VOGONS


First post, by snorg

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Ok, I'm not sure if this is possible, but here is my idea:

Since compact flash is much faster than any vintage hard disk, would it be possible to somehow configure a swap partition as a virtual ramdisk or as EMS? I've been search for a way to get extra memory beyond 640k in my Tandy without much luck (no luck finding viable expansion boards and I'm not ready to try and build one yet) and thought this might be possible. If nothing else, setting up a 32MB or 64MB partition as swap space would be much faster than swapping on a traditional hard disk, even if it is not possible in any way to spoof this as EMS or a ramdisk of some kind.

I ran across a discussion of that very thing on VCF while searching for info on RAM expansions but there wasn't really any info on how to accomplish it, but it sounded like it was possible.

Reply 2 of 3, by snorg

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Well it looks like VOGONS drivers hath provided:

https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fil … 851&menustate=0

I don't suppose anyone has any experience with this? It's unfortunately a
rather large driver at 29k, but if I could cram everything else into upper
memory then I'd be ok. Unless I'm also hamstrung by the fact that my system
has 640k and not 1MB so there technically isn't a UMB. I don't recall
all the particulars and arcana of DOS memory management but I thought
that was the 384K area beyond the first 640k.

Reply 3 of 3, by alexanrs

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Just a heads up - you need a 64KB frame for EMS, and it will take it from your conventional memory (since you don't have more than 640KB of RAM). No way around that, no driver will take less than 64kB once loaded.