a464@mindlink.UUCP (Bruce Dawson) (03/27/90)
> po87553@tut.fi writes: > > Msg-ID: <3306@alva.tut.fi> > Posted: 27 Mar 90 20:08:55 GMT > > Org. : Tampere University of Technology, Finland > Person: Ojala Pasi Juhani > > > I guess you mean FaccII. It's a kind of disk-buffer. But it's quite smart. > It doesn't remember all junk you run, only the most used and shortest > one. And if you take directory of your disk many times, it starts to > remember it too, so when you write ls or dir or something, there is no > movement in disk-drive at all, directory just comes up. There should be > an utility called Facction. You can control the size of the buffer > with it. FaccII is very useful utility, if you have A LOT of memory, > but like I have only one meg, it's too little for using FaccII for anything > reasonable. > > Juha Tuominen, Sysop of The Amiga Project One important detail about FaccII which has been left out is that it is a commercial product. If you don't know what it is, then that probably means you haven't bought a copy of it, so you should delete it from your disks. FaccII is published by ASDG, and should be available in stores. .Bruce Dawson.
sheffler@colt.CS.CMU.EDU (Thomas Sheffler) (03/27/90)
I bought my amiga used (a few months ago) and am still figuring out what some things are. Would anyone care to tell me what the program "FacII" is supposed to do. Thanks. Tom sheffler@ece.cmu.edu
po87553@tut.fi (Ojala Pasi Juhani) (03/28/90)
I guess you mean FaccII. It's a kind of disk-buffer. But it's quite smart. It doesn't remember all junk you run, only the most used and shortest one. And if you take directory of your disk many times, it starts to remember it too, so when you write ls or dir or something, there is no movement in disk-drive at all, directory just comes up. There should be an utility called Facction. You can control the size of the buffer with it. FaccII is very useful utility, if you have A LOT of memory, but like I have only one meg, it's too little for using FaccII for anything reasonable. Juha Tuominen, Sysop of The Amiga Project
FelineGrace@cup.portal.com (Dana B Bourgeois) (03/28/90)
FaccII is a program that buffers floppy disk accesses. That means that as your program reads from the disk, a copy of what is read is kept in memory so that if you need to refer to it again, it is there. So it can be read much faster than going to the disk again. In practice set FaccII to the largest size you can live with. On my 1.5 meg system, I have FaccII set to 256K. Up to 256K of stuff is kept by FaccII buffers in fast RAM making it appear programs run much faster. BAtch files are big winners with a floppy system and FaccII because normally every time you need to 'echo' a line (for example) the echo program has to be read into memory from the disk and executed. If you read it from the disk once then the next time you need it there is a good chance it will still be in the buffer memory so you read it from RAM instead. The best thing is to have everything always in RAM of course. That is impractical in almost every case. So a RAM disk can help, or making a program Resident. But you still need LOTS of RAM for a RAM Disk to be a general purpose solution and the Resident command means you have to decide what to make REsident. Not everything can be Resident and sometimes you don't want it always in memory. Just maybe for three uses in a row. The Buffer idea is that by keeping a copy of what you have called from disk recently, there is a good chance of your needing it again. If not, eventually it will be replaced by something else you read from disk recently. And the best part is that it all happens without any decisions on your part - you don't even know it happens unless you notice things are a bit faster and the disk drive doesn't get used as often. Course if you have a hard disk then you might not want to use FaccII since it uses precious RAM. Or you might want to make the buffer sizes pretty small. Reading from a hard disk is nearly as fast as reading from the RAM buffer so it is your call. I run a three floppy system and the software that has made the biggest difference in ease-of-use over a plain vanilla 1.3 system: Conman, WShell, FaccII, DMouse, MyMenu, PowerPacker. Dana Bourgeois @ Cup.Portal.Com
Darren Popham <POPHAMD@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> (03/29/90)
Amazing Computing had a good review of FACC II. I think it was in
Vol 3 Num 3. The review describes a little about how it is
implemented and also mentions a little about comparing FACC II to
using a ram disk.
-Darren Pophamperley@hobbes (Donald P Perley) (03/29/90)
In article <1379@mindlink.UUCP>, a464@mindlink (Bruce Dawson) writes: >> po87553@tut.fi writes: One addition to what has been said: the function of FaccII is similar to "addbuffers", except that it shares the buffer pool between all your floppies. If you use FaccII (and you probably should), than DON'T use "addbuffers" for any floppy drives in your startup-sequence, as memory committed to addbuffers would be wasted. > One important detail about FaccII which has been left out is that it is a >commercial product. If you don't know what it is, then that probably means you >haven't bought a copy of it, so you should delete it from your disks. FaccII >is published by ASDG, and should be available in stores. There has been a lot of pirating of Facc, but they guy DID say he bought the computer used; I would assume it came with the machine. He could check that he has the original disk, or ask they guy he bought the computer from if he is a crook. -don perley perley@trub.crd.ge.com
po87553@tut.fi (Ojala Pasi Juhani) (03/30/90)
>delete it from your disks
No, I dont't have to delete it. I've neather bought it. I don't have it!
8) I saw once a friend of mine showed it to me - nowdays he uses some
PD-program, whch makes the same, I don't remember the name. As I mentioned,
I have only 1 meg memory and as you probably can understand, there is no
change to create big buffers only because of some programs and the other
hand - I don't need programs like FaccII - I've a HD....
(don't take this article too seriously..)