A 720 sector Ramdisk?

[+Larry]

The only 720-sector ramdisk that I am familiar with is created by the CSS UltraSpeed Plus OS. It creates by default a 720-sector ramdisk in single density (assuming that you have an expanded machine). I'm not sure what it creates (if anything) on a stock 130XE. Again, assuming that you have adequate ram (say a 320K XE) it can also create a 720-sector DD ramdisk. By default, the ramdisk is D4: but can be other numbers, including D9: by running a small CSS utility at boot-up. I haven't used this OS in a while, but IIRC, this ramdisk can also co-exist with the normal MyDos ramdisk which is frequently set up as D8:.

 

Are there any other existing programs that can create a 720-sector ramdisk (which can mirror a real floppy)?

 

-Larry

[+CharlieChaplin]

The only 720-sector ramdisk that I am familiar with is created by the CSS UltraSpeed Plus OS. It creates by default a 720-sector ramdisk in single density (assuming that you have an expanded machine). I'm not sure what it creates (if anything) on a stock 130XE. Again, assuming that you have adequate ram (say a 320K XE) it can also create a 720-sector DD ramdisk. By default, the ramdisk is D4: but can be other numbers, including D9: by running a small CSS utility at boot-up. I haven't used this OS in a while, but IIRC, this ramdisk can also co-exist with the normal MyDos ramdisk which is frequently set up as D8:.

 

Are there any other existing programs that can create a 720-sector ramdisk (which can mirror a real floppy)?

 

-Larry

 

 

Well,

 

QMEG-OS (well-known in Germany and Poland) allows for 64k, 90k, (2x)128k, 180k, 192k and 256k Ramdisk, thus one can easily simulate Single Density, Medium/Enhanced Density and Double Density disks. The built-in freezer of QMEG-Os also makes a lot of use of these simulated disk-densities. Most of all, it supports boot-sectors, so one can easily copy (or freeze) a bootdisk into the XRAM, then switch drives (make D8: the bootdrive D1:)and boot off of the XRAM, which is extremely usefull for bootdisks that often load data (e.g. Infocom adventures like Zork 1,2,3, etc.)...

 

Think there were also some DOs versions that allowed for 90k, 128k and 180k ramdisks. At the moment I only remember Super-DOS 5.x (and probably older versions) by Paul Nicholls from Australia, which supports a 90k ramdisk on a 192k+ (64k RAM + min. 128k XRAM) computer system. But afaik, this ramdisk, like most others, does not have any boot sectors and last not least Mr. Nicholls did something "evil": He made the ramdisk extremely slow, maybe as slow as a standard 1050 floppy drive (with 19k2 Baud), so it is pretty useless for bootdisks (since there are no bootsectors) and its also useless for programs that require fast data transmission (demos/animations/movies and such, because the ramdisk is so extremely slow)...

 

-Andreas Koch.

[a8isa1]

The only 720-sector ramdisk that I am familiar with is created by the CSS UltraSpeed Plus OS. It creates by default a 720-sector ramdisk in single density (assuming that you have an expanded machine). I'm not sure what it creates (if anything) on a stock 130XE. Again, assuming that you have adequate ram (say a 320K XE) it can also create a 720-sector DD ramdisk. By default, the ramdisk is D4: but can be other numbers, including D9: by running a small CSS utility at boot-up. I haven't used this OS in a while, but IIRC, this ramdisk can also co-exist with the normal MyDos ramdisk which is frequently set up as D8:.

 

Are there any other existing programs that can create a 720-sector ramdisk (which can mirror a real floppy)?

 

-Larry

Hi Larry,

 

Ramdrive 1.0 is supposed to handle ramdisks of any size (well up to 8 bank bits worth) and of just about any banking scheme (provided the bank register is just one byte). According to the notes you can program it to handle 16K, 32K, and 64K bank sizes.

 

Unfortunately I had trouble making it work with my former Wizztronics upgrade (256K total) and also my current Hias/Bernd SRAM upgrade (mine is hard-wired to 512K extended memory).

 

I couldn't seem to get the parameters right.

 

Perhaps you can figure it out.

 

I don't know if ramdrive 1.0 is SpartaDOS/SDX friendly. I'm primarily a MyDOS user so I never even tried the combination.

 

You can find the ATR here.

 

- Steve Sheppard

Edited July 16, 2010 by a8isa1

[Mathy]

Hello Steve

 

Isn't that the ramdiskdriver Rafael J. Espino wrote? I used it until the MyDOS ramdiskdriver was fixed. Rafael's software is very nice!

 

sincerely

 

Mathy

[drac030]

Larry, what do you need a 720-sector ramdisk for? Ramdisks usually use the entire banks of ext memory. An ext bank is 16k. Therefore, a 6-bank ramdisk should do: it will contain 768 "physical" single-density sectors, which makes 762 free sectors in SpartaDOS format (or 378 in DD), or 756 in AtariDOS format, enough to fit all the files from a 720-sector single density diskette.

[a8isa1]

Hello Steve

 

Isn't that the ramdiskdriver Rafael J. Espino wrote? I used it until the MyDOS ramdiskdriver was fixed. Rafael's software is very nice!

 

sincerely

 

Mathy

 

Yep.

 

When I was searching I wanted a ramdisk that supported double density and would allow sector copying.

Edited July 16, 2010 by a8isa1

[+Larry]

Larry, what do you need a 720-sector ramdisk for? Ramdisks usually use the entire banks of ext memory. An ext bank is 16k. Therefore, a 6-bank ramdisk should do: it will contain 768 "physical" single-density sectors, which makes 762 free sectors in SpartaDOS format (or 378 in DD), or 756 in AtariDOS format, enough to fit all the files from a 720-sector single density diskette.

 

Thanks to all for the additional examples. I'll check out ramdrive. Think I'll pass on SuperDos... QMEG certainly sounds interesting, although I've never used it very much.

 

I also thought of another possible example -- since you can make an MIO ramdisk of any size in increments of 32K, it seems likely that a 720 sector ramdisk, 90 or 180K could be set up from the MIO configuration menu. I don't have an MIO set up right now, so I currently can't test that assertion.

 

There is a very abbreviated description of the USP OS here:

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

 

Hi drac030-

No, I don't really need it for anything in particular. With the hard drive partitioning available now in multiple sizes, it is just about as useful. As with lots of things that were very neat and useful in 1990 (or so), they are not quite so useful today. But "back in the day" it was very handy to be able to mirror a real drive (and swap the drive to be D1: or perhaps D2:) to allow for playing games that made a lot of disk accesses. The USP OS allowed a lot of flexibility. In general, I find that swapping drives around is very useful, and both the MIO and Black Box, APE, and the USP OS all allowed this. Perhaps there are also others that allow this?

 

At any rate, I don't have a USP installed in a machine currently, but I'm thinking about putting one back in service.

 

-Larry

[rje]

The only 720-sector ramdisk that I am familiar with is created by the CSS UltraSpeed Plus OS. It creates by default a 720-sector ramdisk in single density (assuming that you have an expanded machine). I'm not sure what it creates (if anything) on a stock 130XE. Again, assuming that you have adequate ram (say a 320K XE) it can also create a 720-sector DD ramdisk. By default, the ramdisk is D4: but can be other numbers, including D9: by running a small CSS utility at boot-up. I haven't used this OS in a while, but IIRC, this ramdisk can also co-exist with the normal MyDos ramdisk which is frequently set up as D8:.

 

Are there any other existing programs that can create a 720-sector ramdisk (which can mirror a real floppy)?

 

-Larry

Hi Larry,

 

Ramdrive 1.0 is supposed to handle ramdisks of any size (well up to 8 bank bits worth) and of just about any banking scheme (provided the bank register is just one byte). According to the notes you can program it to handle 16K, 32K, and 64K bank sizes.

 

Unfortunately I had trouble making it work with my former Wizztronics upgrade (256K total) and also my current Hias/Bernd SRAM upgrade (mine is hard-wired to 512K extended memory).

 

I couldn't seem to get the parameters right.

 

Perhaps you can figure it out.

 

I don't know if ramdrive 1.0 is SpartaDOS/SDX friendly. I'm primarily a MyDOS user so I never even tried the combination.

 

You can find the ATR here.

 

- Steve Sheppard

 

It won't work with any DOS that uses the RAM under the OS, meaning most versions of SpartaDOS are out, but it should work with most other DOSes. I remember getting it to work with Atari DOS 3, running DOS 3 from a ramdisk made it a bit nicer to use - no more disk swapping when running certain commands. =)

 

If your memory upgrade uses a standard banking scheme (16K banks switched using PORTB - 54017) then it should work out of the box using one of the .CFG files, e.g. RAMD64K.CFG for a 64K ramdisk. Basically the .CFG file allows you to tell Ramdrive how much RAM you have, how to access it and how big to make the ramdisk(s), and the .CPY files allows you to format the ramdisk(s) and copy files over to them. Technically you could just use the .CFG file and then format the ramdisk and copy files across from your DOS menu. All the gory details are still available at:

http://www.angelfire.com/80s/rjespino/8bit/ramd/ramd.html

[rje]

Larry, what do you need a 720-sector ramdisk for? Ramdisks usually use the entire banks of ext memory. An ext bank is 16k. Therefore, a 6-bank ramdisk should do: it will contain 768 "physical" single-density sectors, which makes 762 free sectors in SpartaDOS format (or 378 in DD), or 756 in AtariDOS format, enough to fit all the files from a 720-sector single density diskette.

 

Thanks to all for the additional examples. I'll check out ramdrive. Think I'll pass on SuperDos... QMEG certainly sounds interesting, although I've never used it very much.

 

I also thought of another possible example -- since you can make an MIO ramdisk of any size in increments of 32K, it seems likely that a 720 sector ramdisk, 90 or 180K could be set up from the MIO configuration menu. I don't have an MIO set up right now, so I currently can't test that assertion.

 

There is a very abbreviated description of the USP OS here:

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

 

Hi drac030-

No, I don't really need it for anything in particular. With the hard drive partitioning available now in multiple sizes, it is just about as useful. As with lots of things that were very neat and useful in 1990 (or so), they are not quite so useful today. But "back in the day" it was very handy to be able to mirror a real drive (and swap the drive to be D1: or perhaps D2:) to allow for playing games that made a lot of disk accesses. The USP OS allowed a lot of flexibility. In general, I find that swapping drives around is very useful, and both the MIO and Black Box, APE, and the USP OS all allowed this. Perhaps there are also others that allow this?

 

At any rate, I don't have a USP installed in a machine currently, but I'm thinking about putting one back in service.

 

-Larry

 

So Ramdrive can:

- set up one or more Single, Enhanced and Double density disks, single or double sided (memory allowing), or custom sizes

- boot from a ramdisk

- swap ramdisks and real drives around on the fly, e.g. make the ramdisk D1: and your real drive D8: if you wanted without having to reboot

- made to co-exist with the MyDOS and Atari DOS ramdisks

- use as much or as little of your extended RAM as you want, right down to using the RAM under BASIC as a small 8K ramdisk (not much use, but hey!)

- copy any files or sectors you want across to the ramdisk on initialisation

- modify sectors on the ramdisk on initialisation, useful if the software you want to use needs some tweaking before it will run from ramdisk

- write protect ramdisks (useful for easily testing how the software you're writing behaves if it can't save to disk, and for software that will only boot from a write protected disk)

 

One thing I remember using it for was to copy files between DOS 2.5 and MyDOS Enhanced Density disks, the two formats were slightly incompatible so you had to be careful which way you copied files. Using Ramdrive I would set up 3 ramdisks, one with MyDOS, one with DOS 2.5 and a third one for data. Boot from ramdisk in to MyDOS, read/write some files between the data ramdisk and a real MyDOS disk, boot from ramdisk in to DOS 2.5 read/write some files between the data ramdisk and a real DOS 2.5 disk, etc. If at any time you made a mistake and the data ramdisk got messed up, just reformat it and continue.

[a8maestro]

Omniview XL/XE can create a real looking ramdrive. Up to double sided/double density with 256K, with a 130XE format memory upgrade.

 

I have a Mydos boot disk set up for 2: 1 is a 720 sector 810 dive(6 banks), the other uses the rest of the banks for a regular Mydos ramdisk.

 

There are a lot of things that need "J" disk dup, and the destination has to act real.

 

a8maestro

[walter_J64bit]

The only 720-sector ramdisk that I am familiar with is created by the CSS UltraSpeed Plus OS. It creates by default a 720-sector ramdisk in single density (assuming that you have an expanded machine). I'm not sure what it creates (if anything) on a stock 130XE. Again, assuming that you have adequate ram (say a 320K XE) it can also create a 720-sector DD ramdisk. By default, the ramdisk is D4: but can be other numbers, including D9: by running a small CSS utility at boot-up. I haven't used this OS in a while, but IIRC, this ramdisk can also co-exist with the normal MyDos ramdisk which is frequently set up as D8:.

 

Are there any other existing programs that can create a 720-sector ramdisk (which can mirror a real floppy)?

 

-Larry

If you want a DOS that "(which can mirror a real floppy)" use Super Dos 5.0 it has a 720-sector ramdisk. If your not using any hard drives you'll be fine. I wish someone would patch Super DOS so it can use a hard drive.

Edited July 27, 2010 by walter_J64bit

[walter_J64bit]

OH, my bad here's the DOS.

Super DOS 5.ATR

[+Larry]

Thanks, Walter, but take a look at post #2 in this thread.

-Larry

 

OH, my bad here's the DOS.

[walter_J64bit]

Oh, see what you want to do, I didn't that a Ramdisk could be use that way.

Thanks, Walter, but take a look at post #2 in this thread.

-Larry

 

OH, my bad here's the DOS.

[a8isa1]

The only 720-sector ramdisk that I am familiar with is created by the CSS UltraSpeed Plus OS. It creates by default a 720-sector ramdisk in single density (assuming that you have an expanded machine). I'm not sure what it creates (if anything) on a stock 130XE. Again, assuming that you have adequate ram (say a 320K XE) it can also create a 720-sector DD ramdisk. By default, the ramdisk is D4: but can be other numbers, including D9: by running a small CSS utility at boot-up. I haven't used this OS in a while, but IIRC, this ramdisk can also co-exist with the normal MyDos ramdisk which is frequently set up as D8:.

 

Are there any other existing programs that can create a 720-sector ramdisk (which can mirror a real floppy)?

 

-Larry

Hi Larry,

 

Ramdrive 1.0 is supposed to handle ramdisks of any size (well up to 8 bank bits worth) and of just about any banking scheme (provided the bank register is just one byte). According to the notes you can program it to handle 16K, 32K, and 64K bank sizes.

 

Unfortunately I had trouble making it work with my former Wizztronics upgrade (256K total) and also my current Hias/Bernd SRAM upgrade (mine is hard-wired to 512K extended memory).

 

I couldn't seem to get the parameters right.

 

Perhaps you can figure it out.

 

I don't know if ramdrive 1.0 is SpartaDOS/SDX friendly. I'm primarily a MyDOS user so I never even tried the combination.

 

You can find the ATR here.

 

- Steve Sheppard

 

It won't work with any DOS that uses the RAM under the OS, meaning most versions of SpartaDOS are out, but it should work with most other DOSes. I remember getting it to work with Atari DOS 3, running DOS 3 from a ramdisk made it a bit nicer to use - no more disk swapping when running certain commands. =)

 

If your memory upgrade uses a standard banking scheme (16K banks switched using PORTB - 54017) then it should work out of the box using one of the .CFG files, e.g. RAMD64K.CFG for a 64K ramdisk. Basically the .CFG file allows you to tell Ramdrive how much RAM you have, how to access it and how big to make the ramdisk(s), and the .CPY files allows you to format the ramdisk(s) and copy files over to them. Technically you could just use the .CFG file and then format the ramdisk and copy files across from your DOS menu. All the gory details are still available at:

http://www.angelfire.../ramd/ramd.html

rje, thanks for this wonderful program. I think I finally resolved my two problems.

 

For one, I had failed to change the format command in RAMDRIVE.CPY to reflect the fact that I have 720 sector ramdisks.

 

Secondly, the "bank_bits XE_512K" setting doesn't work with the Hias/Bernd upgrade (in 512K mode). Using that option causes video corruption and data loss.

 

Here is the RAMDRIVE.CFG that worked for the above upgrade (tested only with MyDOS 4.53/4). I verified that it works by sector copying an ATR to ramdisk and then back to ATR, followed by doing a byte by byte file compare on the host.

 

; HIAS/BERND 512K
BANK_BITS %11101100,0,%11111100
; 32 BANKS, 16K PER BANK=512K
BANKS 32
; SET UP 2 RAMDISKS, 720 SECTORS
DRIVE 7,AUTO,SSDD
DRIVE 8,AUTO,SSDD

 

-Steve