Re: Apple 2 memory

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Roy wrote:

>Bill Garber wrote:
>
>> <exegete@nunya.biz> wrote in message
>> 412d3cab_5@corp.newsgroups.com">news:412d3cab_5@corp.newsgroups.com...
>> : If I remember correctly the RAMFactor card from AE can work in
>> a IIPlus,
>> : giving you up to one meg of RAM.
>> 
>> RamFactor, like the Slinky, works as a ramdisk by default,
>> one MB in ProDOS and 400K in DOS.  Hence the reason I keep
>> my 2 Slinky cards, and give away my RamFactor. Same card
>> in all respects.  :o)
>
>According to AE's catalog, even in a II+ the RAMFactor will extend 
>AppleWorks just as it would in a IIe. I won't pretend to understand how 
>it works, but I would assume that if AppleWorks can load itself into a 
>RAMFactor, so could the TO utilities, and therefore there must be 
>someway for software to utilitze all that RAM. So, for the original 
>questioner, yes, he can use it in his II+, it will give him all that RAM 
>to use, IF his software knows how to use it.

All true, but the RAMFactor and the Apple "Slinky" card are not
bank-switched cards.  Instead, they present a serial byte stream
interface to the expansion RAM, making it essentially unusable
for random addressing.  (Oh, it can be done, by doing a couple
of I/O operations for each address reset prior to reading or writing
sequential bytes.)

Further, essentially _no_ pre-//e software can use it for anything
except as its default RAM disk.

-michael

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