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1991-10-04
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7KB
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182 lines
ReSizeable RAMDisk version 1.20
for XMS memory only
Author
Marko Kohtala
PUBLIC DOMAIN
No rights reserved. All parts of this product may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic,
mechanical, protocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written
permission from the author. No patent liability is assumed with respect
to the use of the information contained herein. While every precaution
has been taken in the preparation of this product, THE AUTHOR ASSUMES NO
RESPONSIBILITY FOR ERRORS OR OMISSIONS. NEITHER IS ANY LIABILITY ASSUMED
FOR DAMAGES RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THE PRODUCT DOCUMENTED HEREIN.
CONTENTS
1. Publishing purpose, features included and recognised missing
2. Files in this release
3. Usage
4. Technical data for further development
5. Last words
1. PUBLISHING PURPOSE, FEATURES INCLUDED AND RECOGNISED MISSING
This RAM disk driver is published in the hope we will get a really good
RAM disk that is entirely public domain. I do not intend to make it all
out myself but rather hope there is out there someone who is willing to
participate in my work.
This RAM disk currently supports the following features:
* XMS (Extended memory on 286 and up with HIMEM) support - no other
memory supported - yet
* Resizeable/removable - destructive
* Possible sizes from few Kbytes to 32M (provided you have enough
memory, of course)
* Configurable
- sector size
- cluster size
- root directory entry count
- number of FATs
* Predefined DOS disk like formats
* Write protection
* Compatible with DOS versions from 2.00 to 5.x
(tested only with DOS 5.0)
* Stores last format time in volume label
What I would like to see added:
* Resizing of the disk without loosing disk contents
* EMS support
* UMB support
* Bank-Switch memory support ("The Last Byte" by Key Software)
* Low memory support
* Any combinations of those above (Bank-Switch+XMS/EMS mostly)
2. FILES IN THIS RELEASE
The following material is distributed in this release:
SRDISK.DOC this document
SRDISK.C disk formatter source code for Turbo C++ 1.0
RDISK.ASM device driver source code for XMS
RDISK.SYS compiled device driver
SRDISK.EXE compiled formatter program for the RAM disk
3. USAGE
To use the RAM disk, you must have the device driver installed at boot
time. This can be done by copying the RDISK.SYS to the root directory of
your boot disk and including the line
DEVICE=RDISK.SYS
to your CONFIG.SYS file.
After this change, when you boot your machine you should see a sign-on
message close like "ReSizeable RAMDisk version x.xx virtual drive d:"
without any annoying error messages.
If you see error messages, you may have forgotten to install the XMS
driver (eg. HIMEM.SYS) prior to the RDISK.SYS, or you have improper DOS
version or something. Try to fix the problem. If you fail... sorry.
If no errors are detected, you have no ramdisk. If you try to use that
disk mentioned on the sign-on message, you'll notice the disk is not
ready. That is because the ramdisk has not been enabled yet. For that
you need the SRDISK.EXE.
The disk can be enabled by, for example, using command "SRDISK d: 1024"
which will make disk d: a 1024K disk. It can be disabled by making it of
size 0: "SRDISK d: 0".
The SRDISK is self documented. You'll get the documentation by typing at
the DOS prompt "SRDISK /?" and hitting enter.
4. TECHNICAL DATA FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT
The job is split between the device driver and the SRDISK program this
way:
Device driver does:
* What ever a RAM disk driver is expected by the DOS to do.
* Support IOCTL calls using the one defined data packet. The packet
contains the following data:
- BIOS parameter block for the drive.
- Disk size in K-bytes.
- Read/write access flags (read flag is actually enabled flag).
- Media byte.
- Flag to tell if the media has changed (set by SRDISK).
- Number of open files on drive.
- Pointer to the sector read/write function in the driver.
- Some information about what kind of memory can be used for the
disk.
* Allocate, reallocate and free what ever disk memory is used by the
driver.
SRDISK does:
* Send the driver the new disk format (with media change flag set).
* Format the new disk i.e. write the boot sector, FAT(s) and root
directory according to the format sent to driver.
I've done it this way because I did not want to bother myself adding the
SRDISK functions to the driver too. Some program was anyway needed to
control the driver.
I am planning to redesign the device driver so that one can hook many
device drivers all supporting different kinds of memory to one logical
drive. This would remove the need for drivers that use many different
kinds of memory and allow user to make driver combinations of his own.
The sources are somewhat documented.
5. LAST WORDS
Although no rights are reserved, I HOPE you will send any modified
versions, new drivers, better documentation, bug reports, suggestions
and your love (preferably female) to me. If I can, I'll then add them to
the next release of SRDISK.
I'd like the modifications to sources as patches to some version the
number of which you should tell.
Make sure every material you contribute is in public domain. I do not
want to add any copyright texts to this product. While I was starting
this thing, I tried to find some PD sources where to start and found
none - I only got frustrated. I hope to fix that too.
I'll make a list of every people contributing material to this product
and ship it with further releases. If modesty is one of your virtues, I
can leave you out of the list.
You can contact me by sending E-mail from
Internet, Bitnet etc. to 'mkohtala@niksula.hut.fi'
CompuServe to '>INTERNET:mkohtala@niksula.hut.fi'
or by calling Airline QBBS, 24H, HST, V.32, V.42, MNP, +358-0-8725380,
and leaving mail to me, Marko Kohtala.