ljdickey@watmath.waterloo.edu (L.J.Dickey) (12/10/90)
How to install EDISK. An introduction and guide for the novice. by Leroy J Dickey Have you ever tried to copy several files from one floppy to another, and discovered that you have to pop your floppies in and out of the disk drive until your arm gets sore? Would you like this job to go a more smoothly, so that you read all the files off the floppy drive in one step, and then swap floppies and copy the files to the new drive? Well, have we got a deal for you. You need a ram drive. This nice piece of software organizes some of that abundance of memory you have on your system into something called a RAM DISK or ram drive. A ram disk works in every way just like a floppy drive, with two exceptions: (1) it is much faster and (2) it is volatile (it goes away when you turn you system off). However, it does not have to go away when you do a "warm boot" by just pressing the little button on the back of your ST. So what's the catch? Why didn't the system come set up with one of these wonderful little babies? The answer is that it uses memory, and you might prefer to use the memory for running a game or TeX or something else. I have heard some advanced users express the opinion that now that they have a hard drive, they no longer need a ram disk. Maybe they don't, but I do. Not so much for copying floppies as I used to do, but for fast response when I want to combine several commands into one, and these commands involve some step in the middle that requires the use of a temporary file. I want that file creation and writing to happen quickly, and I want the reading of the file in the following step to also happen just as quickly. With a ram disk, I don't have to wait for the physical medium to respond. I don't have to wait for the little arm with the little head on it to position itself over a spinning disk, and I don't have to wait for the disk to spin into position, and so on. Just as the hard drive is about 10 times faster than the floppy drive, the ram disk is about that many times faster than the hard drive. There are a number of ram disk programs around. I think that one language vendor included the source code for a model ram disk program for novice programmers to practice with. This means that many beginning programmers have written their idea of a ram disk program. However, one of the best ram disks around is EDISK, version 2.1, by Volker A. Brandt, of the Department of Applied Mathematics in Bonn, West Germany. It is, unlike lots of other ram disk programs, small and fast. I think this means that it is written in assmebly language, becuase of its very small size, with fewer than 800 bytes. The size of the resulting ram disk can be configured from 10K to 3900K, it is reset (warm boot) proof, and it is said to work on the 520, the 1040, the Mega ST, the STe. EDISK is free. I got my first copy by e-mail. It is available from the "terminator" archive, "atari.archive.umich.edu", or, if you are a member of KWEST, you can get it from the KWEST library. I have been using EDISK, version 2.1, on my Mega ST2 for several months now and, as far as I can tell, it works flawlessly. ---------------------------------- How to set up EDISK on your system ---------------------------------- I know from experience that changing programs in the AUTO folder can be trying, to say the least, and so, for the complete novice, I list steps that will lead to successful installation of a ram disk. If you already have some experience in this regard, you may be able to read between the lines and see some short cuts, but for the complete beginner, the steps I outline works for me and has worked for others. - If you already have an AUTO folder, copy the files in it somewhere else, say to AUTO.OLD and delete AUTO and all the files in it. - Make a folder called AUTO. - Copy EDISK21.PRG and ECONF21.TOS into AUTO. - Run (double-click on) ECOF21.TOS to configure the EDISK21.PRG file and: select size (350 is about enough for a single sided floppy). select a letter for the name of your ram disk (I recommend P). - Cold boot: Turn off the power switch for your system. Turn your system back on. - A short message about EDISK21 should flash across the screen. - On the desktop, click once on any drive icon (A will do). The icon image will change (reverse video). - Point to the pop-down menu for "Options" and select "Install Disk Drive". Use your arrow keys to move arround, and Change the drive letter from A (or whatever it is) to P (the same as you chose above). Change the drive label from "Floppy drive" to "RAM DRIVE". Click on INSTALL. - An icon for drive P should appear on the desktop. - Double click on the P icon and get a window for you new ram drive. If this window appears you have done it. You are the proud owner of a ram disk. - Move your icons to the places where you want them to be. - Put the P: window to where you want it to be. - Open any other windows you like and position them where you want them. - Again select the pop-down menu for "Options" to click on "Save Desktop". - Try a cold boot again, (power off, power on) just to see if everything is working. This time the window for the Ram Drive should appear on your screen. - If so, I recommend copying the AUTO folder and DESKTOP.INF to a clean floppy and keep this as a backup. - If you have any files in AUTO.OLD, copy them to AUTO. - Cold boot agian. If all is working correctly, remove AUTO.OLD. If not, move back to a stage where everything works. For instance, copy the directory from your backup floppy, and try some variation. - Have fun. I have not written everything there is to know about EDISK, but it everything you need to know to get started. After you have used it for a while, you might want to know how to turn it off. This it is possible to do, and the documentation that comes with EDISK tells you how to do it. EDISK has other nice touches. For example one of these it that it creates the ram disk with a volume identifier. This is not especially significant most of the time, but if you have a program like "lc" (yes the famous Waterloo "List Catalog" program has been ported to the Atari), it shows the volume identifier, before it shows the directories, followed by the files, and the hidden and system files. All in all, I give this little gem a very high rating. It does everything it is supposed to do, and to the best of my knowledge does not interfere with the running of any other program, with the exception of the necessary fact of life that it takes up some space. -- Leroy J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, U of Waterloo, Canada N2L 3G1 Internet: ljdickey@watmath.waterloo.edu UUCP: ljdickey@watmath.UUCP ..!uunet!watmath!ljdickey X.400: ljdickey@watmath.UWaterloo.ca BITNET: ljdickey@watdcs.bitnet
ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu (Ed Krimen) (12/10/90)
ljdickey@watmath.waterloo.edu (L.J.Dickey) writes: - It is available from the "terminator" archive, "atari.archive.umich.edu", Where?! I looked in utilities, diskutils, misc, unindexed, and newitems. I even tried edisk*.* in /new. -- Ed Krimen ............................................... ||| Video Production Major, California State University, Chico ||| INTERNET: ekrimen@ecst.csuchico.edu FREENET: al661 / | \ SysOp, Fuji BBS: 916-894-1261 FIDONET: 1:119/4.0
ralph@laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek) (12/10/90)
I agree wholehearedly with Leroy J Dickey's review and guide. I add that it is based on the famous ETRNL2 By Mr. Franco, but that it has been completely rewritten, debugged, and improved. I had to move up to it when I got my Mega 4 ST. My only comment is that you have to deconfigure it if you do *not* want a RAM disk! I preferred good ol' ETRNL2's possibility to disable with ALT-something-or-other. Sometimes one just needs all the memory that one can get, and only for a short while. Having to use EKILL.PRG is, to me, cumbersome. Volker A. Brandt, are you listening? Otherwise, I just love it! Use EDISK 2.1!! -- Ralph P. Sobek Disclaimer: The above ruminations are my own. ralph@laas.fr Addresses are ordered by importance. ralph@laas.uucp, or ...!uunet!laas!ralph If all else fails, try: sobek@eclair.Berkeley.EDU =============================================================================== Reliable software should kill people reliably! -Andy Mickel, Pascal News #13,78