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From: toddc@cs.pdx.edu (todd a carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Help needed; VLB caching controller & smartdrv
Message-ID: <22i3na$92k@cs.pdx.edu>
Date: 20 Jul 93 10:47:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.22i3na$92k
References: <11167@icews2.ipc.kanazawa-u.ac.jp>
Organization: Portland State University, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 38
NNTP-Posting-Host: rigel.cs.pdx.edu
In article <11167@icews2.ipc.kanazawa-u.ac.jp> awel@icews1.ipc.kanazawa-u.ac.jp (Azlan Ali) writes:
>
>I have got a system with 8Mb of ram and VLB caching controller with
>512K. I installed the accompanied device driver in my config.sys and
>also put smartdrv in my autoexec.bat. It looks like my smartdrv is
>taking away 2mb of my memory. What I wanted to know is how to make
>sure the caching contoller`s memory is used.
VLB stands for "VESA LOCAL BUS" which basically means the adapter uses
a local bus that runs at the same clock rate as the CPU; not the
generic 10MHz.
If you are using a BLB controller with built in cache, you have a disk
controller that has memory which is filled with every read from the
disk. If you are loading a large file that will require many sequential
reads, the controller will fill it's cache and once, and not access the
disk until it needs to, thereby making access faster. (In theory, that is)
SMARTDRV, is a Microsoft cache TSR that basically does the same thing, but
uses the system memory for the cache. If you have a cache'd controller,
AND are running SMARTDRV, you might be reading information off the disk,
storing it into the controller's cache, then moving it to the
SMARTDRV cache, before finally makiong it available. Depending on
your harddrive, this will probably be faster than no cache at all, but
to take advantage of the VLB design, and save system memory, you might look
into upgrading the controller's onboard memory.
[NOTE - I have personally seen problems using QEMM's "STEALTH" feature with
some VLB controllers. If you are using QEMM and have STEALTH enabled, you
should be sure to test your floppy disk drives.]
Todd Carlson
******************************************************************************
Todd Carlson - Portland State University email: toddc@rigel.cs.pdx.edu
or at TVIS-Engineering, Tektronix, Inc. toddc@tv.tv.tek.com
******************************************************************************