Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!CORY.BERKELEY.EDU!dillon From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Initial Opinion of Amiga (really IBM Hard Disks) Message-ID: <8611190013.AA18346@cory.Berkeley.EDU> Date: Tue, 18-Nov-86 19:13:33 EST Article-I.D.: cory.8611190013.AA18346 Posted: Tue Nov 18 19:13:33 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 18-Nov-86 23:40:28 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 41 >I agree with you in principle Matt, however I did verify something with >PC's that is not true with the Amiga. And that is that on hard disks >the PC's dir command gets slower and slower as the disk get bigger and >bigger up until it breaks at 32Megs. The Amiga's on the other hand >stays the same speed, and doesn't have a hard disk size limit. (Nor >does it waste a lot of space on "clusters" or "allocation blocks") >Personally, I consider that fact relevent now that Maxtor has a 675 Meg >5.25" winchester. (can you say 22 Ms-Dos partitions?) I am sure Microsoft >will continue to improve and upgrade their software as I am sure C/A >will too. >-- >--Chuck McManis >uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com >These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you. The directory listing itself is extremely fast. The problem with the IBM is that to find the number of free blocks, the poor thing must seek about the entire partition. They made the limit 32Megs 'cause they were limited by the 8088 (I agree with you that they should have spent the extra time to make it 2Gig). IBM messed up in many other ways as well: The infamous 'floppy change' bug has not been completely fixed. You can't move directories or files into other directories, you can't rename directories, file path names use '\', file names are still limited to 8chars+extension, file paths are not integrated (letter: is not integrated with \name\name... try CD C:\somename, it doesn't work). CTL-S, CTL-Q, and CTL-C on the IBM ONLY work if you haven't typed anything else first. on the IBM will get you out of a program, but not as nicely (it's an actual interrupt). PC/MSDOS is still one up on the Amiga with a 'load&run' call which returns the return value from the function, and with enviroment variables. The Amiga doesn't really have enviroment variables, at least not in a system-standard way. IBM hard disks are still much faster than Amiga Hard Disks because, as yet, I have not seen a DMA Amiga HD on the market. (anybody know of one??? I admit my information is limited). And, as Chuck says above, the Amiga doesn't ponder when storage becomes extensive. With that many partitions, you start to run out of drive letters on an IBM. You CAN mount one drive designation on another, but it's a hack at best. -Matt Dillon