Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!kent
From: kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu (Kent D. Polk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: The Tower and the Trade Up Policy -- Deal or Disappointment?
Keywords: 3000T
Message-ID: <2744@swrinde.nde.swri.edu>
Date: 7 May 91 04:03:18 GMT
References: <1991May4.104839.18395@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <12922@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <21323@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Sender: news@swrinde.nde.swri.edu
Organization: Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas
Lines: 54

In article <21323@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:
>In article <12922@pt.cs.cmu.edu> cactus@zardoz.club.cc.cmu.edu (Todd Masco) writes:
[...]
>>(blah.  PC Ethernet cards are cheap.  What's so expensive about Amiga
>>Ethernet?).
>
>I wrote up a poster for a house party I'm planning.  It came out as 2MB of
>PostScript code.  It uploaded from my A3000 to "cbmvax" in under a minute.
>Since the printer queue was down, I went next door to my buddy Greg's PC-40,
>which has a weird Eicon printer that also does PostScript.  That PC's Ethernet
>took over 15 minutes to download my file.
>
>Going by that unscientific estimate of transfer rate, if a PC Ethernet card 
>costs $100, the Amiga card should go for $3000.  So think of it as a bargain.
>

Here are the results of diskperf running on a NFS-mounted partition
from our Sun 4/490 fileserver. I did it after hours when not much was
going on:

--------------------------------
Amiga NFS disk performance test:
Filename converter on (case-sensitive/non-sensitive converter)

File create/delete:    create 7 files/sec, delete 43 files/sec
Directory scan:     8 entries/sec
Seek/read test:     63 seek/reads per second
r/w speed:          buf 512 bytes, rd 97693 byte/sec, wr 28011 byte/sec
r/w speed:          buf 4096 bytes, rd 117597 byte/sec, wr 96346 byte/sec
r/w speed:          buf 8192 bytes, rd 162569 byte/sec, wr 119156 byte/sec
r/w speed:          buf 32768 bytes, rd 164697 byte/sec, wr 120989 byte/sec
r/w speed:          buf 131072 bytes, rd 165130 byte/sec, wr 116724 byte/sec
r/w speed:          buf 524288 bytes, rd 167772 byte/sec, wr 121222 byte/sec

This was with an A2500/20 (14 MHz)

The fastest we have done with even '386 machines on the same network is
about 45k/sec reads, so in terms of speed, it is a 'real' Ethernet
card.

While clearly not as fast as my new 2091/Quantum 50M, it does compare
favorably with the 2090a/Rodime 40M, which is only about 50k/sec
faster.

I would also like to point out that file transfers are not all that
benefits. You should see xterms run on this thing. Much faster than the
Sun 3/60's around here! Sure wish the Amiga console could jump-scroll
like the xterms do. Yes, I know that the Sun is responsible for the
tremendous character-rendering speed of the xterms, but...  still would
like that jump-scroll.

Kent Polk: Southwest Research Institute
Internet : kent@swrinde.nde.swri.edu
UUCP     : $ {cs.utexas.edu, gatech!petro, sun!texsun}!swrinde!kent