[Coco] Re: special ramdisk needed...

[Robert Gault]

If the question was intended for Disk Basic, there is no good way to 
subvert the system. While Disk Basic does have a "generic disk path" 
(DRIVE#), this only works for programs or commands that don't specify or 
require a drive number. It is possible to reroute the standard drives 
0-3 to a ram disk, but it means patching DOS so that any attempt at I/O 
to ex. drive 3 will go to the ram disk.

I actually have a ram disk that co opts drive numbers 2 and 3. It could 
be modified to co opt drives 0 and 1 or just 0. Still, this is not a 
trivial exercise and requires assembly level system patches. The ram 
disk patches must be loaded each time Disk Basic is started.

Alex Evans wrote:

> On Feb 13, 2005, at 9:31 AM, Robert Gault wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> 
> On my OS-9 system with a hard disk, H0, D0, and DD were all the hard 
> drive.  My floppies were  F0, F1, and F2.  This eliminated the need to 
> patch software to make it work with my hard drive.
> 
> I think he was talking about doing this under RS-DOS.  Under RS-DOS, too 
> many programs use their own means of doing disk I/O and without patching 
> the program there isn't really a good solution.
>