Re: DMA or not DMA...

[shack@deimos.frii.com (Randy Shackelford)]

In article <15MAY199723572657@vax2.concordia.ca>,
Mitchell Spector <spec@vax2.concordia.ca> wrote:

[snip]

>    My system has 5.125 MB, and even with several extensions loaded
>(icons fill the first row at boot) the Finder still reports a little
>over 3.7 MB of free memory available. The only time I've ever run
>out of memory is trying to load huge stereo digitized sound recordings
>I've done with my Audio Animator (e.g. 3-4 MB files!). Of course these
>days I rather just record lengthy audio on my PC using 16-bit @ 44 kHz
>and then compress it as an MP3 audio file (not only CD quality, but
>the same file space gives me several minutes, not seconds ;)

Guess you don't use any memory as RAM disk. My 5248K ROM 3 has a decent
amount of extensions/drivers, such as all the networking stuff, CD and
media control, and most of the FSTs installed including MS DOS, and has
~3800K free in the about window. I also have a 1 mb slinky in there, which 
means no system memory is taken up for RAM disk space. It is a completely 
crash proof RAM disk too. Also handy since you can format it as  800K for 
those infernal 800K disk archives.

>>   Those of you with HS SCSI cards, I'd invite a few benchmarks of
>>those with and without DMA (and also with/without any acceleration).
>>Boot times are a good real-world measurement, as that's something
>>you'll be sitting through a lot of on the GS.
>
>    I still like to boast my boot time of about 4-5 seconds (with
>a shift-boot) using the combination of a _DMA_ RamFAST, 11ms SCSI
>drive and a 15/64 Zip GS. Or something close to 15 seconds when
>loading with all my extensions, which certainly beats the time it
>takes my Windows 95 to reboot. ;-)

Hmm, never timed mine while booting. Got an unaccelerated box with HS SCSI
and an Apple ROM equipped Quantum 230.
-- 
Randy Shackelford                                 
shack@frii.com