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From: olson@harvard.UUCP (Eric Olson)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Mac+ & HD20 vs Hyperdrive?
Message-ID: <640@harvard.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Jan-86 12:58:46 EST
Article-I.D.: harvard.640
Posted: Wed Jan 22 12:58:46 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jan-86 09:29:38 EST
References: <1190@utai.UUCP>
Reply-To: olson@harvard.UUCP (Eric olson)
Organization: Aiken Comp Lab, Harvard
Lines: 27

My impression of the HD20 is that it cannot be faster than a Hyperdrive.
I have no experience with the Warp drive, but I suspect the HD20 is slower
than it as well.  Here's why:

The HD20 + New Roms is changing too many variables at once.  Presumably,
if you use new Roms you use a new System too.  So, the ROMs contain 64K
of more stuff that needn't be loaded from disk, an HFS so you needn't
build a whole desktop each time you go into Finder, etc.  These speed
enhancements are not due to the HD20!  The HD20, by itself, should be
faster than anything going through a serial port, slower than anything
directly connected to the processor bus (like Hyperdrive and Warp Drive),
and probably slower than anything connected to the (just announced) SCSI
port.  The current HD20 connects to the external drive port, and therefore
has to go through many more protocol conversions than a Hyperdrive/Warpdrive.

When the HD20 is available in an SCSI version, it will likely be competitive
in terms of speed.  Until then, any speed advantage Apple claims is due
to the new Roms and System (and HFS), so a Hyperdrive or Warp Drive running
the new Roms/System/HFS should still be faster.  I'm not sure what software
Hyperdrive will run with (or what Roms), but I am sure that they will
come out with an HFS compatible Hyperdrive (software) soon.

Personally, I am more than happy with the Hyperdrive running the old software,
since there IS a fair amount of stuff that I use that won't work right on
a HFS machine.

-Eric.