Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 09:22:27 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Bill Currie <bill_currie AT MAIL DOT TAIT DOT CO DOT NZ>
Cc: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: Opinion
In-Reply-To: <s1fdcf77.098@MAIL.TAIT.CO.NZ>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960730091720.28847K-100000@is>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Tue, 30 Jul 1996, Bill Currie wrote:

> > Going to the BIOS level also means CWSDPMI will have to implement a disk
> > cache (because third-party caches operate at the DOS/IOCTL level); 
> > without a cache I think you will see a slow-down rather than a speed-up. 
> 
> I thought smartdrv grabbed the int 13 vector?

It does, but only to know when the disk is used.  The cache itself works 
at the DOS block device (IOCTL) level.  First versions of SmartDrv (when 
it was SMARTDRV.SYS, remember?) indeed did work on the BIOS level, but 
that method was long ago abandoned, because you cannot be smart enough on 
the BIOS level (e.g., you don't know what clusters belong to which files).