DOS ain't dead

Custom RDISK Build ("RDISK-S") (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo , Usono, 17.07.2009, 08:50

> > RDISK /: switch added to use any free drive letter, when loaded
> > thru AUTOEXEC or later. RDISKON program added.
>
> I have modified this version of RDISK to make it work with kilobyte
> (rather than megabyte) accuracy.
>
> The download is here:
> http://superkeen.com/peacecorpsfiles/drvrs-pb.zip
>
> I made this change because:
> -RDISK has an amazingly small footprint, so wanted to stick with it. The
> closest competition is the IBM RAMDRIVE.SYS that comes with PC-DOS 7.1,
> and that's over double the size of RDISK.COM!

BITDISK (from TurboDisk) is pretty small, 10k UPX'd. Okay, not that small, but it's also open source and can handle kilobytes. You're using an XMSv2 driver anyways, and your computers are max. 32 MB, so you don't need the massive power of RDISK (gigs). Besides, you apparently have 30k free space left anyways. But yeah, RDISK is definitely cool.

> -I'm working on a DOS boot disk that needs to extract a 7Z file from and
> to a ramdrive. The 7Z Extractor needs roughly 2.3MB of RAM, so a ramdrive
> of 6MB would cause the extraction to fail on a machine with 8MB total RAM,
> and a ramdrive of 5MB would be too small to hold the contents of the 7Z
> file!

Yeah, I see an OpenWatcom-built 7.EXE that uses D3X, nice idea! Although just FYI, the 9.04 one also handles unpacking dirs ('x').

> I would love to see this option implemented in the next version of the
> real RDISK!

That's up to Jack Ellis. I think he still reads (but doesn't post) here occasionally.

P.S. I noticed you used (and semi-worried) about PC-DOS 3.30 COMMAND.COM for its small size. Just for comparison, you could consider FreeDOS' old GCom 0.85. It's approx. 12k UPX'd, but it lacks FOR, IF, SHIFT. Still, it's quite small, so if you don't need complex .BATs, it might do what you want.

P.P.S. As much as I typically shun overformatting, I don't see how you can get around that without using stronger, more memory-intensive compression.

Complete thread:

• New UIDE Available - rr, 28.04.2009, 09:56 (Announce)
  • New UIDE Available - Rugxulo, 28.04.2009, 22:43
    • New UIDE Available - sol, 29.04.2009, 00:37
  • New UIDE Available - rr, 29.04.2009, 22:40
    • New UIDE Available - Ninho, 01.05.2009, 13:09
      • New UIDE Available - Khusraw, 01.05.2009, 15:04
        • New UIDE Available - Ninho, 02.05.2009, 11:06
          • New UIDE Available - Khusraw, 02.05.2009, 14:36
            • New UIDE Available - Ninho, 02.05.2009, 23:23
            • New UIDE Available - rr, 04.05.2009, 22:52
            • New UIDE Available - Ninho, 05.05.2009, 10:52
              • New UIDE Available (May 6) - Rugxulo, 10.05.2009, 03:29
                • New UIDE Available (May 15) - Rugxulo, 17.05.2009, 01:10
                  • New UIDE (May 15) - Does this work for anyone at all ??? - DOS386, 17.05.2009, 05:26
                    • New UIDE (May 15) - Does this work for anyone at all ??? - sol, 17.05.2009, 20:03
                    • New UIDE (May 15) - Rugxulo, 17.05.2009, 22:58
                      • New UIDE4W98SSE (May 15) R.P. - DOS386, 18.05.2009, 06:16
                        • New UIDE4W98SSE (May 15) R.P. - Rugxulo, 18.05.2009, 08:34
                  • New UIDE Available (May 15) - Zyzzle, 18.05.2009, 03:58
                    • New UIDE Available (May 15) - rr, 19.05.2009, 13:49
                      • New UIDE Available (May 15) - Zyzzle, 20.05.2009, 00:07
                  • New UIDE Available (May 15) - Rugxulo, 18.05.2009, 08:40
                  • RDISK test - small bugfix. - Japheth, 19.05.2009, 12:22
                    • RDISK test - small bugfix. - rr, 19.05.2009, 16:30
                  • New UIDE Available (May 27) - Rugxulo, 28.05.2009, 22:13
                    • New UIDE Available (June 1) - Rugxulo, 03.06.2009, 16:13
                      • New UIDE Available (June 9) - Rugxulo, 11.06.2009, 04:03
                        • New UIDE Available (June 23) - Rugxulo, 24.06.2009, 22:54
                          • Custom RDISK Build ("RDISK-S") - Paul, 16.07.2009, 23:18
                            • Custom RDISK Build ("RDISK-S") - Rugxulo, 17.07.2009, 08:50
                              • Custom RDISK Build ("RDISK-S") - roytam, 17.07.2009, 13:12
                                • Custom RDISK Build ("RDISK-S") - Paul, 18.07.2009, 21:48
                                  • Custom RDISK Build ("RDISK-S") - roytam, 19.07.2009, 03:55
                                    • Custom RDISK Build ("RDISK-S") - Paul, 19.07.2009, 18:44
                                      • Custom RDISK Build ("RDISK-S") - roytam, 20.07.2009, 12:23
                                        • Custom RDISK Build ("RDISK-S") - Paul, 21.07.2009, 23:38
                              • Custom RDISK Build ("RDISK-S") - Paul, 18.07.2009, 21:48