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- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!uwm.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!wvnvm!bryan
- Date: Tuesday, 28 Jul 1992 13:38:59 EDT
- From: Jerry Bryan <BRYAN@wvnvm.wvnet.edu>
- Message-ID: <92210.133859BRYAN@wvnvm.wvnet.edu>
- Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
- Subject: Re: os/2 ram drive
- Distribution: comp
- References: <1992Jul27.1480.23146@dosgate>
- Lines: 34
-
- 1. VDISK.SYS is a part of OS/2.
-
- 2. It can be installed on a case by case basis for DOS sessions in
- the DOS settings.
-
- 3. It can be installed in CONFIG.SYS, in which case it becomes
- accessible to all DOS, Windows, and OS/2 sessions.
-
- 4. It is FAT only (yuck).
-
- 5. OS/2 developers apparently believe that a RAM disk is not important
- in the OS/2 environment due to large memory (just keep the data in
- memory and never write it to disk) and/or disk caching. I
- humbly disagree.
-
- 6. A RAM disk can totally eliminate disk I/O if you have enough memory.
- Disk caching does not eliminate all I/O because all writes happen
- eventually, even with lazy write.
-
-
- There is a side issue to which this discussion is peripherally related.
- IBM talks about a better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than Windows.
- The first half of this claim seems to me to be true in nearly all cases,
- and the second half is arguably true at least some of the time. However,
- it seems to me that in some ways OS/2 provides a better DOS than OS/2,
- and I think that is unfortunate. What I mean by that is that a DOS
- window supports numerous settings that are local to the window, but
- OS/2 settings are global. For example, it is possible for DOS windows
- to have private RAM disks of varying sizes, but it is not possible
- (to my knowledge -- corrections, please) for OS/2 windows to have
- private RAM disks of varying sizes. Also, any settings private to
- a DOS window can be set without rebooting your hardware, but many
- OS/2 settings can only be established in CONFIG.SYS and therefore
- require a hardware reboot.
-