Slimmed 6.0.8

[CC_333]

I still think some sort of RAM disk would be beneficial. It could be as large as a megabyte on a Plus, but, for obvious reasons, a reasonably sized disk on a 512k would be quite difficult (a RAM disk on a 128k is probably impossible, so it's not even worth discussing), but even a 100k disk should be enough to keep most software happy.

There are RAM disk softwares for System 6, and many of them could probably be made small enough to fit in ROM without squeezing everything else out.

Thoughts?

c

 

[bigmessowires]

You could give it a try - find an existing RAM disk extension, add it to the disk image I posted, and see how much extra space it needs. I'm not convinced it would be super-useful, though, other than as a way to get a few programs running that don't like read-only disks. The traditional reason for using a RAM disk was for speed, but in this case the RAM disk wouldn't be any faster than the ROM disk.

 

[CC_333]

OK, if I can get a... what's it called... a ROM-inator, I can do some testing.

It seems like it could potentially be useful if one wants to save files in a temporary area while booted from ROM (another primary use of RAM disks, I believe) and then copy it all to a floppy disk (or Floppy Emu) at shutdown or restart.

c

 

[bigmessowires]

The hardware is sold out at the moment, but you don't need it to test the idea. Just grab the disk image I posted, and try changing the contents to include your favorite RAM disk. You should be able to boot it with Mini vMac, or if you shrink the image to 800K you can put it on a locked floppy and boot a real Mac with it.

 

[CC_333]

OK, I'll do that (it'd give me an excuse to use my Floppy Emu!)

c

 

[bigmessowires]

Here's an updated ROM disk image, replaces Pyramid of Peril (doesn't work on a read-only disk) with Cairo Shootout. 

rominator-disk.zip

 

[Bunsen]

Oh! Slimmed! I kept reading that wondering whether System 6 had anything to do with Ghostbusters.

Yeah - title is fixed now.

 

[Bunsen]

What would it take to get AppleTalk networking happening in there?

 

[uniserver]

yup pretty sure the Classic Version has appletalk

 

[360alaska]

What would it take to get AppleTalk networking happening in there?

Downgrading the finder eliminated the chooser...

 

[Bunsen]

Just thinking that a bootable ROM and an Appletalk server full of software means you could run a diskless Mac.

 

[bigmessowires]

Any combination of system software and other programs that will fit in 864K is possible. There's nothing magic about the ROM disk - it works just like a regular disk, but read only. If you can make a system 6 boot floppy with Appletalk on it, you can put that same disk image in the ROM disk.