[Coco] hard disk performance

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 26 September 2008, Robert Gault wrote:
>Discussing test results is pointless unless the test is specified
>precisely and all reported test adhere to the same protocol.
>
>So, to propose a specific test, get Megaread from the NitrOS-9
>distribution and transfer it to your Coco hard drive system. Then
>execute the command sequence
>load date
>date t; megaread </h#@; date t
>where # is the number of the drive under test.
>
>Results on my Ken-Ton scsi adapter, 6309 modified RGB-DOS driver, and
>Segate ST-296N hard drive are
>Fri Sep. 26, 2008 07:12:32 PM
>Fri Sep. 26, 2008 07:13:57 PM
>for one pass of megaread. That should be ~12k/sec.
>
I was going to call that slow, till I did this on my system with the new TC^3 
scsi controller and a 1 GB Seacrate Hawk scsi on there now.  With the older 
Disto 4n1, and that Maxtor 7120s on it, I could do that in 11 seconds.

But the TC^3 and Seagate combo is slower, a lot slower.

{t2|08}/DD/NITROS9/6309L2/MODULES/SCF:date -t;megaread </dd@;date -t
September 26, 2008  22:35:00
September 26, 2008  22:35:26

26 seconds, almost glacial compared to the 11 I used to get.  This is 
38461.53846153846154 bytes/second now, and was 90909.09090909090909 
bytes/second back then.

I finally did get the perms set so I could load r0.dd and ram.dr, but as they 
aren't in the bootfile, the dreaded error 237 prevents them from being used 
so I can't test that from this login.  That also would run megaread in 11 
seconds back then.

Somehow, system memory seems to be being used at a higher rate than it was 10 
years ago, as I could do that then, with more window descriptors in the 
bootfile than I have now.

>The same test using an Adaptec 4000A board with a Tandon TM-252 gave
>11.4k/sec.
>
>My modified driver uses the TFM command to transfer data.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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