Re: AE GSRam Ultra info needed

[dempson@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <49sojq$ibl@hearst.cac.psu.edu>,
Jason Jeffries <JJeffries@psu.edu> wrote:
> In article <49red7$slc@alpine.valleynet.com>
> sjensen@sierra.valleynet.com (Steve Jensen) writes:
> 
> > I have an AE GS Ram Ultra 4 meg card that has 2 rom sockets.  Did
> > AE or anyone ever sell rom application chips for this card?  Has anyone
> > ever burned useful eproms for this card?  If anyone has a manual for the
> > Ultra card I'd sure like some info on what eproms to use.
> 
> I also have one of these cards. AE made it out to be a kind of coming
> revolution--we'd never have to wait for ProDOS 16 to load our apps from
> slow 3.5" floppies ever again!
> 
> Of course, it never happened--AFAIK, no "ROMdisks", as they liked to
> call 'em, were ever produced.

Possibly not any _real_ "ROM" disks (EPROM disks, at least), but there
certainly are simulated ROMdisks that appear as such to the IIgs
SmartPort firmware.

The only example that comes to mind is the "OctoRAM ESP" card, which
is a piggy-back 512K static RAM card for the OctoRAM memory card.  I
have one of these (without any RAM on it - I sold it several years ago
when static RAM was in short supply and very expensive).

It has a jumper to write-protect the contents of the memory.  You have
to run a utility program to load the driver into memory (it goes at
the start of the 512K ROMdisk area, in bank $F0).  After a reboot, a
volume called /ROMDISK is available, holding about 500K of data.

(The card actually supports any multiple of 128KB up to 512KB.)
-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand