not work fully when you use multiple Autoruns ! Why ?!? Well, MyDOS has a copy-buffer of approx. 37kbytes (when Basic is turned off, otherwise its even smaller). So, let`s say you boot your disk, MyDOS (DOS.SYS) loads, *.AR0 (the ramdisk driver) loads and then starts copying files from :Ramdisk into your ramdisk - but as soon as the copy-buffer is full (37kbytes have been copied), it will stop copying any files and continue with the other Autoruns *.AR1, *.AR2, etc. If you have a file (or many files) that is (are) bigger than 37kbytes, it (they) will never get fully copied to the ramdisk, instead the ramdisk-copy-process is stopped and the multiple autoruns are continued.

 

I have tested this with one big file, a 1MB movie/animation file that I wanted to copy into the ramdisk and then run it from there. The player for this movie/animation is written in TB XL, so I also have to start TB XL and the MyDOS loading order should look like this: boot MyDOS without Basic, load ramdisk driver (*.AR0), copy the 1MB movie/animation (found in subdir :Ramdisk) to the ramdisk, when finished load TB XL (*.AR1), which itself loads the movie-player (Autorun.BAS) that finally starts/shows the movie from the ramdisk as an infinite loop. Well, as said before, only 37k of the movie gets copied, then TB XL is loaded and when the viewer finally starts, the movie is over in less than a second, not quite what I want...

 

-------

 

Afaik, there are dozens of other bugs in MyDOS and nowadays I am not sure if it makes sense to fix all of them, because it might take many years to do so (and maybe some bugs cannot be fixed or one may find more and more bugs) - it might be easier for a good programmer in the meanwhile to code his own DOS 2.x compatible DOS which supports subdirs, up to 16MB (maybe even 32MB, 48MB, 64MB or bigger) disk partitions/images, ultra-highspeed with Pokey divisor 0, etc. etc. With MyDOS I often have the feeling "hey, one bug fixed, three new ones found!"

 

Anyways, attached you can find my beta version of MyDOS 4.55 and the mentioned MyRAMD2 driver...

-Andreas Koch.

MyDOS_455_beta.zip