Re: Accelerating the Disk II?

["Rick Kerman" <rkerman@mail.bright.net>]

mkelsey@spam.eecs.wsu.edu wrote in message
<6encp0$h1p$2@leopard.it.wsu.edu>...

>I am wondering if anybody has heard of an undocumented practice that
>would "accelerate" the Disk II?


DOS 3.3 pretty much reads one sector at a time, and ProDOS
pretty much reads one logical block at a time (two sectors).
You could certainly write your own code to load sectors into
memory in a more efficient way, maybe even entire tracks at
a time.  There are also encoding schemes that can be read
much faster than the standard 6x2.  If memory serves, 4x4
can be read in real time with 1:1 sector interleave, and has
been used by game and utility publishers to make fast-boot
disks.  The books Beneath Apple DOS and Beneath Apple
ProDOS are good places to start (if you can find copies).

Rick Kerman <rkerman@mail.bright.net>
http://www.bright.net/~rkerman