NewtonTalk.net August 2008 archive: Re: [NTLK] ATA Linear flash

From: Ryan Vetter <physicalconstants_at_yahoo.ca>
Date: Sat Aug 23 2008 - 04:10:56 EDT

Thanks Ron, and everyone else...
As for CF cards, they are not all created equal. Don't be fooled by X speed. Anybody can say they have a 150 or even 200x speed card. 1x is the benchmark at 150 kb/s. The Extreme III card is 133x, but is packed with some other tech that sets it apart from most other cards. It, for instance, uses ESP, to offload and load data much quicker than most other cards (SanDisk claims twice as fast); it also uses this tech for simultaneous read/write at max speed... reducing bottlenecks.

--- On Sat, 8/23/08, James Wages <james@kiramek.com> wrote:
From: James Wages <james@kiramek.com>
Subject: Re: [NTLK] ATA Linear flash speed
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Received: Saturday, August 23, 2008, 1:54 AM

On 8/23/08 10:55 AM, "R A Parker" <QuadzillaNET@SBCGlobal.NET>
wrote:
> With AppleTalk over serial (a.k.a. LocalTalk), a speed of 230,400bps is
> actually attainable!

And with the latest version of Simon Bell's NCX (version 1.3), you can use
your Keyspan adapter and OS X to give 115,200bps speeds with your Newton --
a big thank you to Simon for adding that too! The only problem is that you
sometimes get timeouts with NCX and serial, and Simon has recently written
to me about possibly addressing that. But Simon's G4 Mac took a dive
recently and he is investing another way to get a Mac up and running so he
can continue the debugging process. Maybe there are some programmers among
us who could lend Simon a hand on this? If I were savvy enough in the area
of Mac programming, I certainly would.

> ...normal (everyday) usage of a Newton, with a High Speed ATA
> CF card and adapter, is hardly perceptible as being slower than what
I'm
> used to with Linear Flash.

Hmmm. I suppose I would need to get myself the same 150x or faster CF ATA
card to test with the enormous packages I use. Bibles for The Message are
massive, as are dictionary files for CLEX and Lexionary. While I understand
that most of you out there don't use big files like this, I do. That could
be why I felt my 1GB MicroDrive was like a snail, but again, I would need to
test this big files on a super fast ATA card to know for sure.

Thanks for all the comprehensive tests and extensive write-up, Ron!

Best,

James Wages

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