hi2cah@sdcc13.ucsd.EDU (John Ogawa) (04/22/87)
<< I live to be eaten! Thank Y I am trying to write an all-in-one desk accessory to set screen colors, write verify, flush rs232 buffers, coldboot, and set the sek rate. OK, so far so good. I've got the interface alright, and I know the easy stuff, setting the screen and the write verify and the rs232 flush. The problem is that I can't figure out a) how to force a boot (hard or soft) after clearing MEMVALID and MEMVAL2, and b) how to get the disk drive to accept a seek rate change. On the former, I'm working in C, MWC 2.0 to be exact, so I'd appreciate any answers be reachable in C. Do I just call a routine set at $0501E ?? The latter is more of a mystery. According to Abacus Internals and MWC documentation, $440 contains the seek rate, 0=6 msec, 1=12 msec, 2=2 msec, and 3=3 msec. OK, so I set it to 2 msec and got out and ran my disk on a large file. Sounds the same to me. A check on the seek rate using Private Eye Desk Acc (nice!) showed 2 msec. I didn't hear a change. Anybody know what's going on? I found some interesting stuff in BIOS around $06800, is the answer there? I have a program called DISKDIAG that checks disk performance and allows you to set the verify and seek rate. I can hear the difference there. Sounds much higher at 2 msec (not surprising :-)!). Is the author(s) around? Also, on a related note: while trying to find info about the seek rate, I found that you could change the stepper motor rate as well. My question is: what changes come from changing the stepper motor rate, and are they worth it/dangerous?? While I'm asking that, is there any REAL advantage to changing the seek rate or any REAL dangers? Thanks much for any light anyone can shed on any of these subjects :-)! Please note the address on the bottom of this posting and try to send replies there. I'd rather read 'em on that account. Thanks. John Ogawa GEnie: TUSHIE NET: ps136sag@sdcc13.ucsd.edu <or> ...ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdcc13!ps136sag ps> I'll summarize answers to the net if people want. pps> I'll give the program to Jim Turner when I'm done if it's any good.