vdisk38 3.8

Short:        Dynamic recoverable RAM disk (V3.8)
Author:       Etienne Vogt (evogt@free.fr)
Uploader:     Etienne Vogt (evogt free fr)
Type:         disk/misc
Version:      3.8
Replaces:     disk/misc/vdisk*.lha
Architecture: m68k-amigaos >= 2.0.4

 vdisk.device is a driver for a recoverable RAM disk. It started in 1993 as
a hack of ASDG-RAM (written by Perry S. Kivolowitz). These hacked versions 
(1.3 -> 1.12) were not distributed.
 As of version 2.0, it has been entirely rewritten, with many new features
added:

 - Up to 16 units with virtually unlimited size (512 Mb to 2 Gb)
 - Sector size of 512, 1024 or 2048 bytes (version 3 and up)
 - Dynamic memory allocation and (optionnaly) deallocation
 - Full support of standard AmigaDOS Filesystems (DOS to DOS5).
 - Will survive the heaviest system crashes as long as its own data is not 
   corrupted.
 - In case of a recovery failure, the cause can be reported by a support
   command.
 - Supports automounting/autobooting units as of V3.3.
 - Supports volatile units that don't keep their content across reboots as of
   V3.5.

 VDisk requires AmigaDOS 2.04 or higher (V37).

CHANGES

 V 3.8
      - Fixed illegal memory accesses during initialization of big volumes with
	bitmap extension blocks. Thanks to Dale Frameli for the bug report.

 V 3.7
      - Fixed a nasty data corruption bug in the unit cleaning routine.

 V 3.6
      - Fixed Expunge and Init routines to allow removal and reloading of the
	device without system reboot. Also, a delayed expunge would have crashed
	due to mismatched stack usage.
      - Official release of vdisk V3.

 V 3.5 beta (internal)
      - Added support for VOLATILE units that will be wiped clean on system
	reboot like the system RAM: disk.

 V 3.4 beta
      - Added NOCLEAN flag to completely disable memory reclamation for vdisk
	units used as virtual floppies.
      - New AmigaDOS units now get preallocated bitmap blocks for compatibility
	with the new FFS2.

 V 3.3 beta
      - Added support for AUTOMOUNT and BOOTABLE vdisk units. This requires
	the vdisk.device to be installed as a resident module with THOR's
	LoadModule command.
      - Some extended trackdisk commands are now accepted as a compatibility
	kludge for broken software like DMS that can't be bothered to fall
	back to the normal commands. They are not officially supported and
	should otherwise not be used.
      - TD_GETGEOMETRY now returns the AmigaDOS faked geometry in CHS fields
	and the real number of available sectors in the TotalSectors field.
	(some of which might not be available to AmigaDOS).

 V 3.2 beta
      - Corrected a stupid bug in the unit checksum routine, which read
	past the end of the unit structure (yuck!).

 V 3.1 beta
      -	Major changes. Internal VTrack size is now 32 sectors which can
	themselves use sizes of 512, 1024 or 2048 bytes. The device now
	also accepts AmigaDOS faked geometries (so a unit can look like
	a floppy for example) as long as LowCyl is 0, SectorPerBlocks
	is 1 and Reserved is 2. The filesystem root block should be
	correctly placed as well.
      - Initialization recovery checks reworked so they no longer reference
	memory not yet reallocated.
      - 'muFS' DosType is now recognized and supported, although the
	current multiuser.library only allows the MultiUserFileSystem
	on hard disk partitions.
      - NSCMD_DEVICEQUERY and TD_GETGEOMETRY commands are now supported.