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APPENDIXK
DOS 2.5 AND THE ATARI
130XE RAMDISK
OOOOOUUOODODDDODD
The ATAAI130XE Computer is equipped with 131,072 bytes-
128K
- of Random Access Memory (RAM), twice
the
maximum
64K available with earlier
model
ATARI Computers.
The
addi·
tional 64K
RAM
can be useful for many purposes: fast exchange
of screen images for animation, additional storage for large data
bases
,
and so forth
.
You can also use the 130XE's extra
RAM
as a very fast
"
virtual
"
disk drive
.
Set
up
as a
"
RamDisk" - recognized by DOS 2.5 as
Drive 8 in your system - it can accommodate up to the equiva-
lent of 499 sectors on a diskette
.
Thai is about half what you can
store on a diskette formatted
in
enhanced
density.
Of course
,
the
" storage"
capacity offered by
the Ram
Disk is
volatile
memory,
which means that information stored in it will be
lost when you
turn
off your computer system
.
So before turning
off your system
,
you should always be sure
that
any data cur-
rently in the Ram Disk that you want
to
save permanently
is reo
corded on an actual
diskette.
However,
the
RamDisk
can be a very convenient
1001.
It allows
you to switch almost instantaneously between
BASIC
(or any
other programming language) and
DOS,
and back again
.
You
can also
use
it to work with
files
"
stored
"
on Drive 8
-
a
tech-
nique
that
might
prove
especially useful when you are
transfer-
ring large amounts of
data
between two programs that are
chained together (that is
,
when one
program RUNs
the
other).
To Activate the RamDisk
Your
DOS 2.5
Master
Diskette
contains a file called RAM·
DISK.COM that automatically sets up the 130XE 's extra 64K
125
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