Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell!pacbell.com!mips!sjsca4!poffen
From: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Help identify hard disk controller
Message-ID: <1990Sep4.192615.3049@sj.ate.slb.com>
Date: 4 Sep 90 19:26:15 GMT
References: <1023@lee.SEAS.UCLA.EDU>
Reply-To: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
Distribution: na
Organization: Schlumberger Technologies, San Jose, CA.
Lines: 48

In article <1023@lee.SEAS.UCLA.EDU> jsin@seashell.seas.ucla.edu (Just Another John) writes:
>
>I have a 25MHz 386 clone (No name), and I'm curious about its hard disk
>speed/performance.  When I ran coretest 2.92, I get 180kb disk transfer
>rate, 35ms average seek time, and 5.7ms Track-to-track.  This is just
>slightly better than an original IBM AT, according to the coretest program.
>
>Is this normal for a 25MHz 386 system?  I get about 26 si ratings (for
>whatever that's worth), and I have no complain about the system as a whole,
>but I can't understand why the hard disk performace is so lousy.
>
>I have a Miniscribe 6085 which formats to 70 MB, and has 1024 cylinders, 
>8 heads, 17 sectors - but I don't have the seek/access time on this drive.  
>It was formatted with SpeedStor utility at 1:1 interleave.
>
>The controller is from Western Digital.  It supports 2 floppies (both
>3.5 high density and 5.25 high density) and 2 MFM hard disks.  It seems to 
>have a 16-bit connector edge, and is in fact in one of my 16-bit slot.  
>There is a marking on the bottom that reads "WA6V", and in smaller 
>letters "K2200028".  There are no jumpers on this board, and it is a 
>half-card (on the large side).  The largest chip on the board reads:
>
>	WDC '87
>	WD42C22A-JU
>	10-02 8849
>	05789190502
>	PROTO    03
>
>What is the rated access time for 6085 Miniscribe drive?
>What kind of disk controller do I have?
>Why is my disk so slow?  Is this normal?
>What can I do to speed it up?
>
>Currently I use smartdrv.sys and sometimes pc-cache.exe (from PC-TOOLS 6.0)
>which makes it bearable, but I can always use some help.
>
>Thanks for any help you can give,
>--

Sounds like a WD1006 controller. Either the interleave is not what you think,
or the system/controller cannot run at 1:1 interleave. I used to get 250Kb/sec
with a WD1003 at 2:1 until I got my SCSI system which gets 1.3Mb/sec.


Russ Poffenberger               DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com
Schlumberger Technologies       UUCP:   {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen
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