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I have an Apple IIc with 128 KB of RAM, about half of which goes unused. Since the IIc has only one drive, it would be convenient to use some of that unused RAM as a RAM disk. I know that this is available for ProDOS, but I use DOS 3.3. (And no, for various reasons I do not wish to switch to ProDOS.) Is there any RAM disk software or support currently available for DOS 3.3 systems?

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    Newest updates to ProDOS (yes, it is being maintained and enhanced) are pretty efficient on memory use, and has a lot of nice features over DOS 3.3. Certainly worth a look.
    – Brian H
    Mar 12, 2020 at 13:13
  • Glen Bredon's DOS Master lets you put DOS volumes on ProDOS disks, e.g. five 140K volumes on an 800K floppy. So you could create a ProDOS RAM disk and then put DOS on top of it. (In theory... not tested.) I don't know if that fits your requirements.
    – fadden
    Mar 12, 2020 at 14:49
  • I remember an article in a German journal (Peeker) in the mid 1980s with a driver/patch for DOS 3.3 to use a bit less than 64 KiB as RAM disk.
    – Raffzahn
    Mar 12, 2020 at 16:12
  • Honestly, I can't even think of any DOS 3.3 software that used more than the base 64KB unless it was written to use a 3rd party card such as the Saturn 128K.
    – bjb
    Mar 12, 2020 at 17:17
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    I'm just throwing this up as a comment, because I haven't done my homework or tried this: but this link "archive.org/details/LOGIC_AppleII_Disk-DOS134" might prove useful?
    – Geo...
    Mar 12, 2020 at 22:00

2 Answers 2

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For many questions in the early days, the answer was Beagle Brothers. In this case DiskQuik.

DiskQuik

DISK DRIVE EMULATOR by HARRY BRUCE and GENE HITE

(REQUIRES APPLE IIe WITH EXTENDED 80-COLUMN CARD)

AN IN-MEMORY "DISK DRIVE"

DiskQuik acts like a disk drive connected to Slot 3, but it is much faster, quieter and more reliable.

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In 1982 there was a product made by Sorrento Valley Associates called the App-l-Cache. It was both a language card and a ram disk. The nice thing is they gave you the source code to all the drivers. So if you know how to access the ram on the ii C maybe you can write a quick ram disk driver following their lead. All info on my git hub page https://github.com/pfiliberti/app-l-cache/

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