It's been a while since I tested AIM. Olof really did a great job for the command line tool "aim_ll.exe".
Besides the syntax similar to imdisk, I like the fact that a volume, with the related partition, can be created immediately along with the disk. And also that we can dismount a whole disk with only a drive letter (instead of the number of a disk or device).
All that will be extremely helpful.
I think to rebuild GUIs from scratch. ImDisk Toolkit has become difficult to maintain because of everything that has been added progressively.
I also think to give up 32-bit. The biggest issues of ImDisk Toolkit started with Windows 11, which is 64-bit only. This will also simplify a lot of things.
RamDyn should be easy to adapt, I will start with it.
I will report the progress regularly.
By the way, I am not inspired about the name of the new project. "AIM Toolkit" is obvious but does not thrill me a lot. Any idea?
🎉
2
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I'm glad to see you decided to develop a new project.
Considering that Olof Lagerkvist made Arsenal Image Mounter as commercial software, I guess using the AIM acronym might require his permission, and even clarifying whether the new project needs to be restricted to commercial use like Arsenal Image Mounter (commercial requires an additional license).
Although I know that ImDisk and Arsenal Image Mounter drivers have a lot of features, most people just use it as a RAM drive, so I hope the name can be more direct.
I really like the name ERAM created by the Japanese guy Hideaki Okubo a few years ago, it's very direct.
Maybe Next Generation RAM Disk Tool (NGRDT)?
What do you think?
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Also, are you interested in developing on Github? Because it is easier to track code changes and make it easier for more people to contribute to your project.
In addition, can we integrate better translation methods? For example, using some crowdsourcing services.
👍
1
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Thanks for testing. Because of the MBR of the virtual disk, the created volume is 1 MB smaller than the specified size. I will fix that.
I am now trying to convert RamDiskUI. It should be possible but of course there are some difficulties.
To answer ood, I obviously have the permission of Olof. The full Arsenal Image Mounter software is very different from this toolkit, especially with its paid part. The targeted people are also different, so it can hardly considered as a rival tool. And I have no intention to copy the paid features.
About GitHub, sorry but I dislike it. :) I want to program the very old way, with just an editor, a compiler, and nothing else.
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RamDiskUI: done.
Despite a few difficulties, it was faster than I thought. I cannot release it because it depends on other components that are not ready yet.
The new project will likely include the GUIs and most features of ImDisk Toolkit.
However, I know nothing about MountImg and what can be done for it.
Next step: ImDisk-Dlg.
❤️
1
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I think that the vast majority of users, if not almost all, care about dynamic ramdisk, Mounting and other add-ons can wait, it's not the most important thing ;) Good luck .
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Now, about MountImg:
Olof has released a completely different command line tool in order to use the DiscUtils library with AIM.
Besides, with AIM, we are not mounting volume but whole disks, and this new tool does not allow to mount only one partition.
So in short, I have to rewrite MountImg almost from scratch. It should be much more simple to write though, and I also want this GUI for myself.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
However, Olof uses C++ for the AIM driver and native tools, and C# for using DiscUtils (through a tool named aim_cli.exe).
On my side, I dislike these languages :) and I prefer not explain why.
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All the code is done (hence this update of ImDisk Toolkit, which could be the last one).
I'm preparing some changes for the translations because this point takes me too much time to maintain. I would like to make something online, where anyone could improve the translations. But that would not be respectful of those who made the original translations. On the other hand, with time, some translators give up or become unreachable.
So finally, I see no good solution.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
About language files:
Adding a tiny feature sometimes requires more time to spend on language files than to make the feature. This removes all the fun. I can no longer accept that.
Therefore, I think I will keep the current system, but I will no longer contact each translator for changes or new features.
For now, only english and french are available.
In order to make a first release as soon as possible, I will keep the current installation package, but I will retry a self-extracting one later.
If everything goes well, a first beta version will be uploaded this week.
Thanks for testing.
I switched my main ramdisk to AIM (dynamic of course), and I have no issue.
For now, I am working to restore all the language files. Even in english, I forgot a few points.
The other language files will have the changed parts in english but will be usable.
Once this done, I will remove the beta statut. It seems there is no problem with the main features so there is no reason to maintain it.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
It's been a while since I tested AIM. Olof really did a great job for the command line tool "aim_ll.exe".
Besides the syntax similar to imdisk, I like the fact that a volume, with the related partition, can be created immediately along with the disk. And also that we can dismount a whole disk with only a drive letter (instead of the number of a disk or device).
All that will be extremely helpful.
I think to rebuild GUIs from scratch. ImDisk Toolkit has become difficult to maintain because of everything that has been added progressively.
I also think to give up 32-bit. The biggest issues of ImDisk Toolkit started with Windows 11, which is 64-bit only. This will also simplify a lot of things.
RamDyn should be easy to adapt, I will start with it.
I will report the progress regularly.
By the way, I am not inspired about the name of the new project. "AIM Toolkit" is obvious but does not thrill me a lot. Any idea?
I'm glad to see you decided to develop a new project.
Considering that Olof Lagerkvist made Arsenal Image Mounter as commercial software, I guess using the AIM acronym might require his permission, and even clarifying whether the new project needs to be restricted to commercial use like Arsenal Image Mounter (commercial requires an additional license).
Although I know that ImDisk and Arsenal Image Mounter drivers have a lot of features, most people just use it as a RAM drive, so I hope the name can be more direct.
I really like the name ERAM created by the Japanese guy Hideaki Okubo a few years ago, it's very direct.
Maybe Next Generation RAM Disk Tool (NGRDT)?
What do you think?
Also, are you interested in developing on Github? Because it is easier to track code changes and make it easier for more people to contribute to your project.
In addition, can we integrate better translation methods? For example, using some crowdsourcing services.
I now have a RamDyn that works with AIM. That was the easy part...
For those who want to test:
Download the AIM driver:
https://github.com/ArsenalRecon/Arsenal-Image-Mounter/raw/refs/heads/master/DriverSetup/DriverSetup.7z
Install it with the "aim_ll" command line tool:
aim_ll --install setup_directory
Then, in a folder, put this RamDyn.exe, aim_ll.exe, aimapi.dll, imdisk.cpl.
And you're done. You can now create AIM dynamic ramdisks, or even static ones with aim_ll.
Last edit: v77 2025-01-21
I now have a RamDyn that works with AIM. That was the easy part...
Woah! great news:) I installed and testing, I have no problems at the moment
Thanks for testing. Because of the MBR of the virtual disk, the created volume is 1 MB smaller than the specified size. I will fix that.
I am now trying to convert RamDiskUI. It should be possible but of course there are some difficulties.
To answer ood, I obviously have the permission of Olof. The full Arsenal Image Mounter software is very different from this toolkit, especially with its paid part. The targeted people are also different, so it can hardly considered as a rival tool. And I have no intention to copy the paid features.
About GitHub, sorry but I dislike it. :) I want to program the very old way, with just an editor, a compiler, and nothing else.
RamDiskUI: done.
Despite a few difficulties, it was faster than I thought. I cannot release it because it depends on other components that are not ready yet.
The new project will likely include the GUIs and most features of ImDisk Toolkit.
However, I know nothing about MountImg and what can be done for it.
Next step: ImDisk-Dlg.
I think that the vast majority of users, if not almost all, care about dynamic ramdisk, Mounting and other add-ons can wait, it's not the most important thing ;) Good luck .
ImDisk-Dlg and ImDiskTk-svc: done.
Now, about MountImg:
Olof has released a completely different command line tool in order to use the DiscUtils library with AIM.
Besides, with AIM, we are not mounting volume but whole disks, and this new tool does not allow to mount only one partition.
So in short, I have to rewrite MountImg almost from scratch. It should be much more simple to write though, and I also want this GUI for myself.
MountImg.exe: done.
Finally, I managed to avoid the full rewrite and I kept a large part of the code. However, I had to remove the preview of the partitions.
All that remains is the installer and the language files. It will likely be the biggest part.
wow amazing :) Can you tell a layman what language you do all this in?
It has always been C only.
However, Olof uses C++ for the AIM driver and native tools, and C# for using DiscUtils (through a tool named aim_cli.exe).
On my side, I dislike these languages :) and I prefer not explain why.
All the code is done (hence this update of ImDisk Toolkit, which could be the last one).
I'm preparing some changes for the translations because this point takes me too much time to maintain. I would like to make something online, where anyone could improve the translations. But that would not be respectful of those who made the original translations. On the other hand, with time, some translators give up or become unreachable.
So finally, I see no good solution.
About language files:
Adding a tiny feature sometimes requires more time to spend on language files than to make the feature. This removes all the fun. I can no longer accept that.
Therefore, I think I will keep the current system, but I will no longer contact each translator for changes or new features.
For now, only english and french are available.
In order to make a first release as soon as possible, I will keep the current installation package, but I will retry a self-extracting one later.
If everything goes well, a first beta version will be uploaded this week.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/aim-toolkit/
First beta release.
FOR TESTING ONLY!
Please report bugs on Discussion or Tickets sections of https://sourceforge.net/projects/aim-toolkit/
Finally ! :)
So far everything is working fine. After 4 days ~100 downloads, not bad ;)
Thanks for testing.
I switched my main ramdisk to AIM (dynamic of course), and I have no issue.
For now, I am working to restore all the language files. Even in english, I forgot a few points.
The other language files will have the changed parts in english but will be usable.
Once this done, I will remove the beta statut. It seems there is no problem with the main features so there is no reason to maintain it.