use a VGA card as a RAM disk

[Mike Chambers]

i've never seen or heard of this before. i found software that lets you use the 176 KB of memory on a VGA card as a RAM disk. obviously, you can only run text mode programs or the data will become corrupt. this is still really cool, though.

i'm using it on my XT to keep the html file and image for the webpage it's hosting at http://retrobox.scieron.com. it's great since you can get fast RAM disk access without using up any of DOS' memory!

it's on this page here, download vgadisk.zip
http://sunsite.rediris.es/pub/msdos/ramdisk/

OR, you can download it directly from my 8088's VGA disk right here!!:D
http://retrobox.scieron.com/vgadisk.zip

 

[atari2600a]

Nice! Obviously more interesting than some of today's cheap gfx chipsets, which will use your systems RAM!

 

[daflory]

This has to be one the most bizzare hacks I've heard of in a while. Almost as crazy as using an XT as a web server.

I wonder if you hack himem.sys to get MS-DOS 6 to load itself into the video RAM!

 

[chuckcmagee]

I still don't truly understand this one - already noted in your XT webserver thread:

IE 7 just refuses to load your XT web page (or download the zip file, for that matter).

EDIT.... It worked, it worked (with IE 7), guess that VGA RAMDISK is fast enough for picky MS.

 

[chuckcmagee]

Hey, your web page IS NOT A WASTE OF TIME!

My

" Put stuff here "

on earthlink.net, Now *that* was a waste of time.

 

[Mike Chambers]

I still don't truly understand this one - already noted in your XT webserver thread:

IE 7 just refuses to load your XT web page (or download the zip file, for that matter).

EDIT.... It worked, it worked (with IE 7), guess that VGA RAMDISK is fast enough for picky MS.

actually, i think it worked because i spent most of the night rewriting the whole thing from scratch.

i removed all code after where it read the webserv.ini file and rewrote it, adding support for multithreaded connections! still needs more work, but it already works alot better and is more stable.

 

[atari2600a]

WAY faster man! Nice work!