A500 Ramdisk Boot

[pooboy_92]

Just wondering if it is possible to boot an a500 off of the ramdisk I have the 512k addon card and have heard people talking about doing it in the past but never any instructions
 
Thank you for any help

[Tenacious]

Just wondering if it is possible to boot an a500 off of the ramdisk I have the 512k addon card and have heard people talking about doing it in the past but never any instructions
 
Thank you for any help

If you set up a RAD:, you can boot first from floppy and transfer the system files to the RAD: (RAD: is configured as a fixed size of memory distinct from the RAMDISK).  The RAD: will thereafter survive a warm reboot and boot very quickly.  Most ppl add some fast ram (like a Supra 500RX, say 2, 4 or 8 MBytes) so the machine has a practical amount of memory of all types.

If you don't have the amiga docs, do a search for "Amiga RAD:".

RAD: is one of those ultra-cool features, faster than any hard drive, that gets overlooked.

[pooboy_92]

Thanks for the info I will dig my book out of the attic tonight and due my best to post the results up online

[Piru]

Just wondering if it is possible to boot an a500 off of the ramdisk

The usability of the RAD: boot is reduced by the fact that at cold start (power on) you need to first copy the contents to the RAD drive. That is: You won't be able to cold start directly from the RAD: drive.

Also, if your system crashes badly the RAD: drive can be lost as well.

[Khephren]

I used to run my A500 off RAD: for months at at a time.
But as Piru points out, you can lose data, don't get complacent. Always make modifications to your WB on the original disk, as well as the RADbench. Always save user documents to disk. Then you won't lose work like I did (built a whole AT-AT in imagine and was left with half a leg!)

[pooboy_92]

I have tried running the following

mount rad

diskcopy df0: to rad: noverify
at this point I get disk copy error disk size error which I assume to mean that I do not have enough space Is there a simple way to resize the rad

[AmigaFreak]

I used to use RAD on my A1000, we had a 2MB Microbotics RAM card attached to our A1000's side expansion slot. Worked really well, fast... just like others say.