wyle@inf.ethz.ch (Mitchell Wyle) (04/10/91)
device=c:\dos\smartdrv.sys 2048 512 device=c:\dos\ramdrive.sys 2048 /e These options and numbers finally worked in smartdrv.sys and ramdrive.sys I could create 2 Megabytes of either cache or ramdisk; or I could do 1 Mbyte of both, and windows 3.0 ran in all cases. emtex Latex is fastest with both cache and ramdisk. smartdrv.sys cache's the fonts after the first time they're read in, and it is obviously faster to write a large dvi file to a ramdisk than to the hard disk. Previewing and printing is faster with the cache. I'll probably go with the cache only, since my wife can also work faster with it in Windows. The speedups are not as great as I had hoped; my wife's $2K machine does not latex faster than a $10K sparc-station-1, and it doesn't come close to the $100K sparcserver-4/490 with IPI disks. It still beats the pants off of the $90K Sun-3/280 server, though :-). Here is a summary of approximate speeds of the machines on which I latex'd my latest paper: Machine Time (sec) Cost (SFr) ------------ ---------- ---------- macintosh 1216 5,500 sun-3/80 146 10,000 sun-3/280 101 90,000 sun-4/490 19 120,000 pc 386/33 62 2,500 ramdsk/cache 58 2,500 I have not tried it on the sparc-station-2 or the mac-IIfx. I suspect ozTex would die on the mac-IIfx. Our experience is that 20% of our licensed software runs on the IIfx. The hardware is also very flakey (33% failure rate per month), and it crashes and dies often while I work on it. The uptime of our sparcs is better than that of our sun-3s. The hardware and software appear to be more stable (typically 2-3 month contiuous uptimes). Of course, my wife's pc is more stable; it has not yet crashed while either of us was doing useful work. I can make it crash more easily than a Sun, if I try, though. The moral of this story? If you primarily use latex and have lots of money, buy a ss-2 with fast disks. If you are relatively poor, buy a 33 MHz i386 clone with lots of memory and use smartdrv.sys. Stay away from that evil Apple company because they cost lots of money and deliver low-quality junk.