Q-Flash Ram Disk

Q-Flash was designed to be the fastest RAM disk for the Sinclair QL at the time.

A ram disk is a virtual disk drive which is stored in the QL's memory providing much quicker access than a microdrive cartridge, or floppy disk drive, or even the QL hard disks.

It was also the first RAM disk which did not have to be pre-formatted before use and would dynamically adapt to ensure it was large enough for the files being copied to it.

The Q-Flash RAM disk also contains a command MDVLOAD to load the whole content of a Microdrive cartridge into a RAM disk in one go. A similar process was also built in later in Tony Tebby's RAM disk (with printer buffer) "Ramprt", when Qram was launched.

Advertised features included:

• The ultimate in speed, reliability, features and compatability
• Seven times faster than other RAM disks : QL Screen image (32768 bytes) loads in 0.15 seconds!
• I/O intensive programs run up to 100 times faster
• No bugs reported since initial release in August 1985
• Full dynamic memory allocation - no FORMAT command necessary. No memory reserved for file data unless really used for your files
• Up to 8 RAM devices can be used with up to 255 files per device
• Works on standard (128K) QL and with all QL software, and takes full advantage of expansion memory up to the 640K maximum
• JUst as easy to use as microdrives or floppies, but much faster.

Title: Q-Flash Ram Disk
Language: 68000 Machine Code
Author: Carsten Koch
Publisher: QFlash (Uwe Fischer]
Year of Publication: 1985
Platforms Suitable for: All Sinclair QLs and emulators
Commercial Status: Unknown
Price as at December 1985: £27 (DM 97)
Reviews: Unknown
Sources Available from: n/a
Latest Version available from: Unknown