150 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
150 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
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DISKTIMER GS
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A Hard Disk Benchmarking Program
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(C) 1988 Joe Jaworski
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18405 Tamarind Street
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Fountain Valley, CA 92708
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GEnie: JVJAWORSKI
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CompuServe: [73307,310]
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This program is FREEWARE. It is copyright material but you
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may use it and/or distribute it free of charge to anyone for
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personal, non-commercial use. Licensing is required for
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including DiskTimerGS with any commercial hardware or
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software product. Contact me at the above address for
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licensing information.
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What is DiskTimerGS?
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DisktimerGS is a "Benchmark" or performance rating program
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designed to measure how efficiently a hard disk drive will
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perform on an Apple IIGS. It is designed to give you, the
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consumer, a rating system by which to measure the
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performance of hard disk drives and their manufacturers
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claims.
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Like all benchmarks, test results cannot be strictly
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correlated to a drive's performance in an actual
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application. However, the key to a benchmark is the
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comparison of results between different products.
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DiskTimerGS has been designed to eliminate as many system
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variables as possible to insure accurate results in a wide
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variety of system configurations. DiskTimerGS is immune to
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disk cache settings, controller cache memory, partitioning,
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system interrupts (including mouse movement), and buffered
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drive seeks.
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APPLETALK USERS: DiskTimerGS disables interrupts during the
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actual test periods. This will "hang" the network.
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Disconnect AppleTalk before running DisktimerGS.
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Using DisktTimerGS
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DiskTimerGS is very easy to use. Simple transfer a copy of
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the program to the disk drive you want to test and launch it
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from there. It doesn't matter if the program is put in a
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folder or in the root directory. However, it must be
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launched from the drive you want to test. The tests will
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take anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes to run.
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DisktimerGS does not perform any WRITE operations and will
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not alter any data on any disk under test. In fact, the disk
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must be formatted and contain a ProDOS directory in order to
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run the tests. If the disk is partitioned, any single
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partition can be tested (the results are independent of
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partitioning) but the partition selected must be at least
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9.9 Megabytes in size in order for the tests to run. DO NOT
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try to run DiskTimer from a floppy. It won't work.
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About the Results
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DiskTimerGS reports its results in seconds for each
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operation. The three tests performed are:
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READ Timing: This test performs a sequential READ of a
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number of 512 byte blocks to determine how fast the Hard
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Disk can transfer consecutive data. The factors that most
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effect this number are the Disk Interleave and Data Transfer
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rate of the drive.
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SEEK Timing: This test measures the time it takes to seek
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the R/W heads of the drive across 10 Megabytes of data. The
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results of this test are mainly governed by the
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Track-to-Track, Average Access, and Head Settling time of
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the drive.
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ADAPTER Timing: This test performs a repeated READ of a
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single block on the disk, measuring the overhead to receive
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data from the low-level disk interface through the ProDOS 16
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high-level interface. Factors that effect this rating are
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the delays through the Host Adapter Card originating at the
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disk drive interface hardware and the Disk/Host interface
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firmware. In other words, it measures the efficiency of the
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SCSI Card or other controller Card used to operate the disk
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drive.
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Interpreting Results
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Compare your drive to the others listed in the DiskTimerGS
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comparison list (included in this download) to see how well
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your drive has performed.
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Submitting To the Comparison List
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The DiskTimerGS Comparison List included with this download
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will be frequently updated. To make DiskTimerGS an effective
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tool, I need your help in keeping this list as up to date as
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possible. If you have a hard disk drive that is not on the
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list, run DiskTimerGS and submit your test results so I can
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include it in the next update. Even if your drive is
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"Homebrew", it would be interesting to compare results to
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commercially available products.
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Run DiskTimerGS at least three times (The results may vary
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slightly depending upon the drive/controller tested). Submit
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all three test results (or an average of the three) along
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with your name, BBS ID, and any additional comments to
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support the test setup. Submit your data to one of my BBS
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ID's listed above.
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Thanks for your support. I hope you find DiskTimerGS an
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Independent and valuable aid in selecting one of the growing
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number of hard disk drives now available for the IIGS.
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-Joe Jaworski
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DiskTimerGS operates through the ProDOS 16 interface under
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GS/OS. It is not compatible with System Disks before version
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4.0 and is not compatible with other models of the Apple II
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