Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!tikal!dad!nelson
From: nelson@dad.UUCP (Paul Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: GS/OS
Message-ID: <3678@dad.UUCP>
Date: 3 Oct 88 18:37:13 GMT
References: <8809302002.aa26185@SMOKE.BRL.MIL>
Organization: R & D Associates, Tacoma, WA
Lines: 48

in article <8809302002.aa26185@SMOKE.BRL.MIL>, SELLSWORTH@HMCVAX.BITNET ("Scott, part time fuzzy") says:
>   First, what is the user impression of GS/OS?  Is it worth driving all over
> the city to find a dealer with a copy?  ...
> 
>   Second question, can it handle the CMS SCSI card, in terms of booting from
> it.  I have two 32 meg volumes set up that I am quite happy with, thank you. 
I just got GS/OS working on my machine with a 60M CMS hard drive with the
CMS SCSI card.  It works just fine with the two volumes.  I was very pleased
with the performance improvement as well.  The finder is much improved when
it comes to copying files around.  You get Mac style thermometer indicators
showing progress at copying.  All my NDAs work fine and also the
sysbeep stuff from Guy Rice. (You get a different display when booting GS/OS
and Guy's little sysbeep message doesn't show up, but the beep is there!).

One thing that is much faster is switching disks (using the disk button) in
the standard file operations dialogs.  GS/OS finds the next disk many times
faster!  I also like the fact that I can ignore the 5.25 drive.  Before
GS/OS, I couldn't stand having prodos and the finder look at the stupid thing.
I would unplug it, but had to keep reconnecting it for my kids (the only thing
the 5.25 is good for).

The disk cacheing is another new feature that is nice.  You control it from
an NDA that allows you to set the amount of memory used for the cache
(from 0 to 1Meg ).  However, I can't figure out how the system remembers the
cache size.  It seems to stash it in battery ram (just a guess) as I set it
to 256K when I booted from 3.5 floppy one time, and when I booted from my
hard drive later, it was still 256K (I think I had the power off in between,
but dont really remember).  I would like to be able to boot off a 3.5 floppy
with a large cache, and use a smaller cache when I boot from my hard disk.
I don't know how to do this yet.

I would have to say that GS/OS is worth getting.  Before I used it, I wasn't
sure that even a faster processor clock would get the GS going at a reasonable
speed, but now the GS is much more responsive.  I haven't seen AE's transwarp
board yet but I'll bet a GS with GS/OS and a higher clock speed will be
really nice, and should quiet alot of the slowness complaints.

I got no documemtation for GS/OS except a rehash of the stuff that came with
system disk 3.2.  I'm not sure what documentation is available.  APDA product
descriptions are now so befuddled with all those APW options that I can't
figure it out! ( you can now get update version 1.0.2 for APW and APW C, which
are supposed to support GS/OS interfaces ).  The only way to get the right
stuff is to call APDA, tell them what you have and ask them what you need.
The APDA number is 1-800-527-7562. Of course the membership is $20 and you
don't get any support if you are not a certified developer.

							Paul Nelson
							...tikal!dad!nelson