Re: Old Sys6 Questions

[dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

In article <Jun.22.14.07.52.1993.1222@trident.usacs.rutgers.edu> scraft@trident.usacs.rutgers.edu (Steve Craft) writes:
> 
> 
> Hey all.  Some old System6 questions before the new stuff gets out:
> 
> I have access to an Apple CDROM and will hook it up via my Apple
> HighSpeed SCSI card.  What CDROMS should I expect to be able to read
> with this?

You should be able to physically read all files on any Macintosh or PC
CD-ROM (HFS or High Sierra/ISO-9660 file systems).  I haven't heard of
any PC CD-ROMs that use the MS-DOS file system (or OS/2's HPFS file
system), but there might be some. 

Whether you can do anything with those files is a different matter.
You would need appropriate display software to deal with proprietary
data (such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.) and this is usually
only supplied for the particular target machine.

For CD-ROMs containing graphics or sound, you need an appropriate
translation utility.

> Anyone seen a 1/2-recent HyperStudio player or new stacks?  

"Half Decent"?  :-)

By "HyperStudio Player" do you mean a program which plays HyperStudio
sounds, or a run-time HyperStudio stack execution program?  There is
only one of the latter (HS.SYS16, from Roger Wagner Publishing), and
it can only be distributed with stacks you've written, not by itself.

For HyperStudio sounds, pass.

> Oh, what does the RAM5 cache control thing do (CDev that is)?  I see
> no speed bost in anything I do, whether I have a 32k or 512k cache
> set.

It has nothing to do with RAM5.  It controls the amount of memory that
GS/OS is allowed to use as a disk cache.

Most programs don't make any use of the cache for reading files.  It
is automatically used by GS/OS to cache directory blocks, and it makes
a big difference to file I/O speed, especially on floppies, if you're
dealling with a lot of directories.

Try setting it to 0k, and comparing that with 32k.

I doubt that you'd gain anything from setting it higher than 128k, and
I've heard that 32k is a reasonable setting.

Note that this sets the _maximum_ amount of memory GS/OS will use.  If
the memory is needed for something else, GS/OS will relinquish it.
-- 
David Empson                                                               
dempson@swell.actrix.gen.nz                                                
Snail mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand