Short: Dynamic recoverable RAM disk (V3.8) Author: Etienne Vogt (evogt@free.fr) Uploader: Etienne Vogt (evogt free fr) Type: disk/misc Version: 3.8 Replaces: disk/misc/vdisk*.lha Architecture: m68k-amigaos >= 2.0.4 vdisk.device is a driver for a recoverable RAM disk. It started in 1993 as a hack of ASDG-RAM (written by Perry S. Kivolowitz). These hacked versions (1.3 -> 1.12) were not distributed. As of version 2.0, it has been entirely rewritten, with many new features added: - Up to 16 units with virtually unlimited size (512 Mb to 2 Gb) - Sector size of 512, 1024 or 2048 bytes (version 3 and up) - Dynamic memory allocation and (optionnaly) deallocation - Full support of standard AmigaDOS Filesystems (DOS to DOS5). - Will survive the heaviest system crashes as long as its own data is not corrupted. - In case of a recovery failure, the cause can be reported by a support command. - Supports automounting/autobooting units as of V3.3. - Supports volatile units that don't keep their content across reboots as of V3.5. VDisk requires AmigaDOS 2.04 or higher (V37). CHANGES V 3.8 - Fixed illegal memory accesses during initialization of big volumes with bitmap extension blocks. Thanks to Dale Frameli for the bug report. V 3.7 - Fixed a nasty data corruption bug in the unit cleaning routine. V 3.6 - Fixed Expunge and Init routines to allow removal and reloading of the device without system reboot. Also, a delayed expunge would have crashed due to mismatched stack usage. - Official release of vdisk V3. V 3.5 beta (internal) - Added support for VOLATILE units that will be wiped clean on system reboot like the system RAM: disk. V 3.4 beta - Added NOCLEAN flag to completely disable memory reclamation for vdisk units used as virtual floppies. - New AmigaDOS units now get preallocated bitmap blocks for compatibility with the new FFS2. V 3.3 beta - Added support for AUTOMOUNT and BOOTABLE vdisk units. This requires the vdisk.device to be installed as a resident module with THOR's LoadModule command. - Some extended trackdisk commands are now accepted as a compatibility kludge for broken software like DMS that can't be bothered to fall back to the normal commands. They are not officially supported and should otherwise not be used. - TD_GETGEOMETRY now returns the AmigaDOS faked geometry in CHS fields and the real number of available sectors in the TotalSectors field. (some of which might not be available to AmigaDOS). V 3.2 beta - Corrected a stupid bug in the unit checksum routine, which read past the end of the unit structure (yuck!). V 3.1 beta - Major changes. Internal VTrack size is now 32 sectors which can themselves use sizes of 512, 1024 or 2048 bytes. The device now also accepts AmigaDOS faked geometries (so a unit can look like a floppy for example) as long as LowCyl is 0, SectorPerBlocks is 1 and Reserved is 2. The filesystem root block should be correctly placed as well. - Initialization recovery checks reworked so they no longer reference memory not yet reallocated. - 'muFS' DosType is now recognized and supported, although the current multiuser.library only allows the MultiUserFileSystem on hard disk partitions. - NSCMD_DEVICEQUERY and TD_GETGEOMETRY commands are now supported.