RAMDOS manual


RAMDOS with CP/M +

Put any disc in drive B, and type:

    |CPM
    Type RAMDOS+ D20

If a disc is not in drive B when CP/M + is loaded, then drive B will not be logged in.

The discs for drive B can be formatted by using FORMATS (see above). DISCKIT3 cannot be used to format a double sided 80 track disc. The standard formats (D1, D10, D2, D20, D40, D80) can be called directly by typing RAMDOS+ D10 or RAMDOS+ D2 etc. If RAMDOS+ is entered without a format, you will be prompted for one of these formats or for "Other" formats. The "Other" option enables you to change the Disc Parameter Blocks directly (see Technical Details below).

Start of day disc

File needed is RAMDOS+.COM. This can be copied by using PIP.

To copy RAMDOS+.COM onto a Start of Day disc, first make sure that if drive B is connected, do NOT put a disc in it; then put the CP/M + System Disc in drive A, with Side 1 uppermost and type:

    |CPM
    PIP A:=B:RAMDOS+.COM

Put the RAMDOS disc in drive A when prowted for the 'Disc for B', and put your Start of Day disc in drive A when prompted for the 'Disc for A'

The command RAMDOS+ D20 can be put in a PROFILE.SUB file on your start of day disc so that it is called whenever CP/M is initialised. See your manual or the Help file on your CP/M + disc.

You can, if you wish, patch the CP/M on your Start of Day disc so that drive B does not need to be logged in with RAMDOS+. See details below.

Technical details

RAMDOS+ changes the DPB values and adds a patch to CP/M in bank 0. None of the addresses of the DPBs, CHKs, ALVs etc are changed.

When RAMDOS+ O is entered you are promted for the drive whose Disc Parameter Block you wish to review. The DPB and XDPB values will be displayed one by one, and can be changed by entering a new value (in decimal or in hex proceeded by &,) or left unchanged by pressing ENTER.

WARNING: Experimentation with these values is NOT recommended. Setting
these values wrongly can seriously damage the health of your disc drive.

PLEASE NOTE - 128 entries only!

Because CP/M + uses a hash table for quick reference to the directory of the disc, this in most cases limits the number of directory entries to 128. This is so for PIP under CP/M +.