tribby@hpindda.HP.COM (David Tribby) (09/28/88)
A few observations after working with OS/GS for a couple of evenings...
Booting up is much faster for 3.5 inch disks. On my system, it took 73
seconds to go from power-up to the Finder on ProDOS 16; it only took
40 seconds for GS/OS. There is not much difference between ProDOS 16 and
GS/OS when booting from the Sider hard disk.
Apple dropped several programs from the system disk: the Launcher,
System Utilities (e.g. copying files from Pascal) and Fast Copy. The
old versions still work under GS/OS.
The APDA documentation doesn't describe the Advanced Disk Utility. It
doesn't look like it does much for me because I can format 3.5 and 5.25
floppies from the Finder, and it doesn't recognize my Sider for
partitioning. I am *real* curious about one aspect: what is the difference
between formatting a 3.5 disk as "800K 2:1" and "800K 4:1"?
The Finder no longer has a "Quit" entry in the "Files" menu. Instead,
look for it under "Special." When I tried erasing a write protected
disk, the "Try Again" did not work...I had to enter the command again.
I loaded a file into the clipboard (via another program) and tried to
look at it with "Show Clipboard." The first part of the file came out
fine, but scrolling does not work. (The last line was duplicated rather
than adding new text during a scroll-down.) Some of the additions to
the Finder not only are useful...they look good too! The Finder comes
as START in the SYSTEM folder; change the name if you don't want it to
be the startup program.
The Installer makes for a very smooth update process...if you have two
drives. (Quite a bit of disk swapping if you depend upon only one!) I
waited on the Installer (once) because it does not get rid of the "clock"
cursor when it was done with its task.
--Dave Tribby
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ARPA: tribby%hpda@hplabs.HP.COM UUCP: hplabs!hpda!tribbyjockc@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Jock Cooper) (09/29/88)
In article <6230017@hpindda.HP.COM> tribby@hpindda.HP.COM (David Tribby) writes: >A few observations after working with OS/GS for a couple of evenings... >partitioning. I am *real* curious about one aspect: what is the difference >between formatting a 3.5 disk as "800K 2:1" and "800K 4:1"? 2:1 and 4:1 are disk interleave values. The blocks on a track are not numbered consecutively. Rather, using a 2:1 interleave, they look something like 0 8 1 9 2 A 3 B ... etc. 4:1 would look something like 0 4 8 C 1 5 9 D 2 6 A E 3 7 B F ... Interleave gives the CPU time to digest a block. When the CPU asks for another (hopefully consecutive) block, the next block should be under the read/write head. 2:1 interleave is good for GS/OS, since GS/OS is faster than P16 was, it needs less time to process a given block. P16 likes 4:1. Hope this all made sense... Jock Cooper ihnp4!killer!jockc
mvs@meccsd.MECC.MN.ORG (Michael V. Stein) (09/29/88)
In article <6230017@hpindda.HP.COM> tribby@hpindda.HP.COM (David Tribby) writes: >...I am *real* curious about one aspect: what is the difference >between formatting a 3.5 disk as "800K 2:1" and "800K 4:1"? The "2:1" and "4:1" refer to the interleave to use on the disk. When using the platinum drives under GS/OS _always_ use the "2:1" interleave. When using the unidisk, always use "4:1" interleave. -- Michael V. Stein - Minnesota Educational Computing Corp. - Technical Services {bungia,uiucdcs,umn-cs}!meccts!mvs or mvs@mecc.MN.ORG
tribby@hpindda.HP.COM (David Tribby) (09/29/88)
Jock...
Thanks for satisfying my curiosity about 3.5" disk formats! Where do you
get your information about GS/OS? The documentation available from APDA
seems to leave some mighty large gaps...or I'm looking in the wrong places.
One more question, if you know the answer: Which interleave format does
the Finder use when it initializes an unformatted disk?
Thanks,
Dave Tribby
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ARPA: tribby%hpda@hplabs.HP.COM UUCP: hplabs!hpda!tribby