Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!floyd!harpo!decvax!mcnc!ecsvax!bet From: bet@ecsvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.micro.apple Subject: Apple disk speed -- more info Message-ID: <2717@ecsvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 12-Jun-84 12:50:44 EDT Article-I.D.: ecsvax.2717 Posted: Tue Jun 12 12:50:44 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 13-Jun-84 06:54:25 EDT Lines: 23 I recently posted a note asking if there is something intrinsic to the Apple disk recording scheme which make it slow, or whether it is simply coincidental that Apple DOS and the Macintosh's system software share brain-damage that slows down the disk access. Ross Alford (alford@ecsvax) responded describing a program he had written in TURBO-PASCAL for the Apple under CPM that read a ~40K file in ~10 seconds. It then took ~20 seconds of computing. He mailed me that program, and I ran it under TURBO-PASCAL on PC-DOS 2.10 (with the disk parameter table patch). It took ~20 seconds to read a ~50K file, and another 10 seconds to compute. It looks like a) Apple drives are not intrinsically slow b) insofar as Apple disk access is slow it is the fault of the Apple operating system c) The IBM-PC is half as fast (assuming that TURBO-PASCAL makes a good benchmark comparison, and that DOS 2.10 isn't inflicting too much overhead on disk I/O) d) In one (possibly typical) application the IBM-PC seems to compute approximately twice as fast. Bennett Todd ...{decvax,ihnp4,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bet