[net.micro.cbm] slow 1541 disk drives

lehman@crystal.ARPA (04/11/84)

I haven't gotten around to examining the 1541, but I've been wondering.
Is it slow simply because of the serial line, or is it slow because of
some other reason?

I get the impression that it reads only one sector per revolution - and
at about 4-5 revs/sec, that comes to 4-5 seconds to load a track - which 
seems about right (seems even longer, though).

Does anyone know about this kind of disk spec?  I didn't see anything
like that when I glanced through the manual.  I have my doubts about 
blaming the serial line because it seems that I can send much more
stuff to my terminal (a 2 wire system - 9600 baud) from a vax 780 than
I can from my 1541 to the c64.  If speed was bounded by the serial line,
then these should be similar (right?).

Now the question is, if it's the drive, (and it really is reading only
one sector/rev) can we reprogram it to pick up several sectors/rev?

so, who knows about this stuff?

Toby Lehman	UUCP:		{ihnp4, seismo} !uwvax!lehman
		ARPA: 		lehman@wisc-crys.ARPA
		CSNET:		lehman@wisc-crys