Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!ogicse!milton!blake.u.washington.edu!dunadan From: dunadan@blake.u.washington.edu (Steven Owen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Re: GS as a IIe Summary: How ProTERM treats RAMdisks Message-ID: <14361@milton.u.washington.edu> Date: 14 Jan 91 10:34:35 GMT References: <91Jan12.095717est.57485@ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca> Sender: news@milton.u.washington.edu Organization: The Broken Blade Lines: 47 GRAY@ADMIN.HumberC.ON.CA (Kelly Gray) writes: > I have an enchanced //e running ProDOS 8 V 1.9, ProSel 8 V 4.0, and >ProTerm V 2.1. I also have a Ramworks III card with 1 Meg of memory. I am >using the RAMdisk driver from ProSel to set up half of my Ramworks card >as a RAMdrive is slot 4 drive 1. ProTerm proceeds to set up a scrollback >buffer that is considerably larger than the free space on the Ramworks >card, so I can only conclude that it is setting up to overwrite the >RAMdisk. ProTerm does NOT remove the RAMdisk driver, nor does it reduce >the size of the RAMdisk to accomodate the scrollback buffer. My system is almost identical to yours, except I'm running ProDOS 1.8. I use ProSel, ProTERM 2.1, and have my 1 MB Ramworks III configured entirely as a RAMdisk (I use ProSel's driver and leave the RAMdisk in slot 3, drive 1 as /RAM). And, as you point out, every time I start up ProTERM, it says I've got 690k of scrollback space. However, since I usually keep my /RAM volume 25% full (I run a BBS, and store files in /RAM to speed things up), I would expect that some of these files would be deleted or corrupted; especially since, at times, my scrollback can get quite large (a routine ProTERM session would be reading 5-6 Usenet newsgroups, and a couple of local bulletin boards). This has never happened. I can only surmise that when ProTERM sets up its scrollback buffer, it only uses the non-occupied blocks in /RAM, or perhaps uses up memory from the "end" of the RAMcard, moving forward as it fills up. I dunno. It's a weird beast, and one would expect the program to be able to recognize available RAMdisk space and use it only if it isn't already configured as a ProDOS volume. > How can I set up ProTerm to leave the RAMdrive memory alone? The manual >only says that Proterm will recognise either AE's ProDrive or the ProSel >driver, but as far as I can see, it does neither. I have yet to find a way to do this. Anybody? Anybody? (Bueller?) One last note of import: I used to use the CACHE program in ProSel, but have found it to be less than reliable. While using it with ProTERM, I discovered one day that a couple of the bitmap and volume directory blocks on my hard drive had been erased; also, I quit using it with my BBS (run under BASIC.SYSTEM and ModemWorks) when it kept corrupting random blocks on the hard drive; it eventually messed up enough important subdirectory header blocks that I had to reformat the drive. I quite using CACHE completely after that, and have yet to encounter any problems with it similar to what I was experiencing before (it's been nearly 9 months, and all I get is an occasional I/O error, which is normal for a 5 year-old drive that's run continuously for the past year and a half). --Mike Owen, sysop of the Broken Blade: (206) 781-9424, 300-2400 baud, 24 hrs