Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!micor!taob
From: taob@micor.ocunix.on.ca (Brian Tao)
Subject: Re: optical r/w  and flopticals (they're different!)  (was:Best hd c
Organization: M.B. Cormier INC.
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 91 04:12:04 EDT
Message-ID: <TaNa52w162w@micor.ocunix.on.ca>
References: <1991Jun25.051645.21935@utstat.uucp>
Sender: view@micor.ocunix.on.ca (View)

philip@utstat.uucp (Philip McDunnough) writes:


> In article <17359@darkstar.ucsc.edu> unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown
> User) writes:
> >
> >       UGGH! 66 ms? And I thought my 35 ms (I think that's right) Seagate
> >drive was bad! (and it IS! but it was $150 for a 40 meg drive.. I hope to
> >upgrade since I have a job this summer)
> Seek time is not as important as throughput for many purposes. I think
> you'll find the throughput quite acceptable. I often use my NeXT from
> an optical (which is far slower re access time) and it's perfectly
> fine. Having more memory helps of course( there).

    Having some sort of disk caching would help even more... GS/OS and 
ProDOS 8 (especially) move the drive head(s) around a lot; reading the 
directory structure, getting the file entry, writing out the file, etc.  You 
don't see very large files on the Apple II (relatively speaking).  So the 
advantage gained by the high transfer rate is not as apparent.  The RAMFast 
might be a good controller for it (assuming it has enough standard SCSI to 
understand the IBM drive), with its disk cache.  Does this floptical have 
its own built-in cache?
