Good morning everyone.
I’m looking for an 8MB RAM expansion card for the Apple IIgs ROM 03 that is not of the Slinky type and that works correctly when installed on a RAM Keeper.
My goal is to create a bootable RAM disk with GS/OS 6.0.4.
Best regards.
Anonymous
User login
Please support the defense of Ukraine.
Direct or via Unclutter App
Active forum topics
Recent content
Navigation
No Ads.
No Trackers.
No Social Media.
All Content Locally Hosted.
Built on Free Software.
We have complied with zero government requests for information.
Your RAM2GS II GW4201D didn't work?
Yes, it works—if by “works” you mean using it to create a 6144 KB ProDOS volume, then yes, it absolutely works. The RamKeeper hasn’t arrived yet, so for now I’m just gathering information, and from what I’ve understood the GarrettWorkshop GW4201D will not function as a bootable RAM disk because it’s a Slinky‑type card. That means GS/OS disables the bootable RAM5 disk functionality. Right now, with the GarrettWorkshop GW4201D, the IIgs won’t boot from the RAMDisk after installing GS/OS 6.0.4 on RAM5. At the moment the GarrettWorkshop card is connected directly to the RAM expansion slot, and it still won’t boot even if you select RAM Disk in Control Panel/Slots. As far as I know, the only card still being sold today is the 4MB ReactiveMicro one, but honestly it annoys me to “downgrade” from 8MB to 4MB just to try this experiment. I don’t know if configuring the GW4201D to use only 4MB instead of 8MB would somehow make it boot, but I really doubt it — everything I’ve found so far says it will never boot because it’s a Slinky‑type card, and GS/OS disables the RAM5 boot functionality when a Slinky device is present.
What do you mean by Slinky-type card? The Slinky RAM card from Garett's Workshop is the GR8RAM, not the GW4201D.
Correct.
OK, once again, the GW4201D is NOT a slinky card.
Now I was talking to Plamen from A2Heaven and I asked him if his battery-backed-up Apple IIGS 8MBRAM/ROM card can boot GS/OS from a RAM drive. He said no, because it turns out the Apple IIgs writes garbage in the beginning of every 64K block during cold start in order to determine how much memory it has. This ends up messing up the boot volume you would store in the RAM. My guess is this is the reason why the GW4201D and every other RAM card for the GS memory expansion slot will not boot. His card however can emulate a SmartPort, and thus can boot from a small SmartPort volume in the ROM.
But this behavior has been the same since the beginning of the IIgs, so wouldn't it make sense that the RAMKeeper prevents it from corrupting the "ROM disk"?
Maybe some of the confusion comes from the frankly somewhat surprising usage of "RAM Disk" & "ROM Disk" in IIgs manuals. From what I understand, a IIgs RAM Disk is a ProDOS volume that only preserves its contents between cold resets, so it should only be used for temporary files (for example, copying floppy disk images using a single floppy drive with the RAM Disk as a temporary staging area). A IIgs ROM Disk preserves its contents across cold restarts and power cycles, but is not necessarily read-only as the name would indicate.