andyross@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Andrew Rossmann) (03/27/90)
Since recently added a meg of memory to a computer, I decided to put most of it (about 768K) to use as a cache. I have tried 3 so far with mixed results. The first was SMARTDRV.SYS, the one that comes with MS-DOS 4.01. It works fairly well, except for 1 program (I believe written in Microsoft Compiled Basic 5.??) which kept giving an error 7 (out of memory.), despite the fact that there is more than enough! So I reluctantly gave up this free and simple cache. I next tried a program from SIMTEL20 called Qwick-Cache. It worked well and appeared to have no compatibility problems, but it is a memory hog! Both Qwick-Cache and SMARTDRV didn't work too well when I tried to load them into QEMM's High RAM. I am now using a program called FASTE. It is from a company called Future Computer Systems. I got this from someplace, and have no documentation. It came with 3 versions, FASTC, FASTE, and FASTX, which are for Conventional, Expanded, and eXtended memory, respectively. It also came with a version of SPINTEST and a DISKIO program. This program seems to work OK even in High RAM, and uses very little memory. Using Coretest (not a good test, but lets me know the ultimate speed of the cache), I get nearly 5.4M/s. SMARTDRV gave me 3.4M/s using Expanded, and 5.4M/s using Extended. Qwick-Cache gave me 2.5M/s using expanded. My question (there had to be one, didn't there??) is whether the FAST! programs are shareware, Public Domain, or commercial?? If shareware or PD, does anyone have documentation for it? (I have version 1.17.) If commercial, how much does it usually go for? Or is it part of a larger package? Andrew Rossmann andyross@ddsw1.MCS.COM
cs121je@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (03/28/90)
If you are interested in a commercial cache, Allow me to say that the
disk cache that has ruled all the cache comparison articles that I have
read is : Super PC-Kwik. Cant remember who it is by.
Frank
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