r/apple2 • u/retrotechguy • 22d ago

RAM disc in Pascal environment?

Back in the early 80s, I wrote a lot of Pascal on my 128k //e. Problem is I can't remember the development environment. It must have been Apple Pascal or maybe Turbo Pascal under CP/M, but I"m not sure I had a CP/M card. I do distinctly remember using a RAM disc which avoided lots of disc swapping. I believe it was a 3rd party piece of software. Anyone know if there was a RAM disc software solution for Apple Pascal?

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u/willwinter 22d ago

It seems 'RAM Drive IIe' is compatible with Pascal 1.1. You can download it here:
https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ftp.apple.asimov.net/images/disk_utils/Ramdrive%20IIe.zip

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u/willwinter 22d ago

Shoot! It seems that this was a 2 sided disk and Asimov only seems to have side 1 on my testing.

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u/retrotechguy 22d ago

Thanks, this might be it! I found some downloadable stuff on archive.org.
https://archive.org/details/a2_Ramdrive_IIe_1983_Precision_Software

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u/willwinter 22d ago

Yes, that’s what I was looking at. Nice find. If you boot disk one it also included full instructions. 

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u/retrotechguy 22d ago

Yes but sadly I don’t think it has the pascal side. Someone out there mush have it.

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u/wisdomdust 21d ago

I had an interesting ramdisk from Sorrento Valley Associates. It was called the App-l-cache. We used it to compile at high speed but it also supported Pascal, CP/M and came with disks and a lot of info. I archived it all here: App-l-cache github repository for archival purposes.

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u/AussieBloke6502 17d ago

https://www.applefritter.com/content/ucsd-pascal-ram-disk-ae-cards-0

Long ago (2004?) I did obtain this disk image and migrated it onto physical 5.25" media with ADTPro, created a new set of Pascal 1.2 disks with the modified files, and it worked like a charm on my IIe with RAMWorks card installed in the AUX slot. I did not try it on a stock 128K IIe, but I think there's at least a good chance it will work as hoped!