Ramworks vs Ramfactor

[Du Hast]

For a IIe what's the difference between a Ramworks and the Ramfactor? What's "slinky" RAM?

Does Appleworks 5.1 recognize both?

[Steve Nickolas]

On Thu, 8 Jun 2017, Du Hast wrote:

> For a IIe what's the difference between a Ramworks and the Ramfactor?
> What's "slinky" RAM?

RAMworks memory is bankswitched 80-column card memory, paged in 64K at a
time. The RAMfactor is a Slinky clone and its memory is accessed
byte-at-a-time through a single C0xx address.

Appleworks should support the RAMfactor out of the box but will need a
patch to support the RAMworks as more than just an 80-column card.

-uso.

[Hugh Hood]

AppleWorks and RamWorks Cards
------------------------------

AppleWorks 3.0, 4.3 and 5.1 all have native support for up to 3 Meg of
RamWorks (AuxSlot) memory. No patching is necessary. With a 3 Meg
RamWorks, for example, AppleWorks 3/4/5 all provide about a 2 Meg 'Desktop'.

Earlier versions of AppleWorks (e.g. 2.1) benefited from the patching
software that AE supplied with the RamWorks card.

Finally, AppleWorks 5.1 can use up to 6 Meg of the 8 Meg of AuxSlot
memory provided on Plamen's/A2 Heaven's RamWorks8M card. This will
provide about a 4 Meg 'Desktop'.

Likewise, it can use 4 Meg of AuxSlot memory on Henry's/ReactiveMicro's
RamWorks IIII card. That should provide just under a 3 Meg 'Desktop'.

To take advantage of those increases with either the RamWorks8M or
RamWorks IIII, though, you need to replace the standard
'APLWORKS.SYSTEM' file with a patched version.

That patched version (along with a source code explanation of the
changes in pdf format), are here:

<http://home.earthlink.net/~hughhood/BigAuxCardAppleWorks51/>





Hugh Hood

[Warren Ernst]

On Thursday, June 8, 2017 at 7:55:41 PM UTC-7, Du Hast wrote:
> For a IIe what's the difference between a Ramworks and the Ramfactor? What's "slinky" RAM?
>
> Does Appleworks 5.1 recognize both?

Hi,

AW 5.x recognizes both.

RamWorks (Aux-slot ram) has the advantage of not taking a precious slot 1-7, and they have a video expander connector you could have, back in the day, hooked an RGB adapter to. Nowadays, A2Heaven has a VGA adapter that can connect to an Aux-Slot ram card that works wonderfully, yet also does not take a slot. The disadvantage of these cards is that it doesn't look like or work like a Ramdisk without running a utility program first, and it erases with a Control-Reset, so you can't boot from it.

RamFactors (Slinky) have the advantage of looking like a Ram Disk automatically. You can format it with Prodos, copy files, and even boot from it. Back in the day you could hook a battery to it and even cold boot from it, making it the fastest way to run ProDOS software. The disadvantage was that it took up a precious slot.

Both expanded the AW desktop beyond AW3 about the same.

Back in the day, I liked booting fast, so I used a RamFactor. Now, I use a CFFA3000 to boot from about as fast in that Slot, so I use a RamWorks to have a larger AW desktop and connect the VGA adapter to. AppleWorks doesn't care either way.

Hope this helps,
Warr

[waynej...@gmail.com]

I’d disagree about the RamFactor being fast. I’d tried one out with a battery in a IIgs and IIe about 20 years ago and found my Ramfast SCSI card to be considerably faster. Still compared to a floppy, it was like lightning.

[Hugh Hood]

On 6/9/2017 4:35 PM, waynej...@gmail.com wrote:
> I’d disagree about the RamFactor being fast. I’d tried one out with a battery in a IIgs and IIe about 20 years ago and found my Ramfast SCSI card to be considerably faster. Still compared to a floppy, it was like lightning.
>

I'll second that, although the RamFactor is no glue horse.

At one time I ran several Zipped IIe's with 5 Meg RamFactors and
battery-backup RamChargers. These systems primarily ran AppleWorks with
many TimeOut and macro applications.

I thought they were pretty slick and fast. I enjoyed showing them off.
But there's always something better, it seems.

One day I was at a buddy's house and he showed me his IIGS equipped with
a RamFAST. When he booted AppleWorks (and dozens of TimeOuts) in the
twinkle of an eye, my jaw hit the ground. How is that possible, I wondered?

After that, I phased out the IIe's with RamFactors and went with IIGS's
with RamFASTs and Zip 100 Drives.

Even 25+ years after the RamFAST was introduced, I'd say it's still the
'gold' standard for speed in Apple II disk storage, particularly in
ProDOS 8 applications. It's tough to beat the combo of DMA and a caching
controller with a meg of fast memory.

Check out KFest headliner Antoine's Google Spreadsheet for some
objective timings if your curious. The link is: {somewhere around here} ;-)





Hugh Hood

[Hugh Hood]

On 6/9/2017 9:30 PM, Hugh Hood wrote:
>
> Check out KFest headliner Antoine's Google Spreadsheet for some

> objective timings if you're curious. The link is: {somewhere around here} ;-)
>

<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uq9VV0--bQ2DiIrI0fVmAbZwvz794sRMIDn8J_8zocs/edit#gid=0>


Yes, I corrected my grammar in the quoted part. Guilty.

[John Brooks]

On Friday, June 9, 2017 at 7:30:26 PM UTC-7, Hugh Hood wrote:

For ram disk use, the Slinky/RamFactor has a number of advantages:
1) Faster block copies with less CPU overhead than Ramworks
2) Simple 24-bit byte addressing vs sparsely populated 64k banks of Ramworks
3) 100% of memory is usable as a ram disk (Ramworks can't use all memory for ram disk)
4) Can be used in any other Apple II (other than //c)
5) Can have multiple installed at once

IMO, the biggest advantage of RamFactor is that CPU code can be executed directly out of it's memory without having to copy it around. Slinky/Ramfactor requires data to be copied to be used.

-JB
@JBrooksBSI

[John Brooks]

Correction, the biggest advantage of <Ramworks> is that CPU code can be executed directly out of it's memory without having to copy it around.

-JB

[Hugh Hood]

Let's see --

RamWorks
RamFactor
RamFAST
RamCharger

-- all in one thread. This gets a bit confusing. ;-)

[Du Hast]

So for today's usage with a CFFA or HD a RAMworks would probably be a better option for general computing. Mostly I want to run Appleworks 5.1 which needs the extra memory. Are there really any other programs that use extra memory on the //e?

[Hugh Hood]

On 6/10/2017 8:07 PM, Du Hast wrote:

>
> So for today's usage with a CFFA or HD a RAMworks would probably be a better option for general computing. Mostly I want to run Appleworks 5.1 which needs the extra memory. Are there really any other programs that use extra memory on the //e?
>

I know of at least 2 --

ProTERM 3.1 [expanded auxcard memory used for its scrollback buffer]

PublishIt!4 [expanded auxcard memory used for large (i.e. multipage)
projects]


It seems like some of the ProSel utility and copy programs and _maybe_
Copy II+ also use expanded auxcard memory.

Obviously, you can also use it for a ramdisk, and by locking out
'banks', you can use part of it as a ramdisk, and part of it as
AppleWorks 'desktop' memory.





Hugh Hood

[Antoine Vignau]

And now, i'm fEDD up supports the RamWorks to record .edd images

Antoine