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