To: ark AT mpak DOT convey DOT ru
Cc: crough45 AT amc DOT de, opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: ClosedDOS???
Message-ID: <19970914.225639.6423.0.editor@juno.com>
References: <350 AT mpak DOT convey DOT ru>
From: editor AT juno DOT com (Bruce Morgen)
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 22:57:53 EDT
Precedence: bulk


On Sun, 14 Sep 1997 23:34:40 RST ark AT mpak DOT convey DOT ru (-= ArkanoiD =-)
writes:
>nuqneH,
>
>In message <97Sep12.134216gmt+0100 DOT 11651 AT internet01 DOT amc DOT de> 
>Christopher Croughton writes:
>> 
>
>> > 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..)
>
I took Hyperdisk for a test drive 
and found it *slower* than 
SmartDrive -- I wound up using an 
old version of it on my XT systems, 
but in that environment it is no 
better than NWCACHE.

>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..
>
This begins to make some sense now 
that memory -- particularly 1 MB 
SIMMs -- has become cheaper.

>>  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.
>
MS has a version that flushes 
to disk whenever a DOS prompt 
appears or control-ALT-DEL is 
pressed -- MS COMMAND.COM and 
recent versions of 4DOS support 
this feature.  I don't recall 
the name of the distribution 
ZIPfile offhand, but the version 
is 5.0 and it is solid in my 
experience on about eight 
different systems.

Ah, here's the ZIPfile -- it's 
PD0805.ZIP, dated June 9, 1993.