[Coco] OS-9 RAM disk with "rdisk" command? And /md descriptor?

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 31 January 2015 22:01:09 L. Curtis Boyle did opine
And Gene did reply:
> /MD was the “Memory Directâ€‌, that allowed you to access all of OS-9
> RAM (we used it to debug kernal code, etc. during NitrOS9
> development). I think Alan Dekok came up with that, or at least
> steered us to using it. So, if you did DED /MD@ or KWIKZAIP /MD@, they
> would default to showing you the system page. Of course, this is
> *very* dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing, and modify
> such memory locations.
> 
> 
> L. Curtis Boyle

> curtisboyle at sasktel.net

I'll have to correct what I just posted to Allen.  On inspection, both 
internal names were adjusted, and the myram.dr when loaded will report 
itself a MRAM, the the matching descriptor is not md.dd but mr0.dd, which 
is internally named R0.

But I see something, the default size as shipped in the repo is 0!  So if 
you want to use it, try setting cyl to 20 first, using dmode, which will 
give a 262,144 byte ramdisk. Big enough to be used as a scratchpad by the 
C compiler, and shouldn't cause a 512k machine any trouble.

Brain fart confusion some would call that.
 
> > On Jan 31, 2015, at 8:56 PM, Allen Huffman <alsplace at pobox.com>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > I cannot remember where I got the OS-9 RAM disk I use, but it was by
> > far my favorite of all the ones I tried over the years. It came with
> > a command called “rdiskâ€‌ that let you dynamically create the RAM
> > disk as any size you wanted, rather than having descriptors set to
> > different sizes.
> > 
> > It looked like this:
> > 
> > Error - Use Rdisk [â€کname’] [/device] [size in blocks] [action]
> > 
> >        where action = T to terminate or R to recover
> > 
> > I used it all the time to create a big RAM disk when I needed it,
> > else small ones, without changing bootfiles.
> > 
> > Looking at my old NitrOS-9 boots, circa 1996, the driver inside is
> > called “Rammerâ€‌:
> > 
> > Size: $0115 #277
> > CRC: $3AB3AA
> > 
> > The one included with NitrOS-9 today is also called Rammer, but it
> > does not seem to honor the Rdisk utility. I plan to pull my old one
> > out and use it, but wondered if anyone remembered what this was.
> > 
> > Also, I note in my bootfile that a second descriptor called “MDâ€‌
> > was in there using Rammer, but it was slightly smaller.
> > 
> > R0 = 47 bytes
> > MD = 33 bytes
> > 
> > I have zero recollection of what /md was for.
> > 
> > 		— A


Cheers, Gene Heskett
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