Re: New Pile of Mystery Boards

[Randy Shackelford <shack@onyx.southwind.net>]

David Empson <dempson@actrix.gen.nz> wrote:

:> : 13.  AII Memory Expansion.  Apple Computer, 1985.
:> 
:> This is a very nice board, but I have always been left wondering: can
:> this memory boon (for a IIe at least!) be used by DOS 3.3 programs?

: Not without some software to patch the RWTS module in DOS.  I've never
: gone looking for any, but there might be something around.

: There is another card which has similar functionality: the Applied
: Engineering RamFactor.  It also supports 1MB, but can take a piggyback
: card with an additional 2MB.

: One major additional feature is that it has a built-in patch mechanism
: which lets the card be used as a DOS 3.3 volume.  If I remember right,
: you boot DOS from a floppy then use IN#n (where n is the RamFactor's
: slot) to hook the card into RWTS.

My Apple slinky card manual says that the slinky supports DOS with an
IN# to the slot as well. It says no formatting disks after doing an IN#
so that means the firmware overwrites part of DOS with RAM disk support.
I was thinking the Apple card did it too but had to double check.

: The software also lets you "partition" the RAM on the card, allocating
: some of it to DOS and some to ProDOS (or was it ProDOS and memory
: expansion for applications?  I forget.)

The slinky doesn't have this feature though, so 400K is the most you can
use with it. That's in the manual too.

I have one RAMfactor and two slinky cards on hand, and they are pretty
handy. I even use one in my ROM 3 IIgs, so I have 5 mb of system memory
and 1 mb for RAM disk. That's more than you could hope to use in a IIgs.
I filled the Apple cards and the slinky type card in my //c with chips
plucked from old 286 logic boards which I picked up for like $2 a pop.
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