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Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Title:AMIGA NOTES
Notice:Join us in the *NEW* conference - HYDRA::AMIGA_V2
Moderator:HYDRA::MOORE
Created:Sat Apr 26 1986
Last Modified:Wed Feb 05 1992
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:5378
Total number of notes:38326

1210.0. "Does StepRate work?" by LOWLIF::DAVIS (That's not a BUG, it's a FEATURE!) Wed Mar 02 1988 13:20

How many of you have tried or are using the StepRate program that is at
PAULY"AMIGA"::STEP.ZOO?  What do you think of it??  I tried it last night
and could notice little, if any, improvement in drive speed.  I did some
timing tests of "dir df0:", "copy df0:x ram:", etc...  I even set the
steprate to 9000 to see if it would get noticably slower, but it didn't
seem to.  (It did make the drive sound a little different during seeks)

					What's yall think?

					...richard
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1210.1Not what you expectedDEBIT::SOOWed Mar 02 1988 13:505
    I tried that program some time ago and noticed very little improvement
    in disk access performance.  Yes, it does slow down a little if
    you set the step rate to some hugh number, if that's what you want.
    It is probably more useful for changing the way the drive sound,
    especially A1000 drives.
1210.2LEDS::ACCIARDIWed Mar 02 1988 13:596
    I don't know if its the same program by a different name, but I've
    been using a little one called 'Speedup' that absolutely seems to
    work.  
    
    Ed.
    
1210.3?NOBHIL::BODINE_CHWed Mar 02 1988 15:063
    Really! Tell us more! Is it public domain?
    
    Chris
1210.4it's PDMTBLUE::PFISTER_ROBSteak knife, puta hole in my headWed Mar 02 1988 15:2113
Yup, it is PD (source included)  all it does is muck with some internal
Dos.device?? structures to decrease the delay in the step rate of the 
drive motor.  This is a rather minor increase, someone figured out the
increase expected would be nominal (like  < 5%) even if you could set this
to zero.


My own experience is that I couldn't set my drives to very much lower 
without read/write errors up the ying-yang.  Apon re-boot the original 
values are restored, so no biggie. The drive does sound better because
it gronks at a higher frequency, which is less annoying to most ears.

Robb
1210.5LEDS::ACCIARDIWed Mar 02 1988 15:2913
    Sure, I got it a while back from PLINK.  I'll upload it here; probably
    over the weekend, since I've been grotesquely neglecting my lovely
    wife, Jayne.  Between the Amiga and my new money sink (electric
    buggy racing) she only sees the back of my head for days on end.
    
    The only problem with these floppy speedup programs is that it is very
    easy for the tiny stepper motor to lose steps with too high a step
    rate.  The maximum slew rate is a function of the viscous drag and the
    inertia of the positioner carriage.  I was able to reliably run my
    floppys with the step interval set to 2000 (uSecs) down from 3000.
    Anything lower than that, and you could hear the drives retrying.
    After three retrys, an Intuition requestor will come up griping that it
    cant read the floppy. 
1210.6DICKNS::MACDONALDWA1OMM Listening 52.525Wed Mar 02 1988 15:588
    Speedup is the same as steprate. They both alter the step rate
    of the floppy drive. They do NOT alter the speed of the drive. In
    that regard both programs provide identical alterations in step
    rate performance. Given the fact that we are dealing with milliseconds,
    you're going to have an awful difficult time in measuring differences
    in access times!!! You will however note a different sound at faster
    step rates. I would not recommend attempting to increase the step
    rate by more than 50% of the default or you may run into difficulty.