Comment by erickhill
3 years ago
Yes, I have something called a RAMLink, which plugged into the back of an "ancient" Commodore 64 or 128. The RAMLink is expandable up to 16MB of RAM. Keep in mind the computers had 64 or 128K.
Anyway, the RAMLink was powered but you could also get a battery backup for it (using a sealed lead-acid battery, like a miniature one used in a car). I could move an operating system called GEOS over to the RAMLink and watch it boot in less than 20 seconds, where it usually took 1.5 minutes to read off disks and eventually load. I could then move programs (word processing, graphics creation, terminal programs - you name it) over to the RAMLink and open and use them in 1-2 seconds max.
This is from 1990 technology, running on computers from the mid-80s. RAM Drives/Disks are awesome.
The Apple IIgs had RAM disk support built in. It was an immense help to eliminate floppy access if you had more than 1MB of RAM which few programs could take advantage of.