Re: RAMPAK

[Wayne Stewart <waynes@intergate.ca>]

Bart wrote:


> Some time back I found a GS at Goodwill with a weird memory card in it: A
> Rampak. It showed 1 meg but had this bank after bank of unpopulated
> sockets
> so... Out came the 286 motherboards....
> After filling the sockets it shows 4 megs.  Works great on my ROM 1
> Stealth
> GS, but....Plug it into a ROM 3 and ...It begins the boot, Icon Parade
> goes
> like normal, desktop begins to load and....It hangs the desktop looking
> totally out of focus.  AE GS Ram III back in the ROM 3 and it works great.
> Any RAMPAK experts out ther to tell me the error of my ways?  Or at least
> Why it doesn't seem to work in a ROM 3?

There's a number of memory cards that won't work in a ROM 3. Most of the AE
cards won't without a different PAL, the GS RAM III being the exception.
I always understood it's a problem with memory addresses. I haven't
checked 
it out with this particular card but others that don't work show the
wrong 
amount of memory in the control panel(too much). So it works fine till
you 
get to an imaginary bit of memory then everything stops

The RaAMPAC4GS was one of the earliest IIgs memory cards, designed and
in 
production before the IIgs was released. The designer was more than a
bit 
annoyed with Apple. He designed the card according to the information Apple
supplied. Then Apple made some preproduction changes and didn't tell anyone.
Because of that this card doesn't do DMA. 

	Wayne