wilson@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu (Samuel Wilson) (05/23/89)
Ahem. This friend of mine... has an AT&T 6300+ with an extremely
awkward disk configuration: it has a Western Dig. WX1002 controller
(i.e. an 8-bit card), a miniscribe 40 meg drive, and DiskManager
software. Under AT&T DOS 3.2 the performance is *terrible* -- about
.5 the speed of an IBM-XT according to Norton SI v.4. The disk is
fast enough, and the computer is fast enough, but the controller card
/ Diskmanager software / DOS version / ROM version software is a
disaster.
What can I (I mean, he) do? I don't care if the disk is partitioned
into several drives, but I need more speed. What is AT&T's solution
to this? Is there another disk controller card, or is the controller
built into the motherboard? If so, how does one tell it what kind of
disk one has?
[ps. without Diskmanager things are no faster; under AT&T DOS
3.1 things are no (?) faster]
Thanks,
Sam Wilson
wilson@cunixc.cc.columbia.bitnet
.edugpw@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (george.p.wilkin) (05/25/89)
From article <1537@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu>, by wilson@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu (Samuel Wilson): > Ahem. This friend of mine... has an AT&T 6300+ with an extremely > awkward disk configuration: it has a Western Dig. WX1002 controller > (i.e. an 8-bit card), a miniscribe 40 meg drive, and DiskManager > software. Under AT&T DOS 3.2 the performance is *terrible* -- about > .5 the speed of an IBM-XT according to Norton SI v.4. The disk is > fast enough, and the computer is fast enough, but the controller card > / Diskmanager software / DOS version / ROM version software is a disaster. DO YOU(er I mean your friend) HAVE THE CORRECT DISK INTERLEAVE I have found this to be sooo far off befor that you would do well to check it. How do I do this?? Spinwrite or the mace utilities Hoptimum will do it for you...... YOU WILL HAVE TO BACK UP DATA FIRST.... Interleave on 6300s with 40 megers has been in the 4-7 range. A plus could go as low as a 2 interleave. DON'T assume someone did this for you. If you must use external rom code also consider a program called RAMIT, it takes the romed code and caches it into ram on the motherboard improving performance greatly.. george
psfales@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (Peter Fales) (05/25/89)
In article <982@cbnewsc.ATT.COM>, gpw@cbnewsc.ATT.COM (george.p.wilkin) writes: > From article <1537@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu>, by wilson@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu (Samuel Wilson): > > Ahem. This friend of mine... has an AT&T 6300+ with an extremely [ Poor disk performance [ > DO YOU(er I mean your friend) HAVE THE CORRECT DISK INTERLEAVE > > I have found this to be sooo far off befor that you would do well to check it. > > How do I do this?? Spinwrite or the mace utilities Hoptimum will do it > for you...... YOU WILL HAVE TO BACK UP DATA FIRST.... > Good suggestion George - one correction. Spin-write (I don't know about the others) will reformat a disk in place without requiring a backup. Of course, backups are a good idea, and I know one person who trashed their disk using Spin-Write, but it was worked great for me. The difference between the correct interleave and one too small is dramatic. -- Peter Fales AT&T, Room 5B-420 2000 N. Naperville Rd. UUCP: ...att!ihlpb!psfales Naperville, IL 60566 Domain: psfales@ihlpb.att.com work: (312) 979-8031
pechter@scr1.UUCP (Bill Pechter) (05/25/89)
In article <1537@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu> wilson@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu (Samuel Wilson) writes: > > >Under AT&T DOS 3.2 the performance is *terrible* -- about >.5 the speed of an IBM-XT according to Norton SI v.4. The disk is >fast enough, and the computer is fast enough, but the controller card >/ Diskmanager software / DOS version / ROM version software is a >disaster. > The answer is simple, disable the ROM on the WD controller (I believe it's W3, go to the internal hard disk bios table on the motherboard (there's a dip switch -- I don't know which one, I'm running a 6300) and reformat the disk using dos and fdisk to partition. I doubled my disk speed on the 6300. The interleave should be somewhere between 3 and 6 on the 6300 plus to get the maximum speed. There's supposed to be a 16 bit Olivetti disk controler card for the M24 and M25 but AT&T didn't use it in the states. I'd kill for one. My 6300 with V30 runs with interleave of 3 (after using qfresh to cut the refresh time down). I get 135kb data transfer rate -- 85 was the best I could do on the WD rom. It's not the rom, however. The 6300 runs the bus at 4mhz. I think the 6300 plus does the same. -- Bill Pechter -- Home - 103 Governors Road, Lakewood, NJ 08701 (201)370-0709 Work -- Concurrent Computer Corp., 2 Crescent Pl, MS 172, Oceanport,NJ 07757 Phone -- (201)870-4780 Usenet . . . rutgers!pedsga!tsdiag!scr1!pechter ** MS-DOS is CP/M on steroids, bigger bulkier and not much better **
gopstein@soleil.UUCP (Rich Gopstein) (05/26/89)
I have found that I can only go as low as a 5:1 interleave with my 6300. That's horrible! I only get about 85KB/sec xfer rate which is pathetic. I'm using a WD XT-GEN controller, but the default DTC controller was no better. I guess the I/O on a 6300 is WORSE than an IBM XT... I used the SPINTEST demo program available on SIMTEL-20 and the HDTEST program to determine the above. You might try the same. -- Rich Gopstein ..!rutgers!soleil!gopstein
jaf@druwy.ATT.COM (John A. Frieman) (05/26/89)
> I have found that I can only go as low as a 5:1 interleave with my 6300. > That's horrible! I only get about 85KB/sec xfer rate which is pathetic. > I'm using a WD XT-GEN controller, but the default DTC controller was no > better. I guess the I/O on a 6300 is WORSE than an IBM XT... > > I used the SPINTEST demo program available on SIMTEL-20 and the HDTEST program > to determine the above. You might try the same. > > Rich Gopstein I have a 6300+ at home and another here at the Lab, both run with an interleave of 3:1. Both have WD controllers and 20 Meg. drives (1 ST-225 and 1 Olivetti both rated at 65 MS seek times). It's been a while since I ran any disk benchmarks but a transfer rate in the 300-400 kb/sec seems about right. The 6300+ has a DMA accelerator for hard disk access. The design for this is published by INTEL with the DMA chip spec., but I haven't seen it used by anyone else. Once you sort out the interleave you might find a copy of QFRESH on a local BBS. This little (15 bytes) gem reduces the number of DRAM refreshs to a workable level. My system picked up 8% on a memory intensive program with QFRESH in the autoexec.bat. Enjoy, John A. Frieman, AGS Info Srv, @AT&T Bell Labs, Denver #include <std.disclaimer>