Ramdisk Project

Here it is!

Started in 1994, and currently being revived. A DOS-independent ramdisk utility that will use your extra RAM. Easily configurable (I hope) to be able to use as much extra RAM as you've got or as much as you want to use. I initialy started to write this in order to satisfy 2 ambitions:

run DOS 3 from a RAMDISK (achieved 26/03/97 in the early hours)
Play ZORK from a RAMDISK (achieved 12/04/97 in the early hours)

Features:

Runs under DOS 2.0, DOS 2.5, DOS 3.0, MyDos 4.50, MyDos 4.53/4 and others
Ramdisk sizes ranging from 8K up to 1Meg or more.
Up to 10 ramdisks active at any time
Write protect your ramdisks
8K Ramdisk using RAM under BASIC ROM - for people with only 64K RAM
Coldstart at a keypress and without losing your ramdisks.
Support for non-standard expanded memory schemes
Configurable with SIO commands
Simulates single, enhanced or double density, single or double sided disks
Play Zork I from ramdisk
Easily configurable with configuration files

Its got some quite nifty features too. Such as allowing you to reboot and maintain the ramdisk, and even reboot from the ramdisk. You can have multiple ramdisks active at one time, splitting up your expanded RAM banks between them. Each ramdisk is assigned a drive identifier in the usual way (i.e. D1: D2: D3: etc.), all this is done from a configuration file, so there is no need to make any coding changes to achieve any of this. The ramdisks can be renumbered on the fly, and you can even swap their identifier with a physical drive. For example if D1 is your physical drive and D2 your ramdisk, you can have all calls to D1 go to your ramdisk and all calls to D2 to your physical drive without changing any of the switches on the back of your 810/1050/XF551...

On the down side it does need to switch the OS from ROM to RAM, and so will not work with any other program that uses that RAM for other purposes, such as Turbo Basic... still you can't have everything. Plus it only supports one address for bank switching, this defaults to 54017 (PORTB), but that can be modified to suit your computer. Version 1.1 of Ramdrive may support 2 bank switching addresses (for REALLY big ramdisks), but lets get version 1.0 out of the door first. =)

These are the manuals for Ramdrive 1.0, there are 5 manuals available, the user manual covers the basics, the CFG file commands covers the commands available in the RAMDRIVE.CFG file, the CPY file commands covers the commands available in the RAMDRIVE.CPY file, the errors manual lists the possible errors and how to fix them and the technical manual is the technical stuff, detailing how it all works. They could do with some nicer HTML formatting, but at least it's all there.

Here are the executables, ready for your Atari 8-bit, just download them and change the extender from exe to obj (if you like). RAMDRIVE.OBJ is the set-up program that reads in the configuration files and sets up your ramdrives, RAMDOFF.OBJ switches your ramdrives off, and RAMDON.OBJ switches them back on again. Enjoy!

Ramdrive 1.0 (13 K)
RAMDOFF program (21 bytes)
RAMDON program (21 bytes)

The following are links to the configuration files available for Ramdrive 1.0. Ramdrive has 2 configuration files, RAMDRIVE.CFG and RAMDRIVE.CPY. The first identifies you expansion type (bank size, address, number of banks, etc), and sets up your ramdrives ready for use. The second formats your ramdrives and copies files and/or sectors onto them. Allowing you to set up your ramdrive(s) to meet your own needs.

These links are to files with Unix return characters, they need to be converted before being used on an Atari 8-bit.

These files are the same as above, but with ATASCII return (155) characters, suitable for downloading directly to an Atari 8-bit.

Comments, suggestions, bug reports, etc. are all welcome.

mail me here