RLL and Xenix (was Re: disk drive hell)

[Jack F. Vogel]

In article <496 at megatest.UUCP> palowoda at megatest.UUCP (Bob Palowoda) writes:
>in article <609 at mccc.UUCP>, pjh at mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) says:
>> 
>> I can't tell you what to buy, but I CAN tell you that the Micropolis
>> 1335 drive with a DTC 5380 (maybe 5280) controller tests VERY slow, as
>> reported by the InfoWorld benchmark program.  And the 1335 is reputed to
>> be a 28 ms drive!
>
>   Interesting my DTC controller seems to be slow also. 
[details on performance deleted]

  I find it interesting that both of you seem to have performance problems with
the DTC controller; I am quite sure it is the controller and not the drives.
We are using two Micropolis drives, one 60 and one 70 Meg (I always forget the
model numbers) with the WD1003RA controller, this formats out to a shade over
200Meg. Now we have no DOS partitions so I have not run the Core test, but
performance empirically seems far improved over MFM.
  Xenix is working great with this combination. I think it is even easier to 
set up than a DOS system would be. You need no special software or bios
entries to deal with the 26 sectors. You just leave the cmos set up as 17
sectors and when installing the system you just tell hdinit the proper
parameters and it all works!!
  I was wondering, how do you have the drives interleaved? Does the DTC have
a track buffer? The WD controller does not so I set up a 2 to 1 interleave.
Perhaps running a 1 - 1 is causing the slowdown. Just a thought.
  If anyone out there would like more information or has questions about using
RLL with SCO just send me some mail and I will be happy to answer whatever
questions I can.

						Best regards,




-- 
Jack F. Vogel
Turnkey Computer Consultants, Costa Mesa, CA
UUCP: ...{nosc|uunet}!turnkey!jack 
Internet: jack at turnkey.TCC.COM