Date:	Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:34:40 RST
From:	ark AT mpak DOT convey DOT ru (-= ArkanoiD =-)
Reply-To:	ark AT mpak DOT convey DOT ru
Message-Id:	<350@mpak.convey.ru>
To:	crough45 AT amc DOT de
Cc:	opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: ClosedDOS???
Organization:	International Brownian Movement
Lines:	57
MIME-Version:	1.0

nuqneH,

In message <97Sep12.134216gmt+0100 DOT 11651 AT internet01 DOT amc DOT de> Christopher Croughton writes:
> 
> > I think replacing gwbasic and edlin with qbasic and edit was a _major_
> > mistake..
> 
> EDLIN should have been kept as an alternative, the same way as I keep Unix
> ed for emergencies.  I don't use BASIC enough to really notice the 
> difference (didn't gwbasic depend on the old IBM PC ROM BASIC, or was 
> that only in early versions?).

Nope,it was IBM BASICA. The difference is that gwbasic was a line-oriented
interactive thing - not bad for simple calculations,something like
programmable calculator. qbasic has some stupid full-screen environment and
does not run simple scripts by one <enter> as gwbasic did.

No one will do something more complex with basic anyways.

> 
> > >  Less base memory, certainly
> > With QEMM - no.
> 
> I don't remember - I upgraded QEMM as well around the same time, so I 
> don't know how well it works with v5.
> 

It works excellent and memory overhead is less with v5.

> > SMARTDRV can not be better or worse,it is complete _shit_.
> > ..and delayed write with it is _dangerous_,it damages data!
> > Use any pd cache instead.
> 
> I've never found a PD cache with either good performance or reliable.

I remember there are some.. btw Hyperdisk (not exactly PD,it is shareware)
is lightning fast being compared with NWCACHE (and with smartdrive too..)

btw NWCACHE slows down terribly on fragmented disks.

..actually i don't care anymore - i have 4mb hardware chache on my IDE 
subsystem and i'm going to add 4 more for scsi..

>  I've
> never had any problems with delayed write and SMARTDRV, except that in old
> versions it used to disable interrupts for far too long and clobbe comms.
> Of course there's the problem if you switch off or reboot the machine, but
> that's the problem with delayed write cache in general not with SMARTDRV
> in particular.

I've seen people who had problems with it all the time. I'm not sure it
does even handle 3-finger salute correctly.

-- 
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   Must be a visit from the dead..     _| o |_ | | _|| |   / _||_|   |_ |_ |_
   CU in Hell ..........  Arkan#iD    |_  o  _||_| _||_| /   _|  | o |_||_||_|

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