ralph@mit-atrp.UUCP (Ralph L. Vinciguerra) (03/11/88)
I'm a very happy purchaser of FaccII, a product which offers fantastic
functionality at a great price. However, I wish it had one feature more:
I wish it could keep track of it's buffers with respect to specific DISKS
instead of DRIVES.
Let's say you have an Amiga with some memory, and
one (or even 2 drives). You typically are poping disks in and out all the
time. It's too bad that FaccII dumps all the buffers for each drive
when the disk is ejected. If instead it tracked the buffers with the DISK
then when that disk got put back in it (and those related buffers were still
in FaccII) they would still be available.
This would mean additional overhead, but for folks with only one or 2 drives
it would make life even better. If the feature got added, maybe it could
be enabled under user control. Just a humble suggestion. FaccII is still
incredibly useful and I'm glad I bought it.
-Ralph
PS: The Compact Disk case for the disk is a clever idea, it just needs to
have the black plastic insert to hold the disk, though, just like a CD.
Mine came with the disk floating around in the outer case.
Hmm...Amiga software could be released in two forms:
Smaller utilties and games (with short instructions) in a CD case
(even multiple CD case combos for several disks).
Larger programs like compilers, could come in those PC-style mini-binders
to hold the Doc's, but still have the disks in little CD cases for safe
storage. Then you can keep all your original software together in a safe
place, out of harm's way, and not floating around with the manuals.
I suspect it would also be a motivation for folks to want to buy the original
software instead of pirate it. The cases have a nice "look and feel".ugpete@sunybcs.uucp (Peter Theobald) (03/12/88)
In article <2126@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> ralph@atrp.media.mit.edu (Ralph L. Vinciguerra; Amiga-Man) writes: (talking about FACC II...) >I wish it could keep track of it's buffers with respect to specific DISKS >instead of DRIVES. >Let's say you have an Amiga with some memory, and >one (or even 2 drives). You typically are poping disks in and out all the >time. It's too bad that FaccII dumps all the buffers for each drive >when the disk is ejected. If instead it tracked the buffers with the DISK >then when that disk got put back in it (and those related buffers were still >in FaccII) they would still be available. FACC can't do this. What would happen if you popped a disk out, put it in another Amiga and changed some files. Now when you pop it back in the first Amiga, FACC's buffers contain the wrong information. I wish FACC could buffer disks intead of drives (I often pop out a disk, put another in to check for a file, and put the first back in), But unless you can think of something tricky, I don't see how FACC could do this and insure the right information is still there. Peter Theobald SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science internet: ugpete@cs.buffalo.edu bitnet: ugpete@sunybcs.BITNET uucp: ..!{ames,boulder,decvax,rutgers}!sunybcs!ugpete csnet: ugpete@buffalo.CSNET
chas@gtss.UUCP (Charles Cleveland) (03/13/88)
In article <9220@sunybcs.UUCP> ugpete@sunybcs.UUCP (Peter Theobald) writes: ) )In article <2126@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> ralph@atrp.media.mit.edu (Ralph L. Vinciguerra; Amiga-Man) writes: ) )(talking about FACC II...) )>I wish it could keep track of it's buffers with respect to specific DISKS )>instead of DRIVES. ) . . . . )FACC can't do this. What would happen if you popped a disk out, put it in )another Amiga and changed some files. Now when you pop it back in the first )Amiga, FACC's buffers contain the wrong information. ) I wish FACC could buffer disks intead of drives (I often pop out a )disk, put another in to check for a file, and put the first back in), But )unless you can think of something tricky, I don't see how FACC could do this )and insure the right information is still there. ) Well, couldn't FACC just check the date and time the volume was last altered, which is recorded in the disk's boot block, and only keep the old buffers if it hadn't changed? -- -Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.- Charles Cleveland Georgia Tech School of Physics Atlanta, GA 30332 UUCP: ...!gatech!gtss!chas INTERNET: chas@ss.physics.gatech.edu
ugmiker@sunybcs.uucp (Michael Reilly) (03/14/88)
In article <224@gtss.UUCP> chas@gtss.UUCP (Charles Cleveland) writes: >Well, couldn't FACC just check the date and time the volume was last altered, >which is recorded in the disk's boot block, and only keep the old buffers if >it hadn't changed? >Charles Cleveland Georgia Tech School of Physics Atlanta, GA 30332 >UUCP: ...!gatech!gtss!chas INTERNET: chas@ss.physics.gatech.edu what would happen if one amiga's clock is 5 minutes behind another one, if you take a disk out of the one 5 minutes behind, you can actually put a date on the disk that is BEFORE the last time the disk was written...hmmmmm that would be interesting... I think what you people are trying/hoping to do with facc is just not what it was designed for....if you have enough memory to be able to cache a whole disk, why not just load most of it into memory, you can figure out which of the programs you use on the disk, and which ones are more important to be in memory... it is of course not automatically caching, but it would work..... Maybe we need someway of writing something on a disk that tells all other computers (amigas) that the disk is "busy" and cant be written on, it can be read from , but not written onto.... except this is probably more trouble than it would be worth... :-) mike Mike Reilly President of UGCSA University of Buffalo Computer Science csnet: ugmiker@buffalo.CSNET uucp: ..!{nike|watmath,alegra,decvax}!sunybcs!ugmiker BITNET: ugmiker@sunybcs.BITNET <-OR-> ACSCMPR@ubvmsc.BITNET
chas@gtss.UUCP (Charles Cleveland) (03/15/88)
In article <9279@sunybcs.UUCP> ugmiker@sunybcs.UUCP (Michael Reilly) writes: )In article <224@gtss.UUCP> chas@gtss.UUCP (Charles Cleveland) writes: )>Well, couldn't FACC just check the date and time the volume was last altered, )>which is recorded in the disk's boot block, and only keep the old buffers if )>it hadn't changed? ) )what would happen if one amiga's clock is 5 minutes behind another one, if )you take a disk out of the one 5 minutes behind, you can actually put a date )on the disk that is BEFORE the last time the disk was written...hmmmmm that Pay attention ;-). I said to check just to see if the date had been changed, not to see whether it had increased. The chances that you could manage to have two amigae write the same date and time to the disk, however you set the clocks or schedule the disk swapping, is negligible. My understanding, possibly corrupt, is that the OS presumes when it writes to the disk that its current time is the time of the last alteration, regardless of what value may have previously occupied those fields in the boot block. I could test this, but unless I hear to the contrary, I won't bother -- on the grounds of Presumptuous Assumption. I was not trying to make a case for tracking disks in FACC, merely trying to address what seemed to me an invalid objection. Frankly however I would like to be able to reserve FACC buffers for a particular disk and not to have them cleared when it is ejected temporarily. -- -Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.- Charles Cleveland Georgia Tech School of Physics Atlanta, GA 30332 UUCP: ...!gatech!gtss!chas INTERNET: chas@ss.physics.gatech.edu
ugmiker@sunybcs.uucp (Michael Reilly) (03/16/88)
In article <225@gtss.UUCP> chas@gtss.UUCP (Charles Cleveland) writes: > >I was not trying to make a case for tracking disks in FACC, merely trying >to address what seemed to me an invalid objection. Frankly however I would >like to be able to reserve FACC buffers for a particular disk and not to >have them cleared when it is ejected temporarily. Now that is an idea, how about a way of "promising" to facc that you will not change a disk, so just hold onto those buffers for a few minutes while I pop this other disk in here for a minute... If you could do that you could have 100 buffers for one disk, 100 buffers for another disk, and so on, because you and I both know, most people don't have another amiga right next to the one they are using, and don't swap disks between them.... >Charles Cleveland Georgia Tech School of Physics Atlanta, GA 30332 >UUCP: ...!gatech!gtss!chas INTERNET: chas@ss.physics.gatech.edu Mike Reilly President of UGCSA University of Buffalo Computer Science csnet: ugmiker@buffalo.CSNET uucp: ..!{nike|watmath,alegra,decvax}!sunybcs!ugmiker BITNET: ugmiker@sunybcs.BITNET <-OR-> ACSCMPR@ubvmsc.BITNET