julius@yugas.UUCP (Julius OKLAMCAK) (12/02/88)
In article <2931@cs.Buffalo.EDU>, ugbernie@sunybcs.uucp (Bernard Bediako): > We were told by Atari representatives at the Toronto Comp. Faire that >the SH205's had 28 ms. drives. Is this true? MEGAFILE 20's (SH205's) use Segate ST-225's. I've never looked up the specs for an ST225, so I can't tell you what the seek rate is rated at... What I want is one of those 1.2 gigabyte Priams with sub-18 millisecond seek times. ;-) Julius Oklamcak Atari (Canada) Corp. - "I spoke for myself."
Kim.Tan@p1004.f162.n221.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Kim Tan) (12/04/88)
> From: julius@yugas.UUCP (Julius OKLAMCAK) > Date: 1 Dec 88 21:10:00 GMT > In article <2931@cs.Buffalo.EDU>, ugbernie@sunybcs.uucp (Bernard > Bediako): > > > We were told by Atari representatives at the Toronto Comp. > Faire that > >the SH205's had 28 ms. drives. Is this true? > > MEGAFILE 20's (SH205's) use Segate ST-225's. I've never looked up > the specs > for an ST225, so I can't tell you what the seek rate is rated at... > > What I want is one of those 1.2 gigabyte Priams with sub-18 > millisecond > seek times. ;-) > If the SH205 is a Segate ST225 then, the seek time is 65ms!! I am sure about this. Because I am using a ST225 20 Meg. on my PC. -- Kim Tan - via FidoNet node 1:221/162 UUCP: ...!watmath!isishq!162.1004!Kim.Tan Internet: Kim.Tan@p1004.f162.n221.z1.FIDONET.ORG
saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs) (12/05/88)
In article <806@yugas.UUCP>, julius@yugas.UUCP (Julius OKLAMCAK) writes: (As a joking aside in a discussion of disk drives) > > What I want is one of those 1.2 gigabyte Priams with sub-18 millisecond > seek times. ;-) > > Julius Oklamcak > Atari (Canada) Corp. Verrrry interesting. A lot of us are noticing big high performance drives out there at prices that once bought smaller & slower drives. Since we've been told that there are compelling reasons to limit TOS to partitions no larger than 16 meg, and there are limits to the number of drive partitions available at one time, what are the possibilities? Can a replacement file system be constructed as an optional add-on? (Thought inspired by contemplation of the MINIX file system, which runs as a user task). How about ESDI controllers: is it possible (and if possible, is it feasible) to put one on the DMA port of an ST? How about the expansion bus of a MEGA? If the TOS file system is a given, what about something like the programs which now select desk accessories and auto folder programs at boot time---something that selects which disk partitions from a much larger disk will be active for this session? I'm not volunteering to do any of this; no guarantees what's possible, but it's certainly beyond me. But maybe someone out there...
paul@cacilj.UUCP (Paul Close) (12/06/88)
In article <7078@chinet.chi.il.us> saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs) writes: > >Verrrry interesting. A lot of us are noticing big high performance drives >out there at prices that once bought smaller & slower drives. This brings up another question. Do the faster seek rates REALLY help given the atari's reputedly poor file system? After all, why blow more money than you need to on a fast disk? Do any of you with 23ms access drives get a noticeable improvement over a 65ms drive? Obviously, given a fast file system you would... but does TOS let you? -- Paul Close paul@cacilj.CTS.COM ...!{uunet, ucsd, crash}!cacilj!paul The Obi-wan Kenobi method: "Use the Source, Luke" -Jim Fulton
Thomas_E_Zerucha@cup.portal.com (12/06/88)
You can define your own extensions to the partition map and than create a mount/unmount utility to assign any of the 24(or 14?) available drive specifiers (strange things happen if you try to redirect a: or b:) to as many partitions as you may want. Of course your non GEM partitions may be larger, I think 32K is the limit.
rona@hpdml93.HP.COM (ron abramson) (12/07/88)
I have a 300 MB drive (HP's, of course) and seem to be at the upper capacity limit. That is, I formatted 14 parti- tions of 16 MB's each. Is there any way to get more than this? I have a 1040 ST which is about 2 years old and used ICD's format software. Thanks for your help! Ron Abramson
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (12/07/88)
In article <838@cacilj.UUCP> paul@cacilj.UUCP (Paul Close) writes: >This brings up another question. Do the faster seek rates REALLY help given >the atari's reputedly poor file system? After all, why blow more money than >you need to on a fast disk? *Yes!* If you get a drive with twice as fast a seek time as another drive, you will definitely notice the speedup. I have a 28ms and 40 ms drive. The 28 ms drive is noticeably faster on everything. You can simply compare how long the "inuse" LED stays lit when doing drive to drive file copies. After all this time on a 40ms Supra 20 (Miniscribe 8425) I can't imagine trying to work on a drive with a 60+ms access time. I'd go nuts waiting for programs to compile and link. I also use TurboDOS, to maximize the benefit of a fast drive... -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems
saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs) (12/07/88)
In article <12206@cup.portal.com>, Thomas_E_Zerucha@cup.portal.com writes: > You can define your own extensions to the partition map and than create a > mount/unmount utility to assign any of the 24(or 14?) available drive > specifiers (strange things happen if you try to redirect a: or b:) to as > many partitions as you may want. Of course your non GEM partitions may be > larger, I think 32K is the limit. Sounds very attractive. But what I know about partition maps would fit in a gnat's ear. I know that they live at the physical beginning of a hard disk and are different in different disk driver systems (I learned that when I tried to put a hard disk bootup program intended for use with AHDI on a disk controlled by BMS software and blew away the partition information). Would someone who knows several partitioning schemes please tell me about them? (I'd guess enough people would be interested to justify posting answers)
hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) (12/08/88)
Paul Close writes: > Do the faster seek rates REALLY help given the atari's reputedly poor > file system. If you use fastfat, it removes the atari problem, leaving only the drive to limit performance. I have ~20 ms drives and they cook! Howard Johnson ATT-BL !lzaz!hcj
Thomas_E_Zerucha@cup.portal.com (12/08/88)
I wouldn't call the Atari's filing system "slow" if you ever dealt with a normal PC (4.77Mhz XT w/ standard Disk Controller), or with an Amiga (the ones I have access to have v. 1.2 of the os, and 1.3 is supposed to be faster). It has problems with the FAT, so get fatspeed or turbodos if you can't wait for TOS 1.4. Not that the others are slow, just that the ST isn't slower unless you have a disk which is both big and full, and if you have the Spectre you will not want anything less than a Mac 2. But to the question - does a faster drive make a difference? YES!!!. Of course you won't notice it if you read files in small pieces, or if your memory is very full, so you can't buffer floppy I/O. But when reading contiguo blocks or if there is a lot of seeking you will notice a difference. Wether it is worth it is another matter. Generally more space will do more good than a faster mechanism, and RLL will be faster than MFM.
fnf@fishpond.UUCP (Fred Fish) (12/14/88)
In article <12297@cup.portal.com> Thomas_E_Zerucha@cup.portal.com writes: >I wouldn't call the Atari's filing system "slow" if you ever dealt with a >normal PC (4.77Mhz XT w/ standard Disk Controller), or with an Amiga (the >ones I have access to have v. 1.2 of the os, and 1.3 is supposed to be >faster). Yes, under 1.3 it is considerably faster. I just installed a controller and disk combo today that gets over 655,000 bytes/sec on reads of 32 Kb or more at a time. The drive is a 3.5" 80 Mb Quantum. -Fred
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (12/15/88)
In article <171@fishpond.UUCP> fnf@fishpond.UUCP (Fred Fish) writes: >Yes, under 1.3 it is considerably faster. I just installed a controller >and disk combo today that gets over 655,000 bytes/sec on reads of 32 Kb or >more at a time. > >The drive is a 3.5" 80 Mb Quantum. > >-Fred How 'bout that... I just installed a Quantum 80S on my system. Nice little drive. I was consistently getting around 1 megabyte/sec on reads of large files. My Miniscribes are now out the door... (By large files, 100K or larger. Like the gcc files & such. Not bad't'all. Figure it's about 20-30% faster than a Miniscribe 8051S, on the average.) At this point, I think trying to find an even faster drive would be a losing proposition. Probably a 28ms drive is going to be the fastest you'd ever need. And of course, you're not just looking at seek times, but raw data transfer rates. I suppose drives with faster seek times are also going to have faster transfer rates, but ya never know. My observations were based on single accesses of files on non-fragmented disks, so seek times really shouldn't have been the major factor. I gotta believe the faster seeks are gonna cut down my compile times though.... -- / /_ , ,_. Howard Chu / /(_/(__ University of Michigan / Computing Center College of LS&A ' Unix Project Information Systems