Re: Zip GS questions

[dmds@msg.ti.com (David de Sosa)]

>I think my next experiment will be to remove the Ramfast card, boot from a 
>system floppy with a Zip init file on it, and try to experiment with 
different
>Zip speed settings this way.  If I can't get any response, there must be 
>something wrong with the Zip card.  In fact now that I think about it, I'm 
not
>sure if my Zip card has ever worked at anything faster than 2.8 mhz.  
>
>Any thoughts here would be much appreciated.    
>
Well, I thought I'd answer my own post with a follow-up on what happened from
the above experiment. I didn't actually remove the Ramfast card, but booted 
from a system 6.01 disk with the Zip init, CDEV and CDA files installed.  No 
other wierd files were installed just the normal 'easy update' stuff when the 
disk was copied from the original system disk.  I also did not turn on the 
power to the hard drive thus forcing the disk to boot.  

First I tried different speed settings using the ZipGs utility file while the
GS system speed was set to normal.  No acceleration was apparent using a 
simple Basic program timing loop from 1 to 10000.  So apparently the Zip card 
is not invoked with the 'normal' speed setting (I don't have a manual to 
verify this).  Next, I changed the GS system speed to 'fast' and rebooted.  
This time I noticed a change in speed that was approximately 2.5 times faster 
than normal which is about what should be expected going from normal to fast 
speed.  Next, I set different speed settings using the ZipGS utility file and 
noticed immediate results (without having to reboot) which corresponded with 
the speed increases or decreases chosen.  So the Zip card is actually working. 
What a relief!  And it works on the fly.  I didn't know that.

Since I was feeling pretty good about all this, I decided to reboot this time
from the hard drive.  The system crashed immediately never getting past the 
intial startup screen.  I promptly went into the control panel and switched 
the GS system speed to 'normal', typed PR#7 and everything booted right up.
I give up.