From: Dave Daniels Subject: Lost Art? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 04 Aug 2002 10:13:40 +0100 Message-ID: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> User-Agent: Pluto/2.02e (RISC-OS/4.29) Organization: None Lines: 17 NNTP-Posting-Host: userkp27.uk.uudial.com X-Trace: 1028460851 news.dial.pipex.com 231 62.188.105.74 X-Complaints-To: abuse@uk.uu.net Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!195.86.7.162!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!news.tiscali.nl!bnewspeer01.bru.ops.eu.uu.net!bnewsifeed01.bru.ops.eu.uu.net!lnewspost00.lnd.ops.eu.uu.net!emea.uu.net!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113301 I recall that many years ago people used to worry about how data was arranged on disks, for example, how sectors were inverleaved on a track and how the sectors were skewed from track to track. The purpose of this was to optimise performance when reading and writing to disk. Today I was copying a file to floppy disk and it took ages. I think the 'clunk' of the drive every couple of seconds was more a device to stop me falling asleep. Yet the machine will read and write other floppy disks with the drive trying to do a machine gun impression. It seems to be the floppy disk and not the drive that affects the speed, and the only thing I can think of is how the disk has been formatted, which brings me back to my first point. Does anybody care about this today, or is it a lost art? Dave Daniels ###### From: Ron Wellsted Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: Sun, 04 Aug 2002 21:10:53 +0100 Organization: The Wellsted Family Lines: 30 Message-ID: <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> Reply-To: ron@wellsted.org.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: pc-80-195-145-38-wv.blueyonder.co.uk (80.195.145.38) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: fu-berlin.de 1028493073 38810653 80.195.145.38 (16 [100566]) X-Orig-Path: tux.wellsted.org.uk!nobody User-Agent: KNode/0.7.1 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!pc-80-195-145-38-wv.blueyonder.co.UK!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113330 Dave Daniels wrote: > I recall that many years ago people used to worry about how data > was arranged on disks, for example, how sectors were inverleaved > on a track and how the sectors were skewed from track to track. > The purpose of this was to optimise performance when reading and > writing to disk. Today I was copying a file to floppy disk and it > took ages. I think the 'clunk' of the drive every couple of > seconds was more a device to stop me falling asleep. Yet the > machine will read and write other floppy disks with the drive > trying to do a machine gun impression. It seems to be the floppy > disk and not the drive that affects the speed, and the only > thing I can think of is how the disk has been formatted, which > brings me back to my first point. Does anybody care about this > today, or is it a lost art? > > Dave Daniels Indeed I think this has become a lost art, try asking any "Computer Savvy" youngster about interleaving or sector skew and enjoy the blank looks. Since most HDs are preformatted (and many cannot be reformatted) this only really applies to floppies nowadays. Another lost skill: Whistling at modems to check they're working... -- Ron Wellsted ron@wellsted.org.uk http://www.wellsted.org.uk ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!not-for-mail From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: 05 Aug 2002 00:36:04 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 80 Message-ID: <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: chonsp.franklin.ch X-Trace: chonsp.franklin.ch 1028500564 1260 10.0.3.2 (4 Aug 2002 22:36:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@chonsp.franklin.ch NNTP-Posting-Date: 4 Aug 2002 22:36:04 GMT X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.4 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113337 Ron Wellsted writes: > Dave Daniels wrote: > > > was arranged on disks, for example, how sectors were inverleaved > > on a track and how the sectors were skewed from track to track. To reduce rotational delay time, and with that access time, in sequential reads. > > took ages. I think the 'clunk' of the drive every couple of > > seconds With 5 disk rotations per second (assuming 1440k) that makes about 10-15 revolutions to read all data of one track. 18 would be maximally pessimum. That is really screwed. > > machine will read and write other floppy disks with the drive > > trying to do a machine gun impression. Anything above about 3 steps per second is massive head stepping, i.e. random accesses. Points to data being scattered over the tracks. > > It seems to be the floppy > > disk and not the drive that affects the speed, Yes. Drives only have an influence on track-to-track stepping time, and even there the time the BIOS waits determines speed. > > and the only > > thing I can think of is how the disk has been formatted, And also how the data has been spread over the disk. This can also be a lousy file system (either bad placing, or got fragmented over time and is now trying to fit data where possible). You do not specify which file system that floppy has. If I assume that means you only know of one (MS-DOS FAT), than be aware that FAT is known for its inefficiency when new and dropping even further when many files have been written and deleted and rewritten. > > brings me back to my first point. Does anybody care about this > > today, or is it a lost art? It is impossible to teach such arcane arts to millions. Not enough time, and the "why should I do that, the damn machine should, thats what I bought it for" attitude. For millions to use something, the "best practise" has to be automated. > Indeed I think this has become a lost art, try asking any "Computer Savvy" > youngster about interleaving or sector skew and enjoy the blank looks. That youngster should not have to know about such. The hardware (or at the latest the software) should know how to do it automatically. > Since most HDs are preformatted (and many cannot be reformatted) this only > really applies to floppies nowadays. Also HDs come with track-at-a-time read/write and multi-track caches. So interleaving is totally irrelevant. Tracks get read in one rotation and then data is used out of cache. Floppies really should do this also (its faster than any interleaving), but the controllers are crap. And the driver writers don't seem to even try to compensate the missing hardware. Once again the victory of crapitalism. -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ Hacker, Unix Guru, El Eng HTL/BSc, Programmer, Archer, Roleplayer - Make your code truely free: put it into the public domain ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: hoh@invalid.invalid (Goran Larsson) Subject: Re: Lost Art? Message-ID: Organization: [1] + 5934 done /bin/rm -rf ~/ & X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test73 (May 24, 2000) References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> Lines: 21 NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.151.132.192 X-Complaints-To: news-abuse@swip.net X-Trace: nntpserver.swip.net 1028534463 212.151.132.192 (Mon, 05 Aug 2002 10:01:03 MET DST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2002 10:01:03 MET DST X-Sender: q-11932@d212-151-132-192.swipnet.se Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 07:58:18 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!192.71.180.34!newsfeed1.swip.net!swipnet!nntpserver.swip.net!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113425 In article <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch>, Neil Franklin wrote: > > > It seems to be the floppy > > > disk and not the drive that affects the speed, > > Yes. Drives only have an influence on track-to-track stepping time, > and even there the time the BIOS waits determines speed. The floppy drivers I wrote (CP/M CBIOS) for my own machine in the 80'-ies used variable track-to-track stepping time depending on how far away the destination track was. The shortest stepping time was way over manufacturers specifications and to be able to use it I accelerated a couple of steps at shorter and shorter times until the high head speed was reached. The drive did not have the usual tock-tock-tock-tock-tock sound you normally associate with a floppy seek, instead it was a tock-to-wooooooooo-to-tock type of sound. Did anyone else pay this much attention to the floppy? -- Göran Larsson http://www.mitt-eget.com ###### From: "Charlie Gibbs" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: 05 Aug 02 10:47:23 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 32 Message-ID: <1486.982T1199T6474836@kltpzyxm.invalid> References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-345.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.he.net!cyclone-sf.pbi.net!199.106.71.17!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews2 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113528 In article <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> neil@franklin.ch.remove (Neil Franklin) writes: >Also HDs come with track-at-a-time read/write and multi-track >caches. So interleaving is totally irrelevant. Tracks get read in one >rotation and then data is used out of cache. > >Floppies really should do this also (its faster than any interleaving), >but the controllers are crap. And the driver writers don't seem to even >try to compensate the missing hardware. Once again the victory of >crapitalism. Sad but true. What's even sadder is that the technology emerged but never made it into the mainstream. The Amiga's floppy disk controller and driver not only does this, but goes to the additional step of eliminating the intersector gaps on the disk itself; that way it puts 11 sectors on a track, getting 880K on a "720K" floppy using a standard IBM-style drive (i.e. no Apple tricks like varying the bit density from track to track). Many people don't care about floppies anymore, though, so the point is largely moot. However, when we had a window replaced in our car after a recent break-in, the mobile glass man took "before" shots with a digital camera that wrote to a standard 3 1/2-inch floppy disk. Not a lot of capacity, but easy to transfer to any computer - the disk just went along with our file. -- cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) I'm really at moc.subyks if you read it the right way. Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. ###### From: "Charlie Gibbs" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: 05 Aug 02 16:27:12 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 24 Message-ID: <732.982T615T9874308@kltpzyxm.invalid> References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <3d4ef017$1_2@news.iglou.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-251.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews2 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113510 In article <3d4ef017$1_2@news.iglou.com> dquebbeman@ixnayamspayacm.org (Douglas H. Quebbeman) writes: >Ah yes, today's youngsters, moreso than any others >in the past, are part of the "appliance generation"... > >To the members of that group, too many switches, buttons, >and lights, is a Bad Thing. Not at all. The number of switches, buttons, and lights is an important factor in the pissing content over who has the latest and greatest appliance. >They only want to see two buttons: ON and FASTER. s/see/use/ The other buttons have to be there, but only for show. -- cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) I'm really at moc.subyks if you read it the right way. Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: Tue, 06 Aug 02 11:33:54 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 26 Message-ID: References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <3d4ef017$1_2@news.iglou.com> <732.982T615T9874308@kltpzyxm.invalid> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVYvI8Priy+dAaaf9ziobdv8TvNBQu0XfZtIMSNg51BgnyUq/DO9/1co X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Aug 2002 12:40:48 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!208-59-182-64 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113481 In article <732.982T615T9874308@kltpzyxm.invalid>, "Charlie Gibbs" wrote: >In article <3d4ef017$1_2@news.iglou.com> dquebbeman@ixnayamspayacm.org >(Douglas H. Quebbeman) writes: > >>Ah yes, today's youngsters, moreso than any others >>in the past, are part of the "appliance generation"... >> >>To the members of that group, too many switches, buttons, >>and lights, is a Bad Thing. > >Not at all. The number of switches, buttons, and lights is >an important factor in the pissing content over who has the >latest and greatest appliance. > >>They only want to see two buttons: ON and FASTER. > >s/see/use/ > >The other buttons have to be there, but only for show. Including the one labelled S-E-X? /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### Reply-To: "Douglas H. Quebbeman" From: "Douglas H. Quebbeman" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 17:37:26 -0400 Lines: 19 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4910.0300 NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 Message-ID: <3d4ef017$1_2@news.iglou.com> X-Trace: news.iglou.com 1028583447 204.250.0.238 (5 Aug 2002 17:37:27 -0400) X-Authenticated-User: dougq X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.250.0.238 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-xfer2.newshosting.com!uunet!dca.uu.net!ash.uu.net!news.iglou.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113448 "Neil Franklin" wrote in message=20 > > Indeed I think this has become a lost art, try asking any "Computer = Savvy" > > youngster about interleaving or sector skew and enjoy the blank = looks. >=20 > That youngster should not have to know about such. The hardware (or > at the latest the software) should know how to do it automatically. Ah yes, today's youngsters, moreso than any others in the past, are part of the "appliance generation"... To the members of that group, too many switches, buttons, and lights, is a Bad Thing. They only want to see two buttons: ON and FASTER. ;) ###### Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 08:47:10 +0200 From: Steve O'Hara-Smith Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Message-ID: <20020806084710.5bfb09b9.steveo@eircom.net> References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> X-Newsreader: Sylpheed version 0.8.1 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.6) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 24 Organization: Wanadoo NNTP-Posting-Date: 06 Aug 2002 16:59:46 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: rot2-p2429.dial.wanadoo.nl X-Trace: DXC=oQK?f42JNXVji<4 wrote: NF> Also HDs come with track-at-a-time read/write and multi-track NF> caches. So interleaving is totally irrelevant. Tracks get read in one NF> rotation and then data is used out of cache. NF> NF> Floppies really should do this also (its faster than any NF> interleaving), The Torch had this for a while before we released it - eventually the BBC side memory it was using got eaten away by an accumlation of cruft and undocumented CP/M feature emulation :(. While it lasted it made the Torch a really nice machine (for a twin floppy CP/M(ish) box), compiling BCPL went faster on the floppy based Torch than on the hard disc based Micromation :) Pity it was never seen like that outside of Abberly House and the press launch, the Torch we finally released was a lot slower than the prototype in pieces on my bench. -- C:>WIN | Directable Mirrors The computer obeys and wins. |A Better Way To Focus The Sun You lose and Bill collects. | licenses available - see: | http://www.sohara.org/ ###### Message-ID: <3D4FC675.4020203@telegraphics.com.au> From: Toby Thain User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.0rc3) Gecko/20020523 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.134.29.156 Lines: 25 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 127.0.0.1 Organization: iPrimus Customer - reports relating to abuse should be sent to abuse@iprimus.com.au Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 22:52:05 +1000 NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.134.67.67 X-Complaints-To: news@primus.ca X-Trace: news.pvt 1028638331 203.134.67.67 (Tue, 06 Aug 2002 08:52:11 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 08:52:11 EDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed.cgocable.net!feed.tor.primus.ca!feed.nntp.primus!news.pvt!53ab2750!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113508 Dave Daniels wrote: > I recall that many years ago people used to worry about how data > was arranged on disks, for example, how sectors were inverleaved > on a track and how the sectors were skewed from track to track. > The purpose of this was to optimise performance when reading and > writing to disk. Today I was copying a file to floppy disk and it > took ages. I think the 'clunk' of the drive every couple of > seconds was more a device to stop me falling asleep. Yet the > machine will read and write other floppy disks with the drive > trying to do a machine gun impression. It seems to be the floppy > disk and not the drive that affects the speed, and the only > thing I can think of is how the disk has been formatted, which > brings me back to my first point. Does anybody care about this > today, or is it a lost art? Just crummy hardware. T > > Dave Daniels > > ###### From: "Michael J. Albanese" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 09:48:02 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: <3D4FD392.8030003@revoke-my-charter.net> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020804 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <1486.982T1199T6474836@kltpzyxm.invalid> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 25 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.news2me.com!sn-xit-05!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113531 Charlie Gibbs wrote: > Many people don't care about floppies anymore, though, so the point > is largely moot. However, when we had a window replaced in our car > after a recent break-in, the mobile glass man took "before" shots > with a digital camera that wrote to a standard 3 1/2-inch floppy > disk. Not a lot of capacity, but easy to transfer to any computer - > the disk just went along with our file. A "photobug" relative of mine just acquired a digital camera and, of course, has been anxiously looking for opportunities to try it out. He recently attended a local event, thinking all evening he was collecting excellent photos of notable persons, which included former Pres. Carter and his wife. You can imagine his dismay later, when he discovered he had spent the whole evening collecting bad sectors :-) You can also imagine my dismay when he called me for help :-( Mike -- (remove 'revoke-my-' from address for email) ###### From: J. Clarke Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 12:41:55 -0400 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 58 Message-ID: References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <3D4FC675.4020203@telegraphics.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-299.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: MicroPlanet Gravity v2.50 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!eusc.inter.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!pln-e!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews3 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113495 In article <3D4FC675.4020203@telegraphics.com.au>, toby@telegraphics.com.au says... > Dave Daniels wrote: > > I recall that many years ago people used to worry about how data > > was arranged on disks, for example, how sectors were inverleaved > > on a track and how the sectors were skewed from track to track. > > The purpose of this was to optimise performance when reading and > > writing to disk. Today I was copying a file to floppy disk and it > > took ages. I think the 'clunk' of the drive every couple of > > seconds was more a device to stop me falling asleep. Yet the > > machine will read and write other floppy disks with the drive > > trying to do a machine gun impression. It seems to be the floppy > > disk and not the drive that affects the speed, and the only > > thing I can think of is how the disk has been formatted, which > > brings me back to my first point. Does anybody care about this > > today, or is it a lost art? > > Just crummy hardware. Not so much crummy hardware as increased integration. Any hard disk you buy today has the controller integrated with the drive, and uses zone bit recording, hot sparing, onboard caching, scheduling, and other techniques to maximize performance and data integrity. While someone who is fully conversant with the properties of the drive and the application for which it is going to be used might be able to improve on the default optimizations for that particular application, doing so would not be the simple task it once was. If the application is such that the improvement in performance that might be obtained by hand tuning the drive is mission-critical and if one is either willing to pay them to do it or offer sufficient sales volume to induce them to do it as an incentive to buy from them, the drive manufacturers can and will provide customized firmware. And of course if you want to be hard-core you can disassemble the firmware on the drive and tweak it--many drives today have the firmware in flash memory and are field-upgradable. As far as diskettes go, I don't think there's any real incentive at this point to play with the formats. Personally I went to LS-120 a while back and that pretty well resolved any diskette performance issues-- second-generation LS-120 drives read and write standard diskettes at much higher rate of speed than the standard drives. > T > > > > > Dave Daniels > > > > > > > -- -- --John Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net (used to be jclarke at eye bee em dot net) ###### Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 19:46:30 +0200 From: Steve O'Hara-Smith Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Message-ID: <20020806194630.5e551d6f.steveo@eircom.net> References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <3D4FC675.4020203@telegraphics.com.au> X-Newsreader: Sylpheed version 0.8.1 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.6) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 17 Organization: Wanadoo NNTP-Posting-Date: 06 Aug 2002 20:08:20 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: i1750.vwr.wanadoo.nl X-Trace: DXC=@]]U2U1_1<31LRBCVF:;_?1`\LnN2UYY1<=[J2X`k>QK24JTH1 X-Complaints-To: abuse@wanadoo.nl Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!psinet-eu-nl!news-x2.support.nl!amsnews01.chello.com!newshub1.nl.home.com!news.nl.home.com!news2.euro.net!postnews1.euro.net!news.wanadoo.nl!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:114069 On Tue, 6 Aug 2002 12:41:55 -0400 J. Clarke wrote: JC> If the application is such JC> that the improvement in performance that might be obtained by hand JC> tuning the drive is mission-critical and if one is either willing to JC> pay them to do it or offer sufficient sales volume to induce them to JC> do it It'd probably be cheaper to use RAM or just delay the project until a fast enough hard disc was available. -- C:>WIN | Directable Mirrors The computer obeys and wins. |A Better Way To Focus The Sun You lose and Bill collects. | licenses available - see: | http://www.sohara.org/ ###### From: "Frank Haber" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 17:49:25 -0400 Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> X-Trace: UmFuZG9tSVb1oZWi6kLOZPYfGkPzCeXnbeMw+n/JHLTYOqpu1/mON5hiO6uHfLpr X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Aug 2002 21:49:25 GMT X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 X-Priority: 3 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-han1.dfn.de!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113860 Goran, >Did anyone else pay this much attention to the floppy? No, that sounds like true devotion. 5-1/4" or 8" drives? I ran a couple of CP/M machines with 4 8" floppies and 3mS step rates. They went CLACK!-screeeee! but had incredibly stupid SECTRANs - no cylinders; up one side, back down the other at 1024 bytes/sector, 1.2 MB. They still were tons faster than an IBM PC, at the same clock rate, which was no trick at all. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: hoh@invalid.invalid (Goran Larsson) Subject: Re: Lost Art? Message-ID: Organization: [1] + 5934 done /bin/rm -rf ~/ & X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test73 (May 24, 2000) References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> Lines: 15 NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.151.133.240 X-Complaints-To: news-abuse@swip.net X-Trace: nntpserver.swip.net 1028696462 212.151.133.240 (Wed, 07 Aug 2002 07:01:02 MET DST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 07:01:02 MET DST X-Sender: q-11932@d212-151-133-240.swipnet.se Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 04:52:24 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!news-hub.siol.net!newsfeed.rt.ru!rt.ru!news-stob.telia.net!news-stoa.telia.net!telia.net!newsfeed1.swip.net!swipnet!nntpserver.swip.net!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:114183 In article , Frank Haber wrote: > No, that sounds like true devotion. 5-1/4" or 8" drives? Originally it was two single side full height 8" drives (with 220 V AC motors and custom hardware for motor on/off) but later it was one dual side half height 8" drive and one 1.2MB 5-1/4" drive. My own format managed to squeeze in 1.6MB on the 8" drive. With my accelerated step rates over maufacturers specifications, my fast optimal interleaving, and cache buffers in bank switched RAM memory this system was fast. -- Göran Larsson http://www.mitt-eget.com ###### From: "Russell P. Holsclaw" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <3D4FC675.4020203@telegraphics.com.au> Subject: Re: Lost Art? Lines: 33 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Message-ID: <7Na49.473$uY.24810@news.uswest.net> Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 09:10:58 -0600 NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.183.117.237 X-Trace: news.uswest.net 1028733123 216.183.117.237 (Wed, 07 Aug 2002 10:12:03 CDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 10:12:03 CDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed.news.qwest.net!news.uswest.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113912 "J. Clarke" wrote in message news:aiou9k4i9g@enews3.newsguy.com... > Not so much crummy hardware as increased integration. Any hard disk you > buy today has the controller integrated with the drive, and uses zone > bit recording, hot sparing, onboard caching, scheduling, and other > techniques to maximize performance and data integrity. While someone > who is fully conversant with the properties of the drive and the > application for which it is going to be used might be able to improve on > the default optimizations for that particular application, doing so > would not be the simple task it once was. > <...snip other comments in that vein> ISTR a few years ago, there were hard disks sold that were optimized for "multi-media" applications, but were otherwise physically identical with other disks. I never knew what they did differently. I assume it was something with interleave formatting, scheduling and/or caching. Don't recall seeing any drives like that lately. I imagine that even "smarter" firmware might be able to adapt to different applications, and dynamically change caching and other parameters, based on the apparent access behavior of the using system. Does anyone here know what, if anything, is done to optimize the drive in one of those digital video-to-disk recorders, like TiVo, that can read and write two video streams concurrently? -- Russ Holsclaw ###### From: "Mike Swaim" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 11:14:20 -0500 Organization: Houston Area League of PC Users Lines: 23 Sender: swaim@hal-pc.org Message-ID: References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <3D4FC675.4020203@telegraphics.com.au> <7Na49.473$uY.24810@news.uswest.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.240.116.4 X-Trace: news.hal-pc.org 1028736844 79397 65.240.116.4 (7 Aug 2002 16:14:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@hal-pc.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 16:14:04 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!nntp1.hal-pc.org!news.hal-pc.org!news.hal-pc.org!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113809 "Russell P. Holsclaw" wrote in message news:7Na49.473$uY.24810@news.uswest.net... > ISTR a few years ago, there were hard disks sold that were optimized > for "multi-media" applications, but were otherwise physically > identical with other disks. I never knew what they did differently. I > assume it was something with interleave formatting, scheduling and/or > caching. Don't recall seeing any drives like that lately. From memory: Regular drives would take a moment to recalibrate themselves every now and then. This was potentially a bad thing with multimedia applications that were streaming data to the disk. Multimedia drives either had additional hardware to handle callibration without stopping, or would delay doing recallibration until after long writes were over. -- Mike Swaim Michael.Swaim@ubswenergy.com Disclaimer: Yeah, like I speak for UBS Warburg Energy. Quote: "Allison, where's daddy?" "Phphphphhphhphphphhphhh." ###### From: J. Clarke Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2002 15:41:57 -0400 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 59 Message-ID: References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <3D4FC675.4020203@telegraphics.com.au> <7Na49.473$uY.24810@news.uswest.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-295.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: MicroPlanet Gravity v2.50 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!wn1feed!worldnet.att.net!216.148.52.17!pln-w!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews1 Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:113965 In article <7Na49.473$uY.24810@news.uswest.net>, rholsclaw@nospam.xxx.fatline.com says... > "J. Clarke" wrote in message > news:aiou9k4i9g@enews3.newsguy.com... > > Not so much crummy hardware as increased integration. Any hard disk > you > > buy today has the controller integrated with the drive, and uses > zone > > bit recording, hot sparing, onboard caching, scheduling, and other > > techniques to maximize performance and data integrity. While > someone > > who is fully conversant with the properties of the drive and the > > application for which it is going to be used might be able to > improve on > > the default optimizations for that particular application, doing so > > would not be the simple task it once was. > > <...snip other comments in that vein> > > ISTR a few years ago, there were hard disks sold that were optimized > for "multi-media" applications, but were otherwise physically > identical with other disks. I never knew what they did differently. I > assume it was something with interleave formatting, scheduling and/or > caching. Don't recall seeing any drives like that lately. I've read that the main thing they did differently was to wait until a certain period of inactivity had occurred before doing self- recalibration of the servo mechanism. A problem with non-AV drives was that if a write came during a recal the drive had to wait for the recal to finish before doing the write, which would lose data. The "AV" drives were designed to minimize the likelihood of this. There may also have been some selection of components to minimize the need for recals. > I imagine that even "smarter" firmware might be able to adapt to > different applications, and dynamically change caching and other > parameters, based on the apparent access behavior of the using system. > > Does anyone here know what, if anything, is done to optimize the drive > in one of those digital video-to-disk recorders, like TiVo, that can > read and write two video streams concurrently? Nothing. They're your basic dirt cheap bottom of the market drives. Many folks have upgraded their Tivos with off-the-shelf drives that work fine. FWIW, complete instructions may be found at . There's also a Tivo hacking FAQ at however some of it appears to be out of date. > -- > Russ Holsclaw > > > -- -- --John Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net (used to be jclarke at eye bee em dot net) ###### From: ghira@mistral.co.uk (Adam Atkinson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: 14 Aug 2002 06:08:25 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 14 Message-ID: References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <1486.982T1199T6474836@kltpzyxm.invalid> NNTP-Posting-Host: 193.130.25.71 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1029330505 1467 127.0.0.1 (14 Aug 2002 13:08:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 14 Aug 2002 13:08:25 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:114458 "Charlie Gibbs" wrote in message news:<1486.982T1199T6474836@kltpzyxm.invalid>... > The Amiga's floppy > disk controller and driver not only does this, but goes to the > additional step of eliminating the intersector gaps on the disk > itself; that way it puts 11 sectors on a track, getting 880K on > a "720K" floppy using a standard IBM-style drive Using diskspare.device from Aminet you could get 984k. And twice that on a high density drive, if you had one. I'm not sure how diskspare.device did it, but it seemed very solid. And if you used MFS as well, you could use normal floppies and diskspare floppies as you preferred, and call them all df0: ###### From: Pete Fenelon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 14:51:13 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: Sender: Pete Fenelon References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> <8o1kia.63n.ln@tux.wellsted.org.uk> <6u65yq9rqj.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> <1486.982T1199T6474836@kltpzyxm.invalid> User-Agent: tin/1.5.12-20020427 ("Sugar") (UNIX) (FreeBSD/4.6-STABLE (i386)) X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 24 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-out.visi.com!hermes.visi.com!sn-xit-05!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:114455 Adam Atkinson wrote: > "Charlie Gibbs" wrote in message news:<1486.982T1199T6474836@kltpzyxm.invalid>... >> The Amiga's floppy >> disk controller and driver not only does this, but goes to the >> additional step of eliminating the intersector gaps on the disk >> itself; that way it puts 11 sectors on a track, getting 880K on >> a "720K" floppy using a standard IBM-style drive > > Using diskspare.device from Aminet you could get 984k. And > twice that on a high density drive, if you had one. I'm > not sure how diskspare.device did it, but it seemed very solid. > Quite impressive! The Atari ST used to use standard 720k format - by the time I'd gone to 11 sectors/track and 83 tracks I was seeing something like 913K but that was right at the tolerance of the "best" floppy drives (almost all would do 81 tracks, most would do 82 and some good ones would do 83). Couldn't get 12 sectors/track on there though. -- that would've got out to 996k if it'd worked! pete -- pete@fenelon.com "there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas" HMHB ###### X-Trace-PostClient-IP: 24.67.16.79 From: Brian Inglis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Lost Art? Organization: Systematic Software Reply-To: Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca Message-ID: <8pgmnugsqjj848almtr1iconmmpq8gb4nn@4ax.com> References: <4b60a744d7dave_daniels@argonet.co.uk> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.9/32.560 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 35 Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2002 12:33:11 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.71.223.147 X-Complaints-To: abuse@shaw.ca X-Trace: news2.calgary.shaw.ca 1031488391 24.71.223.147 (Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:33:11 MDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2002 06:33:11 MDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.news2me.com!ps01-sjc1!news.webusenet.com!pd2nf1so.cg.shawcable.net!residential.shaw.ca!news2.calgary.shaw.ca.POSTED!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:116118 On Sun, 04 Aug 2002 10:13:40 +0100, Dave Daniels wrote: >I recall that many years ago people used to worry about how data >was arranged on disks, for example, how sectors were inverleaved >on a track and how the sectors were skewed from track to track. >The purpose of this was to optimise performance when reading and >writing to disk. Today I was copying a file to floppy disk and it >took ages. I think the 'clunk' of the drive every couple of >seconds was more a device to stop me falling asleep. Yet the Sounds like the diskette is going bad and the drive is recalibrating between tracks. >machine will read and write other floppy disks with the drive >trying to do a machine gun impression. It seems to be the floppy >disk and not the drive that affects the speed, and the only >thing I can think of is how the disk has been formatted, which >brings me back to my first point. Does anybody care about this >today, or is it a lost art? If the diskette was formatted in the DOS 2 days, it could have a delay which exceeds the drive timeout. I remember patching FORMAT and 5-1/4" diskette boot blocks with DEBUG to set some delay to zero in the parameter section of the boot block. -- Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca) fake address use address above to reply tosspam@aol.com abuse@aol.com abuse@yahoo.com abuse@hotmail.com abuse@msn.com abuse@sprint.com abuse@earthlink.com abuse@cadvision.com abuse@ibsystems.com uce@ftc.gov spam traps