Multiple RAD devices on AMIGA 500 with extra fast ram

[ikonsgr]

Hi everyone,
 
 Ι  just installed keeper2k's  4MB fast ram board in my A500 (only extras i have: A502 trapdoor ram + 2nd floppy drive) and i was thinking of  "utilizing" it , by transferring up to 4 disks in fast ram as rebootable rad devices, in  order to play as fast as possible many multi disk adventures i like so  much, without the CONTINUOUSLY AND ANNOYING LOADING times from disks,and  also minimizing disk-swapping.
Now, in order to do that i tried the above method:
First i edit the devs/mountlist and change the highcyl parameter of rad device to 79. Then i copy the entire RAD device block and added it 3 more times in the list, changing the name of the devices to RAD2, RAD3, RAD4.I also changed the unit attribute to the added rad devices from 0 to 1,2 and 3 respectively.
Next opened amiga shell and try the commands:
mount rad:
diskcopy df0: to rad:
mount rad2:
diskcopy df0: to rad2:
mount ra3:
diskcopy df0: to rad3:


Unfortunately what happens is that every disk overwrites the previous one,no matter  what rad device i'm using for diskcopy! It seems like all rad's are  using the same memory area, i've noticed that no extra memory is used  when i copy the 2nd disk in rad2 device.
So the  question is:
Is it possible to have more than 1 rad devices on amiga 500 with extra fast ram, and if so, how can you achieve that?

[matthey]

Is it possible to have more than 1 rad devices on amiga 500 with extra fast ram, and if so, how can you achieve that?

Probably, but maybe not with early versions of AmigaOS. Multiple RAD devices (that I can diskcopy to) work on my AmigaOS 3.x machine in a similar way to what you tried. The old RAD may not have supported more than 1 device or there may be bugs in diskcopy or the RAD device. A possible solutions would be to try a different recoverable ram device off of Aminet or upgrade to a newer version of the AmigaOS. Many games will not work out of RAD (NODOS/custom boot loaders and/or with on disk copy protection) but OS friendly games will of which many adventure games would be classified.

[bbond007]

How about you ADF the file to RAM:

you can mount them with isomount

http://aminet.net/package/util/rexx/isomount122

Also you could copy the files to sub dir in ram

makedir ram:disk1
copy df0: ram:disk1 all
assign ram:disk1 volume_label1:
makedir ram disk2:
copy df1: ram:disk2 all
assign ram:disk2 volume_label2:

[ikonsgr]

Also you could copy the files to sub dir in ram
makedir ram:disk1
copy df0: ram:disk1 all
assign ram:disk1 volume_label1:
makedir ram disk2:
copy df1: ram:disk2 all
assign ram:disk2 volume_label2:

That's a nice solution, but  it's not "boot proof" right? :-)
Suppose i transfer 4 disks of a game in the way you suggest, how can i start the game from within workbench then?
 All games in amiga were autobooting without needing any workbench loaded. That's why i use RAD device:

-It doesn't lost on soft reboot.
-It's EXACTLY like having a "virtual" disk drive loaded in fast ram!

I've already managed to transfer boot disks of 3-4 games to rad, and works perfect! The problem is that so far i can do it ONLY for one disk at a time! Since fast memory i have is more than enough to load 4 disks simultaneously, i really cant understand why this cant be done! It's like having multiple disk drives only in this case these "disk drives" are loaded in fast ram!
One fellow from amibay told me that it can be done, and that many years ago, he used exactly this method of multiple rads to load many disks in fast ram and play games with blazing speed and without disk swapping! Problem is he can't remember how exactly is done.... :rolleyes:
 The only sure thing is that some "tweaking" of rad device in mountlist file  is needed,like change or add some parameters.

[Tenacious]

You have probably tried this.  How did it work with 1 RAD: device sized large enough to hold 3 floppies (2640K)?  You would probably have to create directories for each game floppy and assign its logical name to it.

Have you tried running a large Workbench in RAD: with all your favorite utilities and patches in it?  Cool, huh?

[ikonsgr]

You have probably tried this.  How did it work with 1 RAD: device sized large enough to hold 3 floppies (2640K)?  You would probably have to create directories for each game floppy and assign its logical name to it.

 In fact, i haven't tried this!  You actually suggest what  bbond007 told me , but instead of using ram: use rad: . Well, how can i try this? Change the highcyl parameter of rad device in mountlist to 80X4=320 to hold 4 floppies? And instead of diskcopy, use copy df0: rad:[dir name] /all 4 times?

Have you tried running a large Workbench in RAD: with all your favorite utilities and patches in it?  Cool, huh?

Well not exactly, how ever i did try to make a rad out of the workbench disk and suddenly amiga became 5 times faster! :lol:  Everything from initial loading to just opening a folder is MUCH, MUCH faster with RAD version of workbench. And this kind of experience makes me VERY anxious of how would it be if i could play a "RAD" VERSION of universe, curse of the enchantia, cruise for a corpse,legend of kyrandia (ok this would be "half rad" as the game is 8+1save disks!!!)!

[Tenacious]

In fact, i haven't tried this!  You actually suggest what  bbond007 told me , but instead of using ram: use rad: . Well, how can i try this? Change the highcyl parameter of rad device in mountlist to 80X4=320 to hold 4 floppies? And instead of diskcopy, use copy df0: rad:[dir name] /all 4 times?

Yes, that makes sense.  I would think the first floppy of the game is the bootable one.  It should go into the root of the RAD: and you could rename the RAD: to that floppy's name.  The additional floppies would go into their own sub directories of RAD: and their names would each be assigned the original floppy names so the system could find them as required.

Well not exactly, how ever i did try to make a rad out of the workbench disk and suddenly amiga became 5 times faster! :lol:  Everything from initial loading to just opening a folder is MUCH, MUCH faster with RAD version of workbench. And this kind of experience makes me VERY anxious of how would it be if i could play a "RAD" VERSION of universe, curse of the enchantia, cruise for a corpse,legend of kyrandia (ok this would be "half rad" as the game is 8+1save disks!!!)!

Maybe you could do a super Workbench first with a large RAD: to work all the kinks out.  Then, try games and those that might have unusual boot blocks.  This may only work with games that can be moved to a hard drive (standard, non-copy-protected boot blocks).

Which version of Workbench are you running?  Do you have plenty of docs about RAD:?

[ikonsgr]

Besides keeper2k fast ram and the "classic" add on's of a 2nd floppy and a trapdoor ram nothing else exists in my A500.So i use the classic 1.3 workbench.
 Maybe i will give a try the method you propose, although i doubt it will work, because games usually expect a specific disk volume (in any device, df0:, rad:, hd: etc) to load files from, so i doubt it will "see" and load the files from directories within a disk volume which, apparently, will think it's still the boot disk of the game and no the one it needs.
Then again, who knows? :rolleyes:

[zipper]

Depends. If  they stupidly are hard coded to DF0: then it won't work ( the older the more probable). But for instance F1 GP  could be put anywhere and assigned.

[Tenacious]

Besides keeper2k fast ram and the "classic" add on's of a 2nd floppy and a trapdoor ram nothing else exists in my A500.So i use the classic 1.3 workbench.
 Maybe i will give a try the method you propose, although i doubt it will work, because games usually expect a specific disk volume (in any device, df0:, rad:, hd: etc) to load files from, so i doubt it will "see" and load the files from directories within a disk volume which, apparently, will think it's still the boot disk of the game and no the one it needs.
Then again, who knows? :rolleyes:

You're blazing a seldom explored trail, don't give up!  It is amazing to me that very few have embraced the RAD: as a way to dramatically improve performance.

[matthey]

Depends. If  they stupidly are hard coded to DF0: then it won't work ( the older the more probable). But for instance F1 GP  could be put anywhere and assigned.

A few games like F-18, the "df0:" strings in the program could be edited to "f18:" or similar and then assigned. Some games will work to HD install them to the big RAD drive. Renaming the RAD volume name to "Work" will make some installs easier or keep them from failing. Some of the HD installs were poorly written.

You're blazing a seldom explored trail, don't give up!  It is amazing to me that very few have embraced the RAD: as a way to dramatically improve performance.

It's not new just forgotten. Many smart Amiga users used a RAD back in the day especially programmers. I bet a 4 MB RAD would cut the compile time of SAS/C in 1/2 back then and the Amiga was probably one of the fastest C development systems on this side of 5 grand because of it.

[ikonsgr]

I've test the "big rad" with extra disks as directories in the rad. unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work, at least with a couple of multi disk adventures i've tried it. It boots ok from ram but then asks for "disk 2"...
As it seems, if you can't add multiple rad drives into fast ram it can't be done.Maybe ramdrive.device is limited to 1 rad only. At least in the workbench's 1.3 version.

[Tenacious]

I've test the "big rad" with extra disks as directories in the rad. unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work, at least with a couple of multi disk adventures i've tried it. It boots ok from ram but then asks for "disk 2"...
As it seems, if you can't add multiple rad drives into fast ram it can't be done.Maybe ramdrive.device is limited to 1 rad only. At least in the workbench's 1.3 version.

After you copied the contents of disk2 to a directory on the big RAD, did you then Assign that directory to the original volume's disk name?

[ikonsgr]

I think so i did. I tried the "assign rad:disk1 vol_label:" syntax you propose, but i got errors. I finally manage to use it as: "assign vol
_label: rad:disk1", and that gives me no errors and also it appears in the directory list when i execute the assign command.
Also you think that these assignments can survive after rebooting?
Anyway,the BIG problem with the above method is that it's AWFULLY SLOW!
Because copy /all command transfers disk to ram ,file by file, it's REALLY SLOW!It took more than 2 minutes to copy one disk!
On the other hand, diskcopy is MUCH faster, it needs less than 50seconds to transfer an entire disk to ram!
Spending 3-4 minutes to transfer 4 disks to ram every time i want to play a game it's not so big deal. But  if i need every time ~10minutes to do that, i don't think it's very practical, dont you think? :rolleyes:

[bbond007]

That's a nice solution, but  it's not "boot proof" right? :-)

nope... not bullet proof at all. a lot of software has custom track loaders and its not going to work with many. A lot of those multi-disk adventure games will work.

Heck, a lot of those old ADFs I have on my minimig won't even make use of more than one floppy drive, and as you may know, Minimig (with ARM) has 4 virtual floppy slots

You might be better off looking into one of those hardware floppy drive emulators. I don't know much about them or which is the best.

I did it the lazy way with my A1200... I downloaded a huge torrent of whdload games all ready to go...

That would assume you have a HD though...

My minimig only has 3.5mb RAM and whdload works very well. The only drawback to running it on a 68000 is that you can't exit many games and you have to reboot...