Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!ll-xn!ames!jaw
From: jaw@ames.arpa (James A. Woods)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Why is A/UX disk I/O only 50KB/sec?
Message-ID: <2363@ames.arpa>
Date: Wed, 15-Jul-87 17:50:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.2363
Posted: Wed Jul 15 17:50:30 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 00:36:23 EDT
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Lines: 20

During Phoenix USENIX, at the Unisoft booth, on the Mac II,
a "time cat /usr/dict/words > /dev/null" took about four seconds
of clock time.  Staffers knew little about the disk or controller,
except that it was made by Qualogy.

Is the sluggishness due to:

	(a) xfer rate of the disk (the Dataframe, for example is
      	    spec'ed at just 5 Mbits/sec)?
	(b) an underpowered controller?
	(c) the Sys5-derived filesystem (BSD would do better)
	(d) suboptimal interleave factors for above combination?

The informal comparison between the new Sony 68020-based machine
and the Mac II in the August Unix/World also hints at unbalanced I/O
on the Mac II.

Would disk performance under the default Mac OS be similar?

ames!jaw