Re: [NTLK] ATA Linear flash speed

On Aug 22, 2008, at 10:54 PM, James Wages wrote:
> 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 --

> The only problem is that you
> sometimes get timeouts with NCX and serial,

Shucks... One must have OS X v10.4 or higher and I'm not quite there
yet. No worry though... AppleTalk over Wifi has won me over with its
speed, reliability and compatibility with Classic NCU & NTK. It works
very well and it pretty much works as fast as your Newton will ever go.

> and Simon has recently written
> to me about possibly addressing that.
> But Simon's G4 Mac took a dive

Ouch!

>> ...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.

Allow me to help clarify: It's not so much as the size of the files, in
as much as the amount and frequency of data being written to and/or
read from the ATA.

Take a file as massive as the Bible. ATA will always be slow
"downloading" the package to your Newton. However, once it's on your
Newton, how much "massive" read/write activity is the Bible performing
on the ATA card... not much. Packages like this only move small chunks
of data in/out of current memory... that amount of data which is
required at the time you move to the next page. Otherwise the app sits
dormant while you're reading it.

Many programs will be this way. Once on your Newton, they will operate
pretty much at normal speeds. This is because they are not dependent on
having to constantly read (or write) large amounts of data to the ATA
store.

Last night, I tested Mail V with it set to save the incoming emails to
the ATA. The results were not good. The speed of the ATA drive severely
affected how fast the Newton was able to manage the incoming data from
the POP3 connection. 2K messages were slow but downloaded fine. But,
the first 57K message Mail V tried to download, the POP server timed
out and Mail V disconnected with an error saying so.

Mail V set to store the data to the ATA will probably never be a valid
option.

Allow me to make an educated guess about Newt's Cape. It's not going to
do well either. Newt's Cape web browsing is already a lesson in
patience. The way it (and most browsers) work is to download the html
and graphics to a cache location and then format the page by reading
the data from that local cache. Uh oh... once again there will be
massive read/write/reading of many large pieces of data. The source
html, several gif's and/or jpg's of various size, etc.

Newt's Cape will also prove to be a bad idea for ATA.

At this point, I already know the answer to my next test. GPS (the
application) uses 1-2MB graphic packages for map backgrounds, to
display your position on a real map in real time. The incoming data
from the satellite updates your position and redraws the map every
second. ATA speeds will prove to be a death blow to it's ability to
update and save tracking data.

I'm guessing GPS will not work, not at all...

Sad, but still likin' the 1GB 150x CF card with ATA Support,

Ron

--
Sent using Mail for Mac OS X. Cyberdog lives!
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RAParker
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My name is R A Parker. I own a Newton and a Mac.
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