Path: utzoo!censor!geac!lethe!torsqnt!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!microsoft!iank
From: iank@microsoft.UUCP (Ian KENNEDY)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Xetec Fastrack
Message-ID: <71795@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 10 Apr 91 15:35:38 GMT
References: <22887@know.pws.bull.com>
Reply-To: iank@microsoft.UUCP (Ian KENNEDY)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 31

In article <22887@know.pws.bull.com> C506634@UMCVMB.MISSOURI.EDU (Eric Edwards) writes:
>Recently there was a post from somone who had a Xetec Fasttrack for a couple
>of years.  He said that the driver disabled interupts for an unreasonably long
>time.  Does anyone know if the current driver shipped still does this?  I do
>an awful lot of up/downloading........
>
>Also, the AmigaWhirld article states that the Xetec is a DMA controler.
>Is this really a new controller or did amiga or did AmigaWhirled screw up
>again?
The XETEC controler uses what the manufacturer calls DMAx, which they claim
produces DMA like speeds without the DMA bus contention when working
with hi-res screens. However, I believe that the controler is really NON-DMA
and uses really efficient driver software.

I own a XETEC FastTrack controller driving a 48 MB 28ms seagate drive.
Even with the pathetic Seagate I get throughput of about 400 Kps. The Claims
of 750 Kps (Kilobytes per second) can only be realized with a really fast
hard disk. I have also added the 4MB fast ram daughter board for $360 from
the manufacturer with 80ns simms.

I'm running it on a circa 1987 rev 5 A500 and it works great. I've never 
experienced any waiting while the hard drive is accessed. I've even been
able to work on one partition while de-fragmenting/optimizing another.

Hope this helps...

Ian.
>
>Eric Edwards: c506634 @    "The 3090.  Proof that by applying state of the
>Inet: umcvmb.missouri.edu   art technology to an obsolete architecture,
>Bitnet: umcvmb.bitnet       one can achieve mediocre performance."