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From: csrobe@ICASE.ARPA (Charles S. Roberson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: RE: fast multi-sector floppy I/O with interrupts (question)
Message-ID: <8707211216.AA01884@work1.icase>
Date: Tue, 21-Jul-87 08:16:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: work1.8707211216.AA01884
Posted: Tue Jul 21 08:16:23 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Jul-87 07:22:41 EDT
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>From: mcvax!philmds!nlgvax!johan@seismo.css.gov  (Johan Stevenson)
>Subject: fast multi-sector floppy I/O with interrupts (question)
>To: info-atari16@score.stanford.edu
>
>To speed up I see the following options:
>
> - improve the driver, so that the interrupt caused by the first sector
>   is in time to start the transfer of the second sector
>
> - use a non-standard floppy disk formatter that gives physically
>   consecutive sectors the following relative sector numbers:
>	1, 6, 2, 7, 3, 8, 4, 9, 5
>
> - perform the same trick as above in the driver itself

Johan-
	Have you seen the Summer Edition of STart magazine (and/or
the Spring edition).  David Small used the "non-standard" TWISTER
file format to speed up access times and increase disk capacity.
This was presented in the Spring issue.

Well, in the summer issue they have an alert box about a minor bug,
and they say the Atari is "adopting the twister file format" [a very
loose recall from memory.]  This may solve some of your problems
(i.e.  The format will no-longer be "non-standard".)  Now, I haven't
seen any official words on this other than the magazine, but I never
had a reason to doubt the magazine.  Their reputation is solid.

If you can't get a copy of the magazine, let me know and I will
photocopy the article and the alert box and SMAIL to to you.

Good luck and i eagerly await MINIX ( I have the book, now i'm
waiting for the movie).

PS.  How hard would it be to put a graphic interface around MINIX?
If you have ever worked with SUN Workstations, that is what I'm
looking for...A nice big screen with bitmapped graphics and *NIX!

-chip
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