[Coco] special ramdisk needed...

[Robert Gault]

Can't tell for sure whether you mean on a Coco or any system. The real 
problem is not the ram disk or whether it "supersedes" a floppy or hard 
drive. In fact the question is a non sequitur. The problem is the 
software you want to run.

Software can be written hard coded for I/O or soft coded. In OS-9, hard 
coding would be making the program always look for ex. /D0. Slightly 
more towards the soft coded side would be making the program use /DD. 
Then your selection of /DD could be any drive, floppy, hard, or ram. 
Complete soft coding would have the program ask the user for the source 
or just use the standard input path. If the program uses the standard 
input path, it can be Piped in from anything.

Let's assume you are referring to OS-9. Use dEd to scan the program in 
question looking for either /D or /d. When you locate all such and by 
looking at the next byte find that they are /d0, /d1 or similar, change 
them to /dd and verify the program. That may be adequate for your uses 
if you make /dd point to the desired drive; in your case a ram disk. If 
you want to be more specific, use /r0 instead of /dd.

Robert Emery wrote:
> Would it be possible to have a RamDisk that would supercede floppy drive 0, as
> opposed to any higher drive number?
> 
> Why? To allow software that *only* works from drive 0 to be stored anywhere on
> the hard drive. Then when you want to use the software, you could backup
> whatever disk it's on to the RamDisk and then execute it from the pseudo drive
> 0.
> 
> Another wish would be to cache 2 or 3 disks in RAM, which could then be swapped
> into the drive 0 RamDisk with special keystrokes or something. This would allow
> us to play multi-disk games from the hard drive.
> 
> Comments, digressions?
> 
> Bob
> 
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