8 Dec
2004
8 Dec
'04
2:55 p.m.
On Sun, 5 Dec 2004, Jim Leonard wrote:
> I have a few IBM model 5150s that I use to code entries for programming
> competitions and I'd like to try to speed up the hard disk in any way possible.
> (If you're curious what my last project was, check out
> http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=13722 to download and try it out -- it
> displays full-screen full-motion color video with sync'd sound -- yes, on a
> 4.77MHz 8088, no fooling). I've been looking for any way to speed up the hard
> disk subsystem (currently WD1002 with Seagate ST225) and I simply can't get
> more than 130KB/s out of the darn thing... so:
Yes, there ARE some XT controllers that claim to do 1:1.
I do NOT remember WHICH ones.
Yes, there ARE some 8 bit IDE controllers,
but not all IDE drives will work with them.
On Wed, 8 Dec 2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
Hey Jim.
Are you allowed to use more modern versions of DOS (i.e. post 3.3)? If
so, why not use a version that has SmartDrive built in? Better yet, use
Speedstor or some equally capable caching utility. Or will caching not
work for your purposes?
SMARTDRV was bundled with Windoze 3.10, and will work with
some of the <3.30 DOS versions.
But you need to use 3.31 or newer to have any partitions
larger than 32M.
The DOS 6.2x version of SMARTDRV has some very important
changes that "solved the problems with DoubleSpace":
it defaults to doing read caching, but NOT write caching,
if write caching is turned on, it no longer rearranges the sequence of the
writes,
when a program ends, it will not present the DOS prompt until the write
caching buffer is flushed.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com