[comp.os.vms] RAMdisk for VMS

kenw@noah.arc.CDN (Ken Wallewein) (07/23/87)

  The August/86 and June/87 issues of the VAX Professional contain articles on
the PDA device. Summary: it's slower than an RA81. Reason: it doesn't use DMA,
and it MOVB rather that MOVCx to move data, to avoid page faults in IPLFORK.
Incidentally, I don't understand why there couldn't be some way to predict when
page faulting would occur, so repeated MOVCx instructions could be used.

  Looks like you'd be better off optimizing your caching. BTW, from what I can 
see (I'm no expert), INSTALL works for data files, too.

/kenw

jjo@calmasd.GE.COM (Jay Olson) (07/23/87)

In article <8707230126.AA12895@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, David G. Dugal
(DUGAL%ECL1@STAR.STANFORD.EDU) posts a uuencoded version of a "public
domain" RAMdisk driver.

In article <8707230820.AA19500@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, Glenn Everhart
(EVERHART%ARISIA@rca.COM) posts a disassembled version of this driver.

Based on inspection of the disassembled code, I would say you are 
looking at the standard PDDRIVER, which has come with every VMS system
since 4.2.  As the author of the VAX/VMS PDDRIVER, I can assure you
that I can recognize the code I wrote. For further evidence, just do an
ANALYZE/IMAGE SYS$SYSTEM:PDDRIVER.EXE and note that the link date/time is
identical to that in the disassembled listing.

If this is the case, this code was furnished under terms of a license
agreement and is NOT in the public domain.

				Jay Olson
				a consultant working at GE Calma
				San Diego, CA
				...sdcsvax!calmasd!jjo
				jjo@calmasd.GE.COM