On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 20:55:55 -0800 (PST), Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, 5 Dec 2004, Jim Leonard wrote:
> > > I have a few IBM model 5150s that I use to code entries for programming
> > > competitions and I'd like to try to speed up the hard disk in any way possible.
> > > (If you're curious what my last project was, check out
> > > http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=13722 to download and try it out -- it
> > > displays full-screen full-motion color video with sync'd sound -- yes, on a
> > > 4.77MHz 8088, no fooling). I've been looking for any way to speed up the hard
> > > disk subsystem (currently WD1002 with Seagate ST225) and I simply can't get
> > > more than 130KB/s out of the darn thing... so:
>
> Yes, there ARE some XT controllers that claim to do 1:1.
> I do NOT remember WHICH ones.
> Yes, there ARE some 8 bit IDE controllers,
> but not all IDE drives will work with them.
There are 8 bit SCSI controllers too. Once I sold two to one guy for
$10. Both used NCR 53c90, both had ROM and were bootable.
>
> On Wed, 8 Dec 2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> > Hey Jim.
> > Are you allowed to use more modern versions of DOS (i.e. post 3.3)? If
> > so, why not use a version that has SmartDrive built in? Better yet, use
> > Speedstor or some equally capable caching utility. Or will caching not
> > work for your purposes?
>
> SMARTDRV was bundled with Windoze 3.10, and will work with
> some of the <3.30 DOS versions.
> But you need to use 3.31 or newer to have any partitions
> larger than 32M.
XT's do not have more than 640K memory, thus SMARTDRV is not very useful.
vax, 9000
>
> The DOS 6.2x version of SMARTDRV has some very important
> changes that "solved the problems with DoubleSpace":
> it defaults to doing read caching, but NOT write caching,
> if write caching is turned on, it no longer rearranges the sequence of the
> writes,
> when a program ends, it will not present the DOS prompt until the write
> caching buffer is flushed.
>
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin_at_xenosoft.com
>
Received on Wed Dec 08 2004 - 23:41:21 GMT