RamRead and RamSave - Copyright 1991 - Clint Hastings RamSave and RamRead v1.1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This pair of programs, RamRead and RamSave, will allow you to quick-load the Amax RAM disk from your Amiga (hard) drive before you run Amax, or save the Amax RAM disk afterwards. I created these programs with the following objectives in mind: 1. Not all Amiga hard drives are supported by Amax (mine!). These programs remove most of the need to use floppies while running Amax for me. It also works with the original Amax I, for which no hard drive support is available. (In fact, you can use the same RAM disk with either version.) 2. Even if you have an Amax II-supported hard drive, you might like to have a pre-loaded Amax RAM disk available for speed reasons. 3. FAST file conversion. I do not have the Mac expertise necessary to create such a utility, but I know somebody out there does. The Amax II file conversion utility is OK, but it only does it one file at a time, and you are limited to files less than 800k. Through this RAM save method, files up to 7 megabytes could be converted as fast as your hard drive can read them. Would somebody please write this (and send me a copy :-) Usage ~~~~~ To save the desired RAM image: RamSave start_addr length filename To restore the RAM image: RamRead start_addr length filename How do you know what addresses to use? Well, this is what I have found for my setup. I have 1 meg of chip RAM and 8 megs of fast RAM. My Amax preferences are set for 4096k of Mac memory and 4928k of RAM disk. The RAM disk is located at the top of memory, at least for contiguous fast memory. The fast RAM is addressed from 0x200000 to 0x9FFFFF (hex). Therefore I save the top 5 megs of fast RAM with: RamSave 0x500000 0x500000 AmaxRAM.5.5meg You may name the file whatever you would like, of course. If you have other memory boards with non-contiguous RAM, or pseudo-fast RAM located at 0xC00000, you may have to use multiple RamSave's to save the entire RAM disk. To read it back in, I use: RamRead 0x500000 0x500000 AmaxRAM.5.5meg Reading it back in takes about 20 seconds on my machine, then I run the Amax program. Once the Mac screen appears, just hit F1 and the Mac boots in under 10 seconds. The Mac programs on the RAM disk and the (too) frequent accesses to the Mac system disk are now lightning fast! Other Stuff ~~~~~~~~~~~ Of course, once you reboot into AmigaDOS, all RAM is up for grabs, including that which was part of the Amax RAM disk. You will probably want to Ctrl-D as soon as possible in the startup-sequence, and issue the RamSave command. Likewise when you are going to run Amax, first reboot and Ctrl-D as soon as possible, and then execute a script which does a RamRead and then calls the Amax program. As with all software programs, I cannot be responsible for anything you do with this program, or for anything that happens as a result of using this program. (So why are programmers now called software ENGINEERS anyway? Engineering implies some sort of responsiblity.) Use at your own risk. If you find that this program really makes your Amax more productive (as it did mine) and would like to thank me, a small donation ($1, $5, a zillion dollars, or whatever) would be highly appreciated by this poor college student. My current address is: Clint Hastings 408 East 2nd Avenue #A Salt Lake City, UT 84103 If I've moved, my more permanent mailing address is: Clint Hastings 4602 South 600 East Murray, UT 84107 Thanks. History ======= 25-Apr-1991 Fixed RamSave to actually read the command line v1.1 parameters. (oops!) -- Amax is a trademark of ReadySoft, maker of the best Mac emulator available. Mac is a trademark of Apple Inc., maker of the second best personal computer. Finally, Amiga is a trademark of Commodore, maker of the ultimate personal computer. None of these companies have anything whatsoever to do with my programs.