adw3345@ultb.UUCP (A.D. Williams) (10/11/89)
Is there a program that will speed up disk access on my hard disk? I
was putting some files into a partition from a number of diskettets. It
seemed that it took an awfully long time to find free space as the disk
filled up.
When I did the same thing on a PS/2 at work, it was much faster, even
though my Atari outpaced it in disk reads.
Does TOS 1.4 help with this ? What can I do in the meantime?
What is the maximum # of partitions or megabytes the Atari can handle?
Thanks,
Derrickjansen@atari.UUCP (Mark O. Jansen) (10/12/89)
in article <1407@ultb.UUCP>, adw3345@ultb.UUCP (A.D. Williams) says: > > > Is there a program that will speed up disk access on my hard disk? I > was putting some files into a partition from a number of diskettets. It > seemed that it took an awfully long time to find free space as the disk > filled up. ... > Does TOS 1.4 help with this ? What can I do in the meantime? > Yes, Rainbow TOS (a.k.a. TOS 1.4) helps with this. A LOT. There are speedup programs available in the meantime, but I have not used them, and have no idea how stable/fast/trustworthy they are. I'd recommend you get Rainbow TOS, for this and lots of other reasons. -- "Question" Mark Jansen UUCP: ...ames!atari!jansen Atari Corporation BIX/GEnie: mjansen These views do not necessarily reflect those of Atari Corporation. "No fire exits...that's a BAD PARTY." - Bill Spooner
larserio@IFI.UIO.NO (LarsErikOsterud) (10/12/89)
It will help a lot using a disk-cache program and reserve 1 MB for it (if you have 1 MB free RAM that is). Then the last 1 MB you read from the HD will be kept here, useful when you first edit something, then save and compile - The compiler doesn't have to read the file from disk - its in the cache-buffer and everything goes much faster..... Lars-Erik / ABK-BBS +47 2132659 / ____ ______ ________________________ Osterud / larserio@ifi.uio.no / /___ / The norwegian ST __________/ ______________________/ ____/ / Klubben, user association
hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) (10/12/89)
In article <1725@atari.UUCP>, jansen@atari.UUCP (Mark O. Jansen) writes: > > Is there a program that will speed up disk access on my hard disk? I > ... > > Does TOS 1.4 help with this ? What can I do in the meantime? > > > > Yes, Rainbow TOS (a.k.a. TOS 1.4) helps with this. A LOT. There are > -- > "Question" Mark Jansen UUCP: ...ames!atari!jansen While i was testing my formatter i built a 32 meg partition on one disk. To test it I filled up by copying my 16 meg C: partition to it twice. The setup is source C: on drive 1 (SCSI 0) and destination G: on drive 2 ( SCSI 1). After 16-20 meg of copying, it gets noticeably SLOW! I suspect this is a consequence of clusters being allocated 1 at a time and the FAT bewritten after each allocation. Oh well, its nice to know that TOS1.4 will support 32 MEG. Its just not time effective to make partitions that large when one can easily put 12 partitions on a disk. Howard C. Johnson ATT Bell Labs att!lzaz!hcj hcj@lzaz.att.com
matthews@umd5.umd.edu (Mike Matthews) (10/12/89)
TOS 1.4 speeds up disk access considerably when a disk fills up. Until then, you can use FATSPEED.PRG (not sure where it's available up in Rochester, but it's been available on Gallifrey for a while [ahem]), which is an AUTO patch that works fine. I used it before I had TOS 1.4 without any problems. Mike
covertr@force.UUCP (Richard E. Covert) (10/14/89)
In article <1725@atari.UUCP>, jansen@atari.UUCP (Mark O. Jansen) writes: > in article <1407@ultb.UUCP>, adw3345@ultb.UUCP (A.D. Williams) says: > > Is there a program that will speed up disk access on my hard disk? I > > was putting some files into a partition from a number of diskettets. It > > seemed that it took an awfully long time to find free space as the disk > > filled up. > > Does TOS 1.4 help with this ? What can I do in the meantime? > Yes, Rainbow TOS (a.k.a. TOS 1.4) helps with this. A LOT. There are > speedup programs available in the meantime, but I have not used them, and > have no idea how stable/fast/trustworthy they are. I'd recommend you > get Rainbow TOS, for this and lots of other reasons. > -- > "Question" Mark Jansen UUCP: ...ames!atari!jansen > Atari Corporation BIX/GEnie: mjansen > These views do not necessarily reflect those of Atari Corporation. > "No fire exits...that's a BAD PARTY." - Bill Spooner I bought TOS 1.4 from my dealer when I bought the FAST TECH Turbo16 board for my Mega ST4, and the floppy disk copy time is really improved. I can't tell how much is caused by the T16 and how much by TOS 1.4, but I couldn't believe how much faster a 800K floppy copyied to my hard disk. And the Move command works in TOS 1.4 just like John Townsend said in an earlier message. My local ST dealer has been selling TOS 1.4 for a week or so, and everyone likes it!! Good for you Atari!! Richard Covert . . . . . .
apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) (10/14/89)
hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) writes: >In article <1725@atari.UUCP>, jansen@atari.UUCP (Mark O. Jansen) writes: >> > Is there a program that will speed up disk access on my hard disk? I >> > ...Does TOS 1.4 help with this ? What can I do in the meantime? >> Yes, Rainbow TOS (a.k.a. TOS 1.4) helps with this. A LOT. ... >... After 16-20 meg of copying, it gets noticeably SLOW! It may be slow, but good lord, not as slow as TOS 1.2! The "slow" part is the first write to a new file. GEMDOS looks for the first free cluster in the FAT, always starting from the beginning. When there are 16 solid MB of allocated clusters, that's a lot of FAT sectors to check before finding a free cluster. On TOS 1.2, this is REALLY APPALLINGLY SLOW! On TOS 1.4, this is kind of slow. On TOS 1.4 with enough GEMDOS disk buffers to keep the whole FAT in RAM, it is REALLY FAST! Try Dfree on a 32MB partition in under 1 sec! (Allocating the second, third, ... n'th cluster is not slow, because there the search begins with the previous cluster, not the start of the FAT.) Ken Bad should have posted "CACHEXXX.PRG" here - if he hasn't, I'm sure he will. If you use it and be sure XXX is equal to the sum of the FAT sizes (in sectors) of your disks, GEMDOS will load them up once and never have to hit the disk for reading a FAT again! It is not the case that the FAT is written after each allocation. It's written when a buffer is re-used or the file is closed. ============================================ Opinions expressed above do not necessarily -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp. reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. ...ames!atari!apratt
depeche@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (Sam Alan EZUST) (10/17/89)
In regards to a speedup program for the OLD tos which makes hard disk access
faster, I have a program called TURBODOS by Dominique Laurent and
Atari France (dated March 3, 1988).
This program supposedly fixes lots of bugs in the November 1985 release of
TOS, and it also supports a cache, and makes things much faster. I like it.
My only problem with it is that it is not compaible with NeoDesk. If I have
both installed I get erratic crashes and bizarre mouse stuff (sometimes keys
get logically locked, and sometimes the mouse pointer generates keystrokes,
sometimes I just lose the pointer entirely).
Does anyone else know of a program similar to Turbodos which works under
NeoDesk? I plan to get the 1.4 ROMS soon but don't have them yet.
--
S. Alan Ezust aka "Depeche Modem" depeche@calvin.cs.mcgill.ca
McGill University Computer Science Disclaimer: I claim everything!
Montreal, Quebec, Canada (je pense que.... ) je me souviens
"This kind of pornography is a matter of artistic creativity"ramsiri@blake.acs.washington.edu (Enartloc Nhoj) (10/17/89)
In article <1589@calvin.cs.mcgill.ca> depeche@calvin.cs.mcgill.ca (Sam Alan EZUST) writes: >In regards to a speedup program for the OLD tos which makes hard disk access >faster, I have a program called TURBODOS by Dominique Laurent and >Atari France (dated March 3, 1988). > >My only problem with it is that it is not compaible with NeoDesk. If I have >both installed I get erratic crashes and bizarre mouse stuff (sometimes keys >get logically locked, and sometimes the mouse pointer generates keystrokes, >sometimes I just lose the pointer entirely). > I've been using TURBODOS(March '88) along with NEODESK(v.2.00-2.04) for quite some time now and have yet to experience a problem with the two running simultaneously. I have an '85 1040ST with TOS 1.0. A friend has an identical setup. No troubles. Maybe there's another source to your problem. -ramsiri@blake.acs.washington.edu