That was an amazing amount of RAM in 1986, and begged the question: What can I do with all this memory space?Īt the same time, many users were asking how they could speed up their Macs. The Mac Plus shipped with 1 MB of RAM, but users could increase the memory size to 4 MB. The Mac Plus, released in 1986, had quite a few new features, including the use of SIM (Single Inline Memory) modules that users could easily upgrade. RAM disks existed before the Macintosh ever hit the market, but we’re going to predominantly explore how RAM disks were used with the Mac. The system, as well as any installed apps, can write files to or read files from the RAM disk, just as if it really were another storage drive mounted on your Mac.īut unlike any storage drive, a RAM disk can operate at the speed of RAM, which is usually many times faster than most drive storage systems. Once a popular option in the early days of the Mac, RAM disks, which were used to speed up the performance of a Mac, have fallen by the wayside.Ĭonceptually, RAM disks are a simple idea: a chunk of RAM set aside that looks, to the Mac system, like just another storage drive.
