Is there a list of Apple II programs that take advantage of upgraded memory over the typical 128kb? With all the 1mb, 4mb, 8mb ram cards out there for hobbyists, I'm just wondering what these cards can do for running software. I know some use those cards as ram disks, but I'm strictly looking for answers about software.
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.
RAM disk is a sotware too! Strictly ;)
[quote=Casablanca]
RAM disk is a sotware too! Strictly ;)
[/quote]
...software...
[quote=RyanM]
With all the 1mb, 4mb, 8mb ram cards out there for hobbyists, I'm just wondering what these cards can do for running software. I know some use those cards as ram disks, but I'm strictly looking for answers about software.
[/quote]
The p-System is happy to use a RAM disk with 512kB or more because the different software components of the system are located on this type of mass storage and can be loaded very fast compared to rotating diskettes. These software components are the editor, filer, compiler (Pascal, C, Fortran, Modula), assembler, linker and all the applications.
The whole p-System is a collection of segments. Segment #0 is resident in the main memory, all other segments are loaded from mass storage and unloaded dynamically. Means the editor starts with the next segment and, if necessary, a second segment with some more procedures is loaded. The reason is the address range of the p-Machine is 64kB for instructions and 64kB for data.
Regards
Ralf
[quote=RyanM]
Is there a list of Apple II programs that take advantage of upgraded memory over the typical 128kb? With all the 1mb, 4mb, 8mb ram cards out there for hobbyists, I'm just wondering what these cards can do for running software. I know some use those cards as ram disks, but I'm strictly looking for answers about software.
[/quote]
There were some disk copiers that could use the extra RAM to make a one pass copy like I think some of the later versions of Locksmith. Also a lot of the productivity software could use it like AppleWorks. Although many of them required a patch disk to be able to see it. Another one that I used to love having the extra memory for was ProTERM, it made the scrollback huge.
Disk Muncher is another Disk Copier application that takes advantage of 128K of memory. (paged)
[quote=macnoyd]
Disk Muncher is another Disk Copier application that takes advantage of 128K of memory. (paged)
[/quote]
I don't remember now if it will use more than 128k if you have it.
Disk Muncher uses several Language cards and Saturns . It needs more than one Saturn (128K) to copy the whole diskette in a single pass.
[quote=Casablanca]
Disk Muncher uses several Language cards and Saturns . It needs more than one Saturn (128K) to copy the whole diskette in a single pass.
[/quote]
I wonder how hard it would be to hack it to use other kinds of memory cards, the extended Saturn compatibles that hold more than 128k, Slinky or AE RAM Factor cards or //e AUX memory cards like the RAMWorks and clones.
[quote=softwarejanitor]
[quote=Casablanca]
Disk Muncher uses several Language cards and Saturns . It needs more than one Saturn (128K) to copy the whole diskette in a single pass.
[/quote]
I wonder how hard it would be to hack it to use other kinds of memory cards, the extended Saturn compatibles that hold more than 128k, Slinky or AE RAM Factor cards or //e AUX memory cards like the RAMWorks and clones.
[/quote]
I guess there is no point in doing this since one Saturn and one 16k language card (usually the built-in one into the //e for example) are most likely enough for a whole diskette...Saturn RAM cards are cheaper than all other 128K and larger RAM card alternatives on ebay now ;)
[quote=Casablanca]
[quote=softwarejanitor]
[quote=Casablanca]
Disk Muncher uses several Language cards and Saturns . It needs more than one Saturn (128K) to copy the whole diskette in a single pass.
[/quote]
I wonder how hard it would be to hack it to use other kinds of memory cards, the extended Saturn compatibles that hold more than 128k, Slinky or AE RAM Factor cards or //e AUX memory cards like the RAMWorks and clones.
[/quote]
I guess there is no point in doing this since one Saturn and one 16k language card (usually the built-in one into the //e for example) are most likely enough for a whole diskette...Saturn RAM cards are cheaper than all other 128K and larger RAM card alternatives on ebay now ;)
[/quote]
The mod that would probably be most useful would be to use a RAMWorks style card. Many people with //e or some clones like the Laser 128EX already have a bunch of extra RAM installed.
Of course in general Disk Muncher isn't nearly as useful as it once was since so many Apple II users now do most of their work with flash based storage instead of 5.25" floppies.
[quote=softwarejanitor]
[quote=Casablanca]
[quote=softwarejanitor]
[quote=Casablanca]
Disk Muncher uses several Language cards and Saturns . It needs more than one Saturn (128K) to copy the whole diskette in a single pass.
[/quote]
I wonder how hard it would be to hack it to use other kinds of memory cards, the extended Saturn compatibles that hold more than 128k, Slinky or AE RAM Factor cards or //e AUX memory cards like the RAMWorks and clones.
[/quote]
I guess there is no point in doing this since one Saturn and one 16k language card (usually the built-in one into the //e for example) are most likely enough for a whole diskette...Saturn RAM cards are cheaper than all other 128K and larger RAM card alternatives on ebay now ;)
[/quote]
The mod that would probably be most useful would be to use a RAMWorks style card. Many people with //e or some clones like the Laser 128EX already have a bunch of extra RAM installed.
Of course in general Disk Muncher isn't nearly as useful as it once was since so many Apple II users now do most of their work with flash based storage instead of 5.25" floppies.
[/quote]
Apple //e's usually have only 64K/80COL expansion which is not sufficient for Disk Muncher. Ramworks is several times more expensive and complicated than Saturn cards are now. The "mod" you are talking about is a serious disassembly/ reverse engineering and rewriting /reassembly of that program. Not worth it. Plenty of compatible RAM cards out there. The Disk Muncher's strength is when it comes to RWTS protections...
Appleworks runs much faster. DazzleDraw can load up a bunch of DHR screens and flip between them.
[quote=Casablanca]
[quote=softwarejanitor]
[quote=Casablanca]
[quote=softwarejanitor]
[quote=Casablanca]
Disk Muncher uses several Language cards and Saturns . It needs more than one Saturn (128K) to copy the whole diskette in a single pass.
[/quote]
I wonder how hard it would be to hack it to use other kinds of memory cards, the extended Saturn compatibles that hold more than 128k, Slinky or AE RAM Factor cards or //e AUX memory cards like the RAMWorks and clones.
[/quote]
I guess there is no point in doing this since one Saturn and one 16k language card (usually the built-in one into the //e for example) are most likely enough for a whole diskette...Saturn RAM cards are cheaper than all other 128K and larger RAM card alternatives on ebay now ;)
[/quote]
The mod that would probably be most useful would be to use a RAMWorks style card. Many people with //e or some clones like the Laser 128EX already have a bunch of extra RAM installed.
Of course in general Disk Muncher isn't nearly as useful as it once was since so many Apple II users now do most of their work with flash based storage instead of 5.25" floppies.
[/quote]
Apple //e's usually have only 64K/80COL expansion which is not sufficient for Disk Muncher. Ramworks is several times more expensive and complicated than Saturn cards are now. The "mod" you are talking about is a serious disassembly/ reverse engineering and rewriting /reassembly of that program. Not worth it. Plenty of compatible RAM cards out there. The Disk Muncher's strength is when it comes to RWTS protections...
[/quote]
AE sold hundreds of thousands of RAMWorks cards, and there were plenty of clones, both vintage and modern. It isn't an uncommon card to find and there is almost always one for sale on eBay, etc. I've got a RAMWorks II in my original //e from back in the day and I've got one of A2 Heaven's 8MB RW compatibles cards in one of my Platinum //e and one of my other Platinums one of the new Garrett's Workshop 2MB cards that I've been testing for them (works flawlessly so far).
It wouldn't be a simple mod for sure, it probably not impossible either. It should be possible to search through the code to find places where it is writing to the I/O addresses of a Saturn type card, and from there it shouldn't be that tough to find out where it is storing and reading to the extra RAM. Could be an interesting exercise to really test out the 65C02 disassembler I wrote a while back.
[quote=softwarejanitor]
[quote=Casablanca]
[quote=softwarejanitor]
[quote=Casablanca]
[quote=softwarejanitor]
[quote=Casablanca]
Disk Muncher uses several Language cards and Saturns . It needs more than one Saturn (128K) to copy the whole diskette in a single pass.
[/quote]
I wonder how hard it would be to hack it to use other kinds of memory cards, the extended Saturn compatibles that hold more than 128k, Slinky or AE RAM Factor cards or //e AUX memory cards like the RAMWorks and clones.
[/quote]
I guess there is no point in doing this since one Saturn and one 16k language card (usually the built-in one into the //e for example) are most likely enough for a whole diskette...Saturn RAM cards are cheaper than all other 128K and larger RAM card alternatives on ebay now ;)
[/quote]
The mod that would probably be most useful would be to use a RAMWorks style card. Many people with //e or some clones like the Laser 128EX already have a bunch of extra RAM installed.
Of course in general Disk Muncher isn't nearly as useful as it once was since so many Apple II users now do most of their work with flash based storage instead of 5.25" floppies.
[/quote]
Apple //e's usually have only 64K/80COL expansion which is not sufficient for Disk Muncher. Ramworks is several times more expensive and complicated than Saturn cards are now. The "mod" you are talking about is a serious disassembly/ reverse engineering and rewriting /reassembly of that program. Not worth it. Plenty of compatible RAM cards out there. The Disk Muncher's strength is when it comes to RWTS protections...
[/quote]
AE sold hundreds of thousands of RAMWorks cards, and there were plenty of clones, both vintage and modern. It isn't an uncommon card to find and there is almost always one for sale on eBay, etc. I've got a RAMWorks II in my original //e from back in the day and I've got one of A2 Heaven's 8MB RW compatibles cards in one of my Platinum //e and one of my other Platinums one of the new Garrett's Workshop 2MB cards that I've been testing for them (works flawlessly so far).
It wouldn't be a simple mod for sure, it probably not impossible either. It should be possible to search through the code to find places where it is writing to the I/O addresses of a Saturn type card, and from there it shouldn't be that tough to find out where it is storing and reading to the extra RAM. Could be an interesting exercise to really test out the 65C02 disassembler I wrote a while back.
[/quote]
If your disassembler fails you may ask for help. And then good luck with the patching, you will need it.
Can one add Ramworks to an Apple //GS computer for example => NO. Can one add Ramworks to Apple ][ and Apple ][+ and clones? -> NO.
I personally have Saturns for programs that need them, Ramworks' for other proghrams that need them... It is useless to me to twist the software in any way and indroduce (more) bugs in it.
[quote]
If your disassembler fails you may ask for help. And then good luck with the patching, you will need it.
Can one add Ramworks to an Apple //GS computer for example => NO. Can one add Ramworks to Apple ][ and Apple ][+ and clones? -> NO.
I personally have Saturns for programs that need them, Ramworks' for other proghrams that need them... It is useless to me to twist the software in any way and indroduce (more) bugs in it.
[/quote]
If my disassembler fails, I will fix it. Making programs like Disk Muncher be able to use //e AUX memory above 128K would likely also make it possible or easy to add support for IIgs memory above 128K also, and probably also extended memory on //c, //c+ and Laser 128EX. And for that matter probably to add support for other styles of cards like Slinky and RAMFactor. I don't completely understand unwillingness to consider updating old software or writing new software that I see amongst a lot of people in the Apple II community. I understand that it is easier for you if you already have extra Saturn style memory cards, but there are a lot of people who don't and may not want to buy one just for one thing if they already have a RAMWorks style memory expansion or need one for some other software like AppleWorks.
When you make it then you should advertise this possibility which if happen (I doubt it) in the best case will happen after several years and with many software bugs. I prefer not to invent "Hot water". And use ready - made disassemblers with history like ida ;)
[quote=Casablanca]
When you make it then you should advertise this possibility which if happen (I doubt it) in the best case will happen after several years and with many software bugs. I prefer not to invent "Hot water". And use ready - made disassemblers with history like ida ;)
[/quote]
I wrote my disassembler because I had certain needs that none of the ready made ones I found solved. I'd already written an assembler for similar reasons, so it was the natural next thing to do anyway.
Yes, writing your own disassembler/assembler is a good programming exercise. But I hardly believe that ready-made disassemblers that support this old and simple 6502 processor cannot do much better job than your newly written disassembler ;) The only thing that comes to my mind are good definitions of specific apple2 softswitches and OS/monitor locations that may be missing in the powerful (sometimes commercial) disassmblers. These definitions, if missing can easily be created with every decent disassembler. But, as you proposed, patching every software that uses saturn card to use ramworks style of card is a tedious job that would lead to many complications and errors. You'd better provide the needed hardware. It's cheap and simple. Much simpler than reversing and modifying every existing vintage program. After all, if one wants to avoid paying the price of a sandwich for a new saturn card could run that saturn utilizing software under an Apple2 emulator of their taste.
[quote=Casablanca]
Yes, writing your own disassembler/assembler is a good programming exercise.
[/quote]
Yes, it is :-) 3 years ago I also wrote my own Disassembler. This one is very fast and built as a universal disassembler for some 8bit CPUs. Actually the whole 6502 family is valid (NMOS, Rockwell, CMOS, 65802/65816 and the M740 family), also the 6800 and some more. There are hardware descriptions for the Apple II , IIe, IIc, some Applebus cards, for the Eurocom 1 and some more. And I started to generate descriptions of well known locations in the specific firmware ROMs. But this is not my main point.
The text generator helps reverse engineering of unknown firmware. This disassembler generates tables of unused labels, or used. I can define comments which will be included. There is a kind of text formatting and number formatting (Motorola, RCA, octal, C style, ...) defined by the user, etc.
Based on this descriptions and the modular design I will write my own assembler for 65xx, 68xx, RCA1802, 8748 which I'm interested in. No linker, just for generation of code for ROMs. Or to generate the SYSTEM.APPLE file. One feature will be mixing code of different CPUs in one code file. I.e. NMOS, CMOS and 65802, probably 6502 and Z80.
This is really a good excercise for writing error free code. Very impressive for the younger people who need their weekly software update and a cloud ;-)
Regards
Ralf
[quote=Casablanca]
Yes, writing your own disassembler/assembler is a good programming exercise. But I hardly believe that ready-made disassemblers that support this old and simple 6502 processor cannot do much better job than your newly written disassembler ;) The only thing that comes to my mind are good definitions of specific apple2 softswitches and OS/monitor locations that may be missing in the powerful (sometimes commercial) disassmblers. These definitions, if missing can easily be created with every decent disassembler. But, as you proposed, patching every software that uses saturn card to use ramworks style of card is a tedious job that would lead to many complications and errors. You'd better provide the needed hardware. It's cheap and simple. Much simpler than reversing and modifying every existing vintage program. After all, if one wants to avoid paying the price of a sandwich for a new saturn card could run that saturn utilizing software under an Apple2 emulator of their taste.
[/quote]
My newly written disassembler has the advantage of being run on a modern platform and being able to generate its output in the assembler input formats that my assembler can parse. One of the reasons I wrote my assembler is because I wanted something that could handle input source code that was originally targeted for several different assemblers like Merlin, SC, Lisa, Apple DOS Toolkit, etc. None of the existing freely available products could do those things. This is not a commercial business so it would be pretty hard to justify spending money on an expensive commercial product.
But mainly you seem to miss the point of retrocomputing entirely. It's a hobby. There are very few serious reasons to use an Apple II for any real business any more. Sometimes a 'tedious job' kind of challenge is what people are looking for. Of course if you just want to play old games from your childhood, that is perfectly acceptable too.
Buying hardware may be fairly cheap, but it can't beat free. There is no charge other than time for patching things or writing new software. And the definition of 'hobby' in general is mostly pointless use of time.
Time is the most valuable resource that we have on Earth...Speaking of vintage computing I prefer to leave the software intact in its vintage form...And not to suspect proposed by you not yet existing code patching/hooking meant to emulate Saturn RAM over RAMWORKS card upon every glitch...On the other hand our vintage Apple computers are getting more and more expensive and they are generally not free...Much more expensive than a mere saturn RAM card is...If you want a 100% free solution just use (to some extent inaccurate) Apple2 emulators running on modern platforms. Patching is a dirty solution. I have written several emulators for different hardware for PCs. But with Apple2 platform where neither I/O traps exist, nor MMU of any kind your job would be difficult, non-universal and to me more difficult than rewriting for example from scratch a Disk Muncher like copier that utilizes many kinds of RAM cards...
OK, so going thru this thread and some checking, I think this is what I see so far:
ProDOS / DOS 3 RAM Disks
Pascal (Ramdisk and ???)
CP/M (Ramdisk and ???)
Appleworks
Disk Muncher (Saturns only?)
Locksmith (V6 at least- https://macgui.com/kb/article/140)
ProTerm
DazzleDraw
(From the RamWorks II brochure)
Pinpoint
MouseDesk
HowardSoft
FlashCalc
The Spread Sheet
Managing Your Money
SuperCalc
MagiCalc
VisiCalc
(From a picture in that brochure)
Magic Office System
ProFiler
PFS:file
WordPerfect