IIgs users with IIgs-aware DMA cards: we need your help!

[ZaneKaminski]

Hi everyone,

My friend Garrett Fellers and I design, manufacture, and sell vintage hardware through his Garrett's Workshop brand. One of our products that's been out for a while is our GW4201-series "RAM2GS" RAM expansion card for Apple IIgs. (eBay link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-IIgs-4-MB-RAM-Expansion-Low-Power-New-2020-Production-GW4201B-/254230319800) We have a new 8MB version of this card in the release-candidate stage and are looking for some testers to make a final pass trying it out before we release the card.

In particular we are looking for users with IIgs machines and at least one card which does IIgs-aware DMA. Examples are the MicroDrive Turbo and the Apple High-Speed SCSI card (as differentiated from the "regular" SCSI card). If you have such a card and are interested in trying our new RAM, please let me know. The testing we are interested in basically consists of running GS/OS using the card, copying files to/from a RAM disk, running programs from the RAM disk, etc.--nothing fancy or complicated. If interested, we will send you a card free of charge, which you can of course keep once we're done with testing.

Edit:

I figured I'd attach a picture of the RAM2GS II as well:

 

[Byrd]

@ZaneKaminski

I'm looking over here at a IIGS with a RAMFast Rev D SCSI card and CFFA3000 card - and some sort of long Applied Engineering RAM card.  Happy to help out, but I'm in Australia, PM me if so.

Thanks

JB

 

[NJRoadfan]

I have a Transwarp GS plus a RamFAST Rev. D SCSI card. Currently does DMA to a fully populated 6MB Applied Engineering GS-RAM+ in a ROM 01 machine. Just a note about testing RAM disks, DMA is only possible to the first 4MB of RAM on IIgs RAM cards due to motherboard limitations. The built-in RAM disk firmware will allocate from the top of memory downwards, so you'll have to make a RAM disk larger then 4MB to use any DMA-able RAM.

 

[ZaneKaminski]

I have a Transwarp GS plus a RamFAST Rev. D SCSI card. Currently does DMA to a fully populated 6MB Applied Engineering GS-RAM+ in a ROM 01 machine. Just a note about testing RAM disks, DMA is only possible to the first 4MB of RAM on IIgs RAM cards due to motherboard limitations. The built-in RAM disk firmware will allocate from the top of memory downwards, so you'll have to make a RAM disk larger then 4MB to use any DMA-able RAM.

Thanks! What I mean is a little different than what you’re saying though. I’m talking about when an application has a DMA disk card read into an a buffer owned by the app. This buffer will often be in expansion RAM. So for a read operation that moves a disk block from the card into an application's buffer, the data flow will go from the disk card, onto the peripheral bus, through to the fast bus, and then onto the RAM card. This is the situation which needs a bit more testing.