Re: SOME QUESTIONS! * *!! ** !! ** !! ** !! ** !!***

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

Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:

> In article itsme <quantum@telis.org> writes...
> 
> >What kind of non volatile ram/rom cards are available and where? (like
> >battery backup, static ram)
> 
> [AE RamKeeper]
>
>     The other would be MDIdeas' OctoRam ESP. It was a piggyback board
> that plugged into the OctoRam SIMM memory board and used up to 512K of
> static RAM, with a lithium battery to keep a ROM Disk active. David
> Empson has one of these I believe.

Yep.  I stopped using it as soon as I got a hard drive, and sold the
memory on it to the company I work for (32K static RAM chips were very
expensive at the time and we had an urgent need for them at work).

The card worked fine, except that the battery was faulty.  I got around
this by wiring up a 3-AA battery clip with NiCd batteries.

The main problem was that it could only support 512K of RAM (512 bytes
of which was required for the device driver).  This is fine if you're
mostly using the IIgs as a fast IIe (as I was at first), but once you
hit ProDOS-16 or GS/OS it isn't large enough to boot from, which limits
its usefulness.

It also completely blocks slot 7, and requires the use of low-profile
SIMMs on the OctoRAM.

Operationally: it has no ROM on the card, so you have to run a utility
program to load the driver into the card.  The driver is stored at
location F0/0000 and is recognised automatically by the IIgs SmartPort
firmware.  There is a jumper on the card which enables/disables writes.

The other problem that comes to mind is that the driver was buggy, but I
disassembled it and fixed it.  No native driver was provided for GS/OS.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand