Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!unido!laura!jf
From: jf@laura.UUCP (Jan-Hinrich Fessel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: A REAL RamDisk
Message-ID: <1346@laura.UUCP>
Date: 8 May 89 15:04:37 GMT
References: <2963@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <92@sdcc10.ucsd.EDU>
Reply-To: jf@laura.UUCP (Jan-Hinrich Fessel)
Organization: University of Dortmund, W-Germany
Lines: 53

In article <92@sdcc10.ucsd.EDU> cs163afu@sdcc10.ucsd.edu.UUCP (Some call me...Tim) writes:
>In article <2963@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> opielask@sun.soe!clutx.clarkson.edu.UUCP writes:
>>I heard there are ramdisks for the Amiga and the Mac that ajust their size
>>as you put files into them.
>
>This can't be done on the ST because of one important detail about
>memory management:  When a program is executed, it is allocated ALL
>available memory.  So, though you could use this from the desktop,
>as soon as you were in a program that didn't give back its memory,
>the RAMdisk would run out of room.
>
Also there is a problem with Blitter-TOS, which allocates all availible 
memory while copying files. This may or may not be true for TOS 1.4, i 
was not able to test this, because my reset-proof-and-resizable-ram-disk
will not work with TOS 1.4 :-(.

>i.e. Every time the size of the Ramdisk changes you have to reset
>the computer.

Not true...

>Even the Amiga reset-proof-ramdisk isn't resizeable.  There are two

Too bad:-).

>The nice thing is that you can boot from the reset-proof one (without
>a floppy) under Kickstart 1.3 (a ROM upgrade).
The nice thing is that you can boot under Blitter-or-older TOS from the
reset-proof-and-resizable-ram-disk i am talking about, and select where
the auto and acc to load are located.

>That would be a nice feature to add to TOS...
>
>Actually, I can imagine ways in which a reset-proof, resizable
>RAMdisk might be made, but it would either require hardware
>(cartridge) or TOS-version-dependant code, and the latter method may
>not even be possible.

The ramdisk is called FLEXDISK, it works with TOS-version-dependant code,
and the only thing i am missing is the compression.

Sorry if i'm late??

	Jan-Hinrich

P.S.: FLEXDISK comes with a copy-utility and is not in the public domain.


-- 
			      Jan-Hinrich Fessel
	Universitaet Dortmund, IRB	jf@unido.uucp  ||  jf@unido.bitnet
	There's no way to delay that trouble comin' every day... F.Z.
 =============================================================================