Re: Apple II still ahead of the curve!

[scott@alfter.DIESPAMMERSDIE.us (Scott Alfter)]

In article <bOadnXMYQfSatKnYnZ2dnUVZ_o2dnZ2d@comcast.com>,
Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
>William Garber wrote:
>> "mdj" <mdj.mdj@gmail.com> wrote in message
>1160991353.814512.121080@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com">news:1160991353.814512.121080@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>> : PZ wrote:
>> : > I don't believe it.  The Focus card is 100% smartport compatible and
>> : > allows something like 32+ partitions under GSOS, ProDOS or otherwise,
>> : > with no onboard RAM that I know of.
>> :
>> : Are the partitions perchance fixed size, not including the last
>> : partition ?
>> 
>> No, as with the Microdrive, the partition table of
>> the Focus is stored on the drive itself. It is read
>> with each access of the drive.
>
>Ouch!  So every access involves two seeks and two reads??

That sounded somewhat less than optimal to me at first.  It no doubt is, but
the performance hit shouldn't be as bad as it sounds at first.  Nearly all
hard drives have some amount of cache on them.  As long as the partition
table is in the cache, reading it from the drive isn't going to cause a
seek.

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