[comp.sys.amiga.tech] Bridgeboard HD speed

galocy@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Keith B Galocy) (11/20/90)

I just bought a new 330meg SCSI for my 2091 controller.  It's really
fast on the Amiga (15-17ms or so) but the partition I set up for my
bridge card is dragging in a major way.  The ten meg partition I had
(have) on my quantum is slow but acceptable.  I set up a 72meg partition
on the new drive and partitioned it with fdisk to 32meg, 32meg, 8meg.  
I've only used half of the first 32 meg and already it is nearly too slow
to use.  Word Perfect 5.1 is ridiculous.  Anyway, I want to know if I'm 
doing something wrong or if my pc partition is too big or my (probable 
cause) Amiga partition is too large.  By the way, I've also got the 2630
if that makes a difference.  Any insight would be greatly appreciated
because I've been unable to use it...

						Thanks,  Keith.

-no trite sig.

a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs) (11/20/90)

In article <1990Nov19.202344.13666@en.ecn.purdue.edu>
galocy@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Keith B Galocy) writes:

>I just bought a new 330meg SCSI for my 2091 controller.  It's really
>fast on the Amiga (15-17ms or so) but the partition I set up for my
>bridge card is dragging in a major way.

     I've always found that a bridge board partition on an Amiga's
hard disk is unacceptably slow, even with just a five-megabyte
partition.  The bottleneck seems to be in in the interface between
the bridge board and the Amiga, not the drive itself.  I wound up
giving the bridge board its own dedicated hard drive (a hard card
in an IBM slot) and it zips right along.  I do MS-DOS software
development on my 2500/2286; it's nice not to have to clutter my
desk with one of those Incredibly Boring Machines.  :-)

Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.UUCP
MS-DOS: I hate it, but I use it - twice a day.

drysdale@cbmvax.commodore.com (Scott Drysdale) (11/20/90)

In article <1990Nov19.202344.13666@en.ecn.purdue.edu> galocy@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Keith B Galocy) writes:
>
>I just bought a new 330meg SCSI for my 2091 controller.  It's really
>fast on the Amiga (15-17ms or so) but the partition I set up for my
>bridge card is dragging in a major way.  The ten meg partition I had
>(have) on my quantum is slow but acceptable.  I set up a 72meg partition
>on the new drive and partitioned it with fdisk to 32meg, 32meg, 8meg.  
>I've only used half of the first 32 meg and already it is nearly too slow
>to use.  Word Perfect 5.1 is ridiculous.  Anyway, I want to know if I'm 
>doing something wrong or if my pc partition is too big or my (probable 
>cause) Amiga partition is too large.  By the way, I've also got the 2630
>if that makes a difference.  Any insight would be greatly appreciated
>because I've been unable to use it...

if you've got a few hundred K of unused RAM available, try doing
	addbuffers xyz: 400
where xyz: is the amiga partition containing your fake ms-dos partition file.
it's almost respectable after you do that.

the reason is that the filesystem can't keep enough data (filesystem linkage
blocks and such) in memory to efficiently do random seeks on a large file
(10 meg) unless you give it lots of buffers.

>						Thanks,  Keith.

  --Scotty

-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Scott Drysdale           Software Engineer
Commodore Amiga Inc.     UUCP {allegra|burdvax|rutgers|ihnp4}!cbmvax!drysdale
		         PHONE (hopefully sometime this year)
"Have you hugged your hog today?"
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

harding%b56vxg.dnet@kodak.com (JON HARDING) (11/20/90)

In article <1990Nov19.202344.13666@en.ecn.purdue.edu>, galocy@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Keith B Galocy) writes...
> 
>I just bought a new 330meg SCSI for my 2091 controller.  It's really
>fast on the Amiga (15-17ms or so) but the partition I set up for my
>bridge card is dragging in a major way.  The ten meg partition I had
>(have) on my quantum is slow but acceptable.  I set up a 72meg partition
>on the new drive and partitioned it with fdisk to 32meg, 32meg, 8meg.  
>I've only used half of the first 32 meg and already it is nearly too slow
>to use.  Word Perfect 5.1 is ridiculous.  Anyway, I want to know if I'm 
>doing something wrong or if my pc partition is too big or my (probable 
>cause) Amiga partition is too large.  By the way, I've also got the 2630
>if that makes a difference.  Any insight would be greatly appreciated
>because I've been unable to use it...
> 
>						Thanks,  Keith.
> 
>-no trite sig.
I've tried every combination of file services on the Amiga and have found, as
one would expect, that separate drives on each "side" of the machine is the
best configuration for optimal performance.  On that note I must mention that
I ran SPINRITE on the PC hard disk and found that the optimal interleave was
five: you can specify this when you do a low level format or let SPINRITE do
it.  The 5 value versus the nominal 3 value will render a 510% increase in 
disk performance, (yes. Five times better.).  Of the file server schemes,
the Amiga partition on the PC side is much faster than the ABOOT scheme of
a PC partition on an Amiga side harddisk.  I also experimented with partition
placement and emulation on the amiga side without measurable improvement.
Some time ago I posted a request for any information on ABOOT scheme 
optimization, but so far haven't seen any.  We may be the only ones doing 
this stuff.
N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J 
|	Jon Harding, N2KZJ	email: harding%b56vxg.dnet@Kodak.COM	      |
|		* I don't represent KODAK by word or deed. *		      |	
N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J N 2 K Z J 

smp@myamiga.UUCP (Steven M. Palm) (11/25/90)

In article <1990Nov19.202344.13666@en.ecn.purdue.edu> galocy@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Keith B Galocy) writes:
>
>I just bought a new 330meg SCSI for my 2091 controller.  It's really
>fast on the Amiga (15-17ms or so) but the partition I set up for my
>bridge card is dragging in a major way.  The ten meg partition I had

 Well, I have a Seagate ST-157N-1 running on my TrumpCard controller.  This is *not* the Professional model, just the base model.  I have a 10 Meg partition set up, and the Transformer seems much faster. :-(    If you ever find out a method to speed it up, please let me know.
 
 I ran PerfMon one time while doing some copying...  The meter bottomed out when it accessed the harddrive...  Perhaps I'm asking too much from my 2000?

>						Thanks,  Keith.
>
>-no trite sig.

-----
 {rutgers,ames,gatech}!ncar!asuvax!stjhmc!myamiga!smp
 smp@myamiga.UUCP
 <no cookie for you today!>

drysdale@cbmvax.commodore.com (Scott Drysdale) (11/27/90)

In article <smp.3176@myamiga.UUCP> smp@myamiga.UUCP (Steven M. Palm) writes:
>In article <1990Nov19.202344.13666@en.ecn.purdue.edu> galocy@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Keith B Galocy) writes:
>>
>>I just bought a new 330meg SCSI for my 2091 controller.  It's really
>>fast on the Amiga (15-17ms or so) but the partition I set up for my
>>bridge card is dragging in a major way.  The ten meg partition I had
>
> Well, I have a Seagate ST-157N-1 running on my TrumpCard controller.  This is
> *not* the Professional model, just the base model.  I have a 10 Meg partition
> set up, and the Transformer seems much faster. :-(    If you ever find out a
> method to speed it up, please let me know.
> 
> I ran PerfMon one time while doing some copying...  The meter bottomed out
> when it accessed the harddrive...  Perhaps I'm asking too much from my 2000?

if you've got a few hundred K of free memory, do an "addbuffers your_hd: 400"
and things will go much more quickly.  the problem is that the 1.3 FFS doesn't
deal well with random seeks in large files.  (ie, it goes slow).  don't expect
miracles from fake ibm hard drive partitions - they're going to be at least
half the speed of a real controller plugged into the PC bus.


>
>>						Thanks,  Keith.
>>
>>-no trite sig.
>
>-----
> {rutgers,ames,gatech}!ncar!asuvax!stjhmc!myamiga!smp
> smp@myamiga.UUCP
> <no cookie for you today!>

 --Scotty
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Scott Drysdale           Software Engineer
Commodore Amiga Inc.     UUCP {allegra|burdvax|rutgers|ihnp4}!cbmvax!drysdale
		         PHONE (hopefully sometime this year)
"Have you hugged your hog today?"
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=