TK2 and RAM disk

[badaman]

Hello.

We are all used to using the TK2 and the RAM disk that the expansion cards include, but I have a basic doubt. Do ROMs with TK2 also incorporate the RAM disk?

I have an old ROM cartridge with TK2 and RAMPRINT, which, as they tell me, includes RAMdisk and printer utilities (screen dump, printer spooler,...).

From it, Zerover has made a copy on a cartridge designed by him, but he would like to have the most updated version of TK2 on this new cartridge. The idea is to use it together with a Qubide on one of my computers.



I'm not so interested in the printer options of that cartridge, but I am interested in the RAMdisk. I have tried a cartridge with TK2 2.20 and it does not include RAMdisk.

My questions are:

1. Is there any version of TK2 available to burn to a ROM cartridge with RAMdisk?

2. Among them, what are their advantages and disadvantages?

3. Do versions of TK2 2.32 and/or 2.36 by Marcel Kilgus include it?

4. I add another question. How can I find out which version of TK2 is being used?

Thank you.

[t0nyt]

As far as I’ve been able to discover (both from various advise and trying the different versions) none of the TK2 versions include a ram drive

You need a Rom of some sort that includes it or load something like ramprt (I’ve actually just put my Trump card back in my system this evening so have rem’d out ramprt from my boot sequence)

[t0nyt]

I haven’t tested v2.36 yet though, I’m currently using v2.34

I thought initially when using q-emulator that it _was_ in tk2, but soon discovered the ram drive was built-in to the emulator not tk2

[t0nyt]

I haven’t tested v2.36 yet though, I’m currently using v2.34

I thought initially when using q-emulator that it _was_ in tk2, but soon discovered the ram drive was built-in to the emulator not tk2

Just to confirm, I’ve now upgraded to v2.36 and it doesn’t have a ram drive. So I think it’s safe to say no tk2 has ram drive

[dilwyn]

Many systems which came with Toolkit 2 also came with ramdisks e.g. floppy disc systems. So it made people think they were part of TK2.

But as you've found, ramdiscs were never part of TK2 as such.

There are two main types of ramdisc.

1. Static - these are formatted to a fixed capacity
2. Dynamic - these don't have to be formatted to a fixed capacity, they grow in size the more you save to them.

Dynamic are obviously more convenient since they change size automatically, but this may in turn cause "heap fragmentation" where you get odd sized chunks of memory which aren't continuous, so even when released may not appear in the free memory figure until those chunks become continuous again. This is far less likely to happen with static ramdiscs. Modern ramdiscs have some protection against this, but it's something you should always be aware of with dynamic ramdiscs to understand what can (in theory at least) happen when you repeatedly save files of varying sizes to ramdiscs resulting in inexplicable out of memory errors.

Most modern ramdiscs can function as either type. If you don't format, they will become dynamic and expand and contract as required. But they usually allow you to format them to a fixed number of sectors, e.g. so that you can make one the same capacity as a floppy disc.

[tofro]

QJump have always sold their RAM disk as a separate product, "ramprt" (Also includes a print spooler). It just got mixed up with Toolkit 2 over time because many disk interfaces simply included both.

If anyone wants to use ramprt (as the most "original" RAM disk), it is included as a separate file in the "QPAC2 support disk" on the QL homepage:

https://dilwyn.qlforum.co.uk/pe/qpac2_supp.zip

Unfortunately, I can't find a separate manual for it anywhere. You will probably have to use one of the disk interface manuals.

[RalfR]

"ramprt" was originaly bundled with the "QRam" package from QJump. Detailed instructions are found in that manual.

https://sinclairql.speccy.org/archivo/docs/sys/qram.pdf

[dilwyn]

Here's the RAMPRT section fo the QL manual. Might add this to my site for those who wish to use the RAMPRT part of QPAC2.

Note: warns against using this with SMSQ/E.

RAMPRT.pdf

RAMPRT manual

(123.45 KiB) Downloaded 22 times

[badaman]

Thank you very much for all the information.