From: Paul Guyot (pguyot_at_kallisys.net)
Date: Thu Feb 06 2003 - 07:28:15 PST
Hi folks,
I'm pleased to announce ATA Support 1.0RC5.
ATA Support is a nearly 30 months old project (geez) aiming at using
ATA cards in the Newton instead of linear cards. This 5th Release
Candidate might be the last one. If no one reports a data loss
problem in say the next 3 weeks (or if I don't experience one
myself), and if I fixed the eMate bug, I'll release 1.0.
This new version includes many fixes and some improvements.
All the details can be found on my website here:
http://www.kallisys.com/newton/ata/
The most important part is that two bugs that could cause data
corruption have been fixed. You should better backup your data and
reformat your cards.
One of the new features is speed tests. These tests could be used at
some point to map out bad blocks. In the meanwhile, I replaced their
results from Nick's Test It speed in the compatibility database.
Testing my cards showed a lot of differences between them. Although
this test isn't perfect (since some tasks are running in the
background) and probably depends a lot on the Newton model, they give
much more reliable results than Nick's Test It since they don't
depend on the store size or the data already there.
Please note that these tests are raw transfer speed. I only count the
time spent by the driver. Actual data transfer rate is much lower,
but the tests give me an idea about what to improve to get the
fastest Newton experience.
Please update the entries concerning your cards in the database
(http://www.kallisys.com/newton/ata/compat/) after having run the
read speed test (this is non destructive, you just need to unmount
stores to run the test).
This test doesn't perfectly describe the speed, though. My SmartMedia
card is very fast for reading but pathetically slow for writing.
Regards,
Paul
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