Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pyramid!prls!philabs!ttidca!svirsky
From: svirsky@ttidca.TTI.COM (Bill Svirsky)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Cache Software -- What's good.
Keywords: Cache for PS/2 Model 30-286
Message-ID: <3857@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Date: 9 Feb 89 17:04:01 GMT
References: <1064@unm-la.UUCP> <9383@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: svirsky@tab.tti.com (William Svirsky)
Organization: Citicorp/TTI, Santa Monica
Lines: 34

In article <9383@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> jsilva@cogsci.berkeley.edu.UUCP (John Silva) writes:
>PC-Tools Deluxe has an excellent cache program, plus a VERY nice integrated
>utility package, fast backup/restore, and format recover tools.  It can be
>found for $65 at shows and computer software discount houses.

Make sure that you get PC-Tools Deluxe version 5.  It adds MANY new
features.  I've got it and its great.  The cache program that comes with
it was rated very favorably by PC-Mag.  Its actually a version of PC-Kwik's
disk cache program, which was one of the Editor's Choices.  In my informal
testing, on both a PC-XT and a Compaq 386, it decreased program execution
time by about 25% and decreased disk accesses by 40-50% (saving a lot of
wear and tear on the disk drive).  I ran a sample of C compiles and file
compares.

However, PC-Mag has a free disk cache program called Dcache which is
almost as good, within a couple of percentage points of PC-Tools disk
cacher.  Dcache is not quite as flexible.  It can use expanded memory
but not extended and it always reads 8 sectors at a time.  The author
did some extensive analysis and found out that 8-sector reads are, by
far, the most common on the IBM PC.  The trick with Dcache is to also
use MSDOS's caching, ie. BUFFERS=.  I found that best results on my PC-XT
with a cache of 64K were with BUFFERS=17.  Otherwise there were an
excessive number of disk reads when a program was being loaded.  I have
a theory as to why this is true, but I don't know for sure.

I can post Dcache, send it to comp.binaries.ibm.pc, or e-mail it, as
long as I won't violate any copyrights.  I don't have any online docs,
just the magazine article.  Get PC-Mag 11Oct88 issue for full details. 
Entering "DCACHE ?" displays help on the command syntax. 

-- 
Bill Svirsky, Citicorp+TTI, 3100 Ocean Park Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405
Work phone: 213-450-9111 x2597
svirsky@ttidca.tti.com | ...!{csun,psivax,rdlvax,retix}!ttidca!svirsky