[comp.sys.amiga] Info on WOW

watt@usafa.UUCP (02/18/87)

Has anyone purchased or seen a piece of software (I think) called WOW?
It was listed in the march issue of the amiga  buyers guide as a floppy
disk performance enhancement that allows a floppy to work faster than a
hard disk.  I find this hard to believe and would like to find someone
that has verified or denied this claim.  The company selling it,
Intuitive Technologies, has three other programs that could be bundled
with it.  In which case I think the title changes to Amiga PowerPak.

Glenn D. Watt, Jr
Chief USER Services Division
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Instructor of Mathematics

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fnf@mcdsun.UUCP (02/19/87)

In article <105@usafa.UUCP> watt@usafa.UUCP (Capt Glenn Watt) writes:
>Has anyone purchased or seen a piece of software (I think) called WOW?
>It was listed in the march issue of the amiga  buyers guide as a floppy
>disk performance enhancement that allows a floppy to work faster than a
>hard disk.  I find this hard to believe and would like to find someone
>that has verified or denied this claim.

Not really too hard to believe given that current hard disks are only
about 30-50% faster than floppies because of Amigados software.  Tim
King reportedly has a disk handler that is as much as four times faster
than the current one.  There are also reports of such a beast being available
on various BBS's (they may be illegal copies of the Tim's unreleased one).

-Fred
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kim@amdahl.UUCP (02/23/87)

In article <105@usafa.UUCP>, watt@usafa.UUCP (Capt Glenn Watt) writes:
> Has anyone purchased or seen a piece of software (I think) called WOW?
> It was listed in the march issue of the amiga  buyers guide as a floppy
> disk performance enhancement that allows a floppy to work faster than a
> hard disk.

I recall hearing mention of this product at a FAUG meeting a couple of
months ago.  WOW is a disk caching program, and as such is quite likely
to be faster than a hard disk assuming they use a decent caching algorithm
(at least for sequential [as opposed to random] accesses).  Of course
it won't help at all on the initial access of a "block of information",
but sebsequent accesses to "blocks of information" near the initial one
will occur at RAM speeds.

Intuitive Technologies is the company that "emerged from the ashes" of
the MaxiSoft company, as I recall, and they seem to have really gotten
their act together with the Macros version of MaxiPlan.  It looked GOOD!

Also at the FAUG meeting, they showed a resident "keyboard enhancer"
program that provided macro capabilities that was really nice.  You
could have it remember keystroke AND mouse events, and then repeat them
with a single keystroke, by name, etc.  Had conditionals, etc. in it too.

From what they said then, these should be available about now ...

/kim


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