Posted by: Aektann on 2024-08-18 04:25:24I’m curious about the reason why RAM disk option in the memory control panel is not available for some classic Macs and available for others. Like, on PowerBook 180 it is present, but there’s no that option for Macintosh IIci.
Posted by: mikes-macs on 2024-08-18 04:46:45040 or PPC, I'm not sure the reason why.
Posted by: Big Ben on 2024-08-18 05:48:45Hi, it’s not related to the CPU as every powerbook supports it and the famous Portable.
It’s related to hardware support, more precisely support in ROM.
It’s described in TIL9334, I didn’t found a link to it yet sorry.
I don't know what features the built-in RAM disk functionality has that this other software does not have. The TIL says the built-in solution can save the RAM disk automatically. It is built into the ROM - does that mean it can boot from the RAM disk?
Posted by: Mk.558 on 2024-08-18 17:57:49It can boot from the RAM disk if the machine supports it in the Memory control panel: you'd simply copy a boot folder to the RAM disk, go to Startup Disk, select the RAM disk, and reboot.
The built-in one can save to disk, this just means whenever you shutdown it automatically dumps the contents to the internal storage before it shuts down.
Posted by: dv- on 2024-10-05 06:37:38Back in the day, I used this with my Mac Plus and System 6. Dunno if it was ever updated and working with 7, though.
You could copy a system folder to it, select that as the startup disk, and restart - it would stay loaded and boot from the ram drive.
I should try it again to see if I'm remembering the process right. But I definitely was booted from a RAM disk with that.
Posted by: Mk.558 on 2024-10-05 08:48:08RAMDisk+ cannot preserve the contents of a RAM disk when a machine is rebooted. Only Q700+ that have the RAM disk allocation in the Memory control panel can do this. What you're probably thinking of is the automatic hot-swapping of the active volume that RAMDisk+ v2 likes to do automatically.
Posted by: mikes-macs on 2024-10-05 14:26:01When using System 6 and RAMDisk+ and using the hot-swapping, you have to make sure the same Control Panels and Extensions that you want on the RAM Disk are loaded on the disk based boot drive. You cannot install them after.
On Macs that had no HDD, using a 1.44 MB floppy you can have System 6 and a few Control Panels and Extensions. I used a Zip 100 with a full System 6.0.8 and every Control Panels and Extensions needed because a floppy doesn’t have the needed space. Supposing the Mac still has no HDD installed, once the Zip disk had everything needed I copied the contents to a read-only disk image that mounts on my server and is shared over AppleTalk.
The RAMDisk+ control panel allows you to not only save the contents at shutdown but on boot it allows for automatically copying the items to the RAM disk from the source. In this case the read-only disk image on the server. ( you just check the box to have the share auto mount on boot in the Chooser) It then automatically does the hot swap as well.
This was a big deal on Macs without a Hard Drive providing you can spare the RAM.