history is hard

[Stan Sieler]

Fred writes:
   ..."MS-DOS 3.3 did not even come with a
disk cache."
and discusses problems with SMARTDRV (in MS DOS 4.01 and later).

I'm not sure if it was technically a form of caching, but the AmigaDOS
delayed floppy write (well before MS-DOS cache) caused enormous problems
for Amiga users.  (It may well have contributed significantly to the lack
of market success.)
Basic problem: you save something to a floppy, and pull it out.    You now
have a corrupted floppy.  You needed to wait a few seconds for the OS to
decide "well, looks like I better flush the last few dirty sectors out to
that floppy".

(I contend it was a form of write caching, designed to speed writing to
floppies where writing tended to occur in nearby places.)

Stan