Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!arisia!leisner
From: leisner@arisia.Xerox.COM (Marty Leisner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Dos disk buffering schemes
Message-ID: <579@arisia.Xerox.COM>
Date: 24 Jan 89 22:27:54 GMT
Organization: Xerox PARC
Lines: 19

I recently wrote a COFF style libld implementation to unpack TI34010
coff files on ms/dos.

Unpacking symbol tables caused lots of disk thrashing.

I'm using Aztec C 4.1b.  It seems the stdio routines reread the disk sector 
after every fseek.  Fine.

But it seems DOS goes to disk with every read.  What does BUFFERS= do in
config.sys?  It doesn't seem to do much (DOS hits the disk every time it seems).

Running with cache installed on a Compaq 386 indicates  approximately 1 disk
read per symbol.  Doesn't DOS maintain some sorta crude buffer cache?

Puzzled,

Marty Leisner
Xerox Corp.
leisner.henr@xerox.com