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Text File | 1992-12-12 | 23KB | 620 lines

SRDISK (TM) ReSizeable RAMDisk version 2.00 XMS and EMS memory Copyright (c) 1991,1992 Marko Kohtala All rights reserved CONTENTS 1. Disclaimer of warranty 2. License 3. Features included 4. Files in this release 5. Usage 5.1. Basic installation 5.2. Driver 5.3. SRDISK program 5.3.1 SRDISK sample commands 5.3.2 SRDISK command line options 6. Troubleshooting 7. Last words 1. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY THIS SOFTWARE AND MANUAL ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES AS TO PERFORMANCE OF MERCHANTABILITY OR ANY OTHER WARRANTIES WHETHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. BECAUSE OF THE VARIOUS HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS INTO WHICH THIS PROGRAM MAY BE PUT, NO WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE IS OFFERED. GOOD DATA PROCESSING PROCEDURE DICTATES THAT ANY PROGRAM BE THOROUGHLY TESTED WITH NON-CRITICAL DATA BEFORE RELYING ON IT. THE USER MUST ASSUME THE ENTIRE RISK OF USING THE PROGRAM. ANY LIABILITY OF THE SELLER WILL BE LIMITED EXCLUSIVELY TO PRODUCT REPLACEMENT OR REFUND OF PURCHASE PRICE. 2. LICENSE This software is NOT public domain. It is copyrighted software distributed as shareware. This software is NOT free. A license fee must be paid if used longer than for one month evaluation period. See PAYMENT.DOC for details of the payment. Everybody has the right to copy and distribute this software as long as it is unmodified and all the original files listed in chapter 4 of this document are included. A fee of at most $7 may be charged for the total expences of copying. If a copying fee is taken, the receiver of this software must be made aware that he has not bought other rights to the software but the ones stated here. 3. FEATURES INCLUDED This RAM disk currently supports the following features: * Compatible with MS-DOS versions from 3.00 to 5.x and DR-DOS 5 to 6. * XMS - Extended memory on 286 and up with HIMEM or other XMS 2.0 driver. * EMS - Expanded memory of LIM/EMS version 4.0. * Device drivers may be chained to form larger disks using many different kind memories. * Resizeable - can preserve disk contents if new format has room enough. * Removable. Can be disabled without reboot. * Supports 32-bit sector addressing introduced in DOS 4. Thus over 32M RAM disks are possible. (Up to 63M disks tested.) * Configurable - sector size - cluster size - root directory entry count - number of FATs * Predefined DOS and FDFORMAT floppy disk look-alike formats. * DISKCOPY compatible. You can copy to/from SRDISK drive using DOS DISKCOPY. * Write protection. * Can optionally set environment variables SRDISKn (n=1,2,...) to the installed SRDISK drive letters. Users may find that the ability to resize is invaluable. Since some programs can take best use of memory by directly using it while others need a fast disk for temporary files, you can now have optimal performance with both kinds of programs without the trouble of changing configuration and rebooting. The feature of being able to resize automagically when there is need for it is currently not in my reach. 4. FILES IN THIS RELEASE The following files are distributed in this release: SRDISK.DOC this document SRDXMS.SYS device driver for XMS memory SRDXMSS.SYS device driver for XMS memory (small version) SRDEMS.SYS device driver for EMS memory SRDEMSS.SYS device driver for EMS memory (small version) SRDISK.EXE formatter program PAYMENT.DOC registering information WHATSNEW.DOC what is new in this release and history FILE_ID.DIZ short description of packet for BBS operators The small versions of device drivers do not support DOS DISKCOPY compatibility and require user to make sure there is enough stack available by specifying STACKS=8,512 (or similar) in CONFIG.SYS. Also, you can not chain another device driver after a small version device driver. 5. USAGE The SRDISK is basicly split into two parts: 1) a device driver to add the virtual drive into DOS and 2) a program to control the device driver The following explains the installation and how to use both of these parts. 5.1. BASIC INSTALLATION The basic installation for XMS memory can be done following these steps: 1. Copy SRDXMS.SYS into you root directory. 2. Copy SRDISK.EXE into some directory in your PATH. 3. Make sure you have HIMEM.SYS or some other XMS driver installed in CONFIG.SYS before the following step. 4. Add into your CONFIG.SYS line DEVICE=SRDXMS.SYS 5. Add into your AUTOEXEC.BAT after the PATH command line SRDISK <size> The <size> defines the disk size in Kbytes. If you have EMS memory, then use file SRDEMS.SYS in place of SRDXMS.SYS and make sure EMS 4.0 device driver is installed in CONFIG.SYS before the SRDEMS.SYS. The device driver adds into DOS a new disk drive. Before you run SRDISK.EXE or when you set the disk size to zero, the new disk drive behaves as if you have a floppy drive without a floppy inserted. 5.2. DRIVER The driver can accept two parameters: DEVICE=SRDmmm.SYS [d:] [/A] The [] around the parameter mean it is optional; you must not type the brackets. d: The 'd:' can be used to tell the driver at what letter it is assigned. It is mostly a cosmetic thing. If your version of DOS does not tell the drive letter to the device driver, and srdisk can not later determine it, you can use this to make it known. Another use for 'd:' is to define into what SRDISK drive the current driver is to be appended. /A This tells the driver to append itself to the previously installed SRDISK device driver. The memory accessed using this driver is then available as extra memory to the previously installed SRDISK drive. If you want the low part of your disk to use XMS and the high part EMS memory, you can put these two lines into your CONFIG.SYS DEVICE=SRDXMS.SYS DEVICE=SRDEMS.SYS /A For this to work, the first device driver must have the extra code to look into the next driver for more memory. Therefore the first device driver must not be the small version SRDXMSS.SYS or SRDEMSS.SYS. Merely installing the driver gives you no RAM disk. It is as if you had installed a floppy drive without putting a disk in the drive. For that you need the SRDISK.EXE program. 5.3. SRDISK PROGRAM The disk can be enabled by, for example, using command "SRDISK 1024" which will make first SRDISK a 1024K disk. It can be disabled by making it of size 0: "SRDISK 0". You should include the command to enable the RAM disk into your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. The SRDISK.EXE is self documented. You'll get the documentation by typing at the DOS prompt "SRDISK /?" and hitting enter. To get a hang of it better, some examples with explanations are given below. 5.3.1. SRDISK SAMPLE COMMANDS Command SRDISK 1024 creates or changes the old disk to a 1024K (= 1M) disk. More precisely it calculates various disk parameters as it best sees fit for most users needs. Those disk parameters can be defined by user on the command line if the calculated values do not meet his needs. After the parameters have been calculated, the memory (1024K = 1M) needed for the disk is allocated and a disk image is created into the memory. The calculated parameters include sector size, cluster size, number of FATs and root directory size. - Sector is the basic unit of storage. It's size does not mean much, but it has to be a power of 2 and no larger than 512 bytes. - Cluster size tells in how large blocks the space is allocated. Larger clusters mean smaller FAT (= File Allocation Table), but then even the smallest file always takes at least that much space. Cluster can not be smaller than one sector. A cluster is a collection of sectors. - FAT is the table that holds information about each allocation unit, cluster, on the disk. The information can be indication that the cluster is free, or where the next cluster of the file is or that the cluster is unusable. A disk only needs one FAT - though multiple copies of it can be specified. Note that the other FATs are only copies of the first one. - Root directory is limited to hold only some predefined number of files. If you get "Can not create file" errors while there is plenty of free space on disk, you need to make the root directory larger. Alternatively you should create a subdirectory and create the files there. Subdirectories can be arbitrarily large. If there is data on the disk to be preserved, sector and cluster size are not changed. Command SRDISK 1024 /O does the same as the command 'SRDISK 1024' except the various disk parameters are not calculated but instead the old parameters are used. Command SRDISK /F:1440 tries to create the disk to look like a real floppy disk. It also defines some parameters that otherwise have no effect like media descriptor, number of heads and sectors per track. These parameters have no other function but to make it look like it is a real, physical disk - which it is not. Command SRDISK /S:256 /C:1024 /D:64 reformats the disk. The size is determined by the old size of the disk even without the use of /O. Sector size is changed to 256 bytes, cluster size to 1024 bytes (two sectors) and root directory will hold 64 entries (one of which is used for the volume label). Command SRDISK /U clears the disk. It recalculates the format and makes it better if possible, but preserves the disk size. Without this switch, the disk contents are preserved if possible. Command SRDISK E: tests if E is a SRDISK RAMdisk and, as no format is defined, display it's current configuration. The letter may not correspond to the letter known by DOS for the drive if the letter is defined wrong when installing the SRDISK.SYS device driver in CONFIG.SYS. Command SRDISK without the drive letter specified tries to determine the drive by first trying the current drive and if it is not a SRDISK drive, then the first SRDISK drive loaded in CONFIG.SYS. As no change in the format is defined, the current configuration of the found drive are displayed. 5.3.2. SRDISK COMMAND LINE OPTIONS To ease remembering the command line options, SRDISK has for some settings several different options. Many of the options are long, but you can truncate them if you write enough for SRDISK to identify the option unambiguously. An exact match in the full lenght of the option is always identified instead of some another option that begins with the same characters. All numeric parameters for the options are translated using the C language rules: Number starting with 0 is octal number (base eight) and with 0x is hexadecimal (base 16), others are decimal. The options in alphabetical order are /? List of most important command line options /A:n Number of FAT copies (1 or 2) /ASK Ask for confirmation if data would be lost /C:n Cluster size /CLUSTER:n Same as /C /D:n Dir entries /DEVICETYPE:n Device type for DISKCOPY compatibility /DIRENTRIES:n Same as /D /DOSFORMAT:n DOS or FDFORMAT lookalike format /E Set environment variables SRDISKn /ENVIRONMENT Same as /E /ERASE Clear disk contents /F:n Same as /DOSFORMAT /FATS:n Same as /A /FORCE Destroy data if necessary to force new format /H Same as /? /HEADS:n Number of heads for DISKCOPY compatibility /HELP Same as /? /M:n[:n...] Max sizes for different drivers in a drive /MAXSIZES:n Same as /M /MEDIA:n Media ID byte for DISKCOPY compatibility /NO NO, do not destroy data to complete new format /O Use old disk format where not redefined /OLD Same as /O /REGISTER Display registration information /S:n Sector size (128, 256 or 512 bytes) /SECTORS:n Number of sectors per track /SECTORSIZE:n Same as /S /SIDES:n Same as /HEADS /SPT:n Same as /SECTORS /U Same as /ERASE, FORMAT compatible /UNCONDITIONAL Same as /ERASE /V:n Verbose level (1-5) to control amount of output /VERBOSE:n Same as /V /W:x Write protection x is ON/+ or OFF/- /WRITEPROTECT:x Same as /W /Y Same as /FORCE /YES Same as /FORCE The above list of options will be valid in the future 2.x versions of SRDISK. The options by function /? /H /HELP List the most important command line options and exit. /A:n /FATS:n Number of FAT copies (1 or 2). You need only one FAT unless you need to make the disk look like some floppy disk. /C:n /CLUSTER:n Cluster size. Cluster is the unit used to allocate disk space. This option has effect on the space used for File Allocation Table. If cluster size is small, bigger FAT is needed and there is less room for files, but files may take more room. /D:n /DIRENTRIES:n Root directory entries. FAT file system has fixed size root directory. You can specify the size for it using this option. /DEVICETYPE:n DOS does not care what type the device is, but in case some non DOS program asks DOS for the type it can be specified with this switch. This is normally set correctly if you use the /F switch. Device types are 0 = 360K 1 = 1.2M 2 = 720K 3 = 8-inch single-density 4 = 8-inch double-density 5 = Hard disk 6 = Tape drive 7 = 1.44M 8 = Read/Write optical 9 = 2.88M /E /ENVIRONMENT Set environment variables SRDISK1, SRDISK2 etc. to the drive letters or SRDISK drives installed. You can then use the variables in batch files to access the RAM disk. For example: REM Set environment varsiables without much output and REM make a tiny disk at the same time SRDISK /E /V:1 /F:1 SET TMP=%SRDISK1%:\TMP MKDIR %TMP% IF "%SRDISK2%" == "" ECHO You have only one SRDISK drive /F:n /DOSFORMAT:n DOS or FDFORMAT lookalike formats. The number n defines the disk size in Kbytes. This option also sets all the other parameters besides the size to match the corresponding DOS or FDFORMAT created floppy disk. The currently supported formats are Size Media Device SPT Sides 160 FE 360 8 1 DOS 180 FC 360 9 1 DOS 200 FD 360 10 1 FDFORMAT 205 FD 360 10 1 FDFORMAT 320 FF 360 8 2 DOS 360 FD 360 9 2 DOS 400 FD 360 10 2 FDFORMAT 410 FD 360 10 2 FDFORMAT 640 FB 720 8 2 DOS 720 F9 720 9 2 DOS 800 F9 720 10 2 FDFORMAT 820 F9 720 10 2 FDFORMAT 1200 F0 1.2 15 2 DOS 1440 F0 1.44 18 2 DOS 1476 F0 1.44 18 2 FDFORMAT 1600 F0 1.44 20 2 FDFORMAT 1640 F0 1.44 20 2 FDFORMAT 1680 F0 1.44 21 2 FDFORMAT 1722 F0 1.44 21 2 FDFORMAT In addition to these there is a special format 1 to make a mini disk. This can be used if you have your RAM disk in your PATH and do not want to get Drive Not Ready errors when you have freed the memory for RAM disk. /HEADS:n /SIDES:n Number of heads for DISKCOPY compatibility. This is normally set correctly if you use the /F switch. /M:n[:n...] /MAXSIZES:n[:n...] Max sizes for different drivers in a drive. Normally SRDISK uses as much space as is available on the first driver and only then starts allocating on the second one. If you want to use only up to some amount of memory on the different drivers chained to one drive, you can define the amounts with this option. For example to define first driver use only 100K of memory, give command SRDISK /M:100 If you would have three or more drivers chained into one drive, you could define first and third to use 100K and let the other drivers use as much as they were allowed to use before with command SRDISK /M:100::100 /MEDIA:n Media ID byte for DISKCOPY compatibility. This is normally set correctly if you use the /F switch. /O /OLD Use old disk format where not explicitly redefined with command line options. /REGISTER Displays the registration information. /S:n /SECTORSIZE:n Sector size (128, 256 or 512 bytes). Sector is the basic allocation unit of a disk. Smaller sector size can decrease the amount of memory wasted on boot sector, FAT and root directory, but that is just about the only benefit of it. Clusters are formed of sectors, so sector size can not be larger than cluster size. DOS uses by default 512 bytes per sectors. /SECTORS:n /SPT:n Number of sectors per track for DISKCOPY compatibility. This is normally set correctly if you use the /F switch. /U /UNCONDITIONAL /ERASE Clear disk contents. This implies option /YES. If your disk gets corrupted and SRDISK refuces to reformat it, try this switch. SRDISK should not then care about the current disk, but rather just wipes it off and creates a new one. /V:n /VERBOSE:n Verbose level (1-5) to control amount of output. With /V:1 you can limit the output to the title. /W:x /WRITEPROTECT:x Write protection contol. The parameter x can be ON, + or nothing to enable the write protection or OFF or - to disable it. /Y /YES /FORCE /NO /ASK These are to control the need of user intervention. All questions in SRDISK are formed so that answer YES will give permission to destroy data and continue, while NO will abort the operation and try to preserve the data on the disk. By these options you can give the answer on the command line. /ASK is the default and means the user will be prompted to make choise. 6. TROUBLESHOOTING Causes of grief 1. RAM disks loose their contents when power is turned off! Do not store anything valuable there. 2. There is no XMS nor EMS memory without a proper device driver. HIMEM.SYS will do for XMS. For EMS you need to install the device driver that came with your expanded memory hardware. QEMM can supply both on 386 or better hardware and you might be better off using the SRDEMS driver with it. 3. Not all HIMEM.SYS support memory above 16M limit. HIMEM.SYS versions 2.78 and later should be good. 4. DR-DOS 5 HIDOS.SYS does not implement the XMS resize function. Therefore SRDISK may not be able to resize the disk unless you replace the HIDOS.SYS with HIMEM.SYS. 5. Some programs swap themselves for a shell to the ramdisk. If you change the format of the disk or clear the disk from such program, the swapped program may not be able to recover and can crash your computer. 6. Some disk caching programs are reported to cache SRDISK too! This can cause a system crash and caching a RAM disk is anyway useless. If you use a disk cache, please load it before SRDISK.SYS or tell it explicitly not to cache the SRDISK drive. 7. SRDISK needs it's XMS memory in one contiguous area. Therefore if SRDISK complaints about insufficient memory while you have plenty of it free, the reason might be that some other program uses a piece of the memory in the middle of the available memory. 8. There can be problems with XMS memory when not enough of it can be allocated. This may result in lost disk contents. Also some memory managers that provide both XMS and EMS (like QEMM by Quarterdeck Office Systems Inc.) can fool SRDISK to think there is more memory available than there really is if SRDISK uses both XMS and EMS memory for the disk. 7. LAST WORDS You can contact me by sending E-mail from Internet to `Marko.Kohtala@hut.fi' CompuServe to `>INTERNET:Marko.Kohtala@hut.fi' or by traditional mail to Marko Kohtala PL 115 SF-01451 Vantaa FINLAND or by calling Airline BBS, 24H, HST, V.32, V.42, MNP, +358-0-8725380 and leaving mail to me, Marko Kohtala (sorry, no netmail). Oh, and we should not forget these (I can not verify they are correct, but still): QEMM is a trademark of Quartedreck Office Systems Inc. Microsoft, MS-DOS and SmartDrive are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. DR-DOS is a trademark of Digital Research Inc. FDFORMAT is copyrighted by (and trademark of?) Christoph H. Hockstätter, Germany. Nice work.