Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!think!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!OZ.AI.MIT.EDU!GZT.EWW From: GZT.EWW@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU (Wes Williams) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: Rocket and Zip Chips Message-ID: <12401130467.22.GZT.EWW@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU> Date: 25 May 88 13:24:13 GMT References: <67.011023@adam.DG.COM> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 24 Re: (Bruce_Kahn asks) How can they say their chips speed up external devices? I am quite sure they can't, but they appear to. On floppy drives, Apple has programmed in a delay of the drive read terminating its read. The drive finishes its read (or write) and remains on for an additional 1/2 second or so. After this time is passed, the drive read/write light winks out and that section of the process is completed. We all have seen this as multiple read/writes access the disk and the light blinks off and on. Processing within the computer is taking place as the signals to read/write are transmitted to the drive(s). As computer processing time is shortened during this example, the accelerated computer has the ability to process data at a higher rate, thus the data being read/written is assimilated faster, yielding a (under some circumstances) a non-flashing drive access light. It has nothing to do with the external device other than cutting processing time. The end result is assimilated data from a drive that is visibly shortened in access time. I will go out on a limb here and say that (depending on data type) the access time can be as much as %50 faster. This is a phony statement that does prove out. More appropriately just misstated to shorten the sales pitch. \|/es \|/illiams -------