Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!psuvm!cunyvm!ndsuvm1.bitnet!nu156266
From: NU156266@NDSUVM1.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Fast reading of floppies...
Message-ID: <3747NU156266@NDSUVM1>
Date: 20 Mar 90 20:44:14 GMT
References: <14075@fs2.NISC.SRI.COM> <14076@fs2.NISC.SRI.COM>
Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computer Network, Fargo, ND
Lines: 14
DISCLAIMER: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article.

There have been several previous posts on fast reading of floppys...
On programs like locksmith and some other fast copiers... they read a complete
image of the disk tracks into memory without decoding them at all.  However
to store the complete tracks into memory they use the access time to get
the disk drives up to speed and the drive arm movement delays to manage
memory when storing the previously read track images.  I don't know of
any such routines for the 3.5" disk drives or the hard disks.  You'd
have to go buy an Applied Engineering scsi cache card for that.  I don't
think you'd be able to implement such code using the prodos MLI calls
to fastread blocks but under DOS 3.3 you could do so by reading the sectors
in a backwards order

Becky
nu156266 @ ndsuvm1