Re: ProDOS misc. questions

[shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <4tpo7i$rh5@wraith.cs.uow.edu.au>,
David E A Wilson <david@wraith.cs.uow.edu.au> wrote:

>The volume directory of /RAM (the 64K RAMdisk in aux memory in a 128K //e, //c
>or //gs) has only one block. This broke early versions of BASIC.SYSTEM. The
>current BASIC.SYSTEM and PRODOS files both support 1 and 4 block volume
>directories (returning $200 and $800 lengths respectively). 1 block directories
>are easy enough to check for - the forward link in the first block is $0000.
>Any other size of volume directory would require scanning the whole thing.

The 64K RAM disk is also nonstandard in that its device driver's format call 
automatically writes the volume directory and bit map to the drive. Formatters
have to do this chore for other devices. I consider this device to be of so
little use that I wrote a system program which disconnects it, as well as the
5.25 drives, which my //e's hard disk boots into and which I run on the IIgs
to get into ProDOS 8.
-- 
Randy Shackelford                                 I was internet
shack@frii.com                                    when internet wasn't cool