history is hard

[Christian Groessler]

On 2020-05-26 22:06, Stan Sieler via cctalk wrote:
> 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.)


They probably would just have to implement a "sync" command, and tell 
people to use use it before ejecting a disk...

regards,
chris