rnss@ihuxy.ATT.COM (Ron Schreiner) (06/10/88)
In article <3826@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> etruscan@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Dominik J. Schmidt) writes: > I have just recently become a member of comp.sys.atari.st, and recently > read a remark about possibly using the cartridge port as a ramdisk. > Could someone please email me all the information available on that > subject? A ramdisk is just what I need right now. > On the subject of RAM DISKs, I mean external RAM "DRIVES"; Some of you may remember Glen Stone, and his chip which he called Stonehenge, well the chip ( and a PCB ) is real and will be made available with in 2-3 weeks. Points of interest; connects to the dma port (hard disk) devices can be daisy-chained, i.e. RAM DRIVEs or Hard Drives ( your hard drive must support pass-thru, else put it last ) 2Meg with 256K parts, 8Meg with 1M parts Dwell on this; Daisy-chain 7 RAM DRIVEs for a total of 56MEG of very fast external storage. Comments; I ran "showpic" on the RAM DRIVE, it was able to display the frames fast enough for animation. The RAM DRIVE was sized, formated and installed with the Supra Hard Disk utilities. Nity Grity; The chip, a PCB, and docs will be offered as a kit. A support kit will also be offered that will include some hard to get parts, like the DB19s, the PGA socket, maybe the xtal. In addition a power supply will be made available. Power requirements are 5V at 2A with good transient current response. A completely packaged ready to plug in product will be available in 2-3 months. Watch for the "Maximum STrive" For more info; Write email RONSAT Technologies Inc. ...ihnp4!ronsat!rns 368 Lexington Drive. Buffalo Grove IL. 60089 login: info at (312) 520-7812 Phone (312) 520-8003 if you want to talk to a human, call befor 10am CDT. I am affiliated with RONSAT. -- Ron Schreiner AT&T Bell Labs ...ihnp4!ihuxy!rnss
stone@amc-vlsi.UUCP (Glen Stone) (06/13/88)
Hi, Ron mentioned that the external Ram Disk was used with Supra Hard Disk driver. In fact any hard disk driver works. I'm supplying (and I'll also release to the public domain) a driver and utilities for the ram disk for the people that don't have hard disks. This leads me another point. Found an interesting "bug" when playing with the DMA code that Supra released to the public domain. When entering and exiting Supervisor mode, the system call looks to see what mode your in and toggles you to the other mode. So be careful, if you call the DMA routines when already in Super mode you'll be toggled out of super mode and nothing works. That is, the call to "Supon" turns Sup. off if Sup. is on. Glen