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1989-09-30
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4KB
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78 lines
SHAREWARE REVIEW
PROGRAM: DISKBUF -- Optimize your BUFFERS=
AUTHOR: W. G. Madison
REGISTRATION: Public Domain
WHERE FOUND: Sound of Music (516) 536-5630
RESTRICTIONS: None
RATING: 8.5
Buffers and Files. Files and Buffers. Software packages tell you what to
set them at; gurus tell you how to use them; DOS manuals explain what they
are. Aside from still having no idea what Buffers and Files are you feel
rather comfortable sitting down to the computer. Yeah, right.
Show of hands for those who have absolutely no idea what Buffers are. Wow,
can you get together and do the wave? Ok, out of that group a show of hands
for those who actually care what Buffers are. Almost 0%. Fantastic. I used
to care less what my Buffers were set to until I read they take up memory.
No, not my precious memory. Anything but that. Disk space, screen size,
anything but my memory. Where will I put the funky program that tells me
what drive I'm on, or that whizzer of a program that allows me to see my
hard drive go on or off. You know, the necessary programs?
Settle down. They only take a little bit of memory: 512 bytes. Alas,
putting two together only takes up 1K. Whew. Hold it! What about the 20
that Telix says is needed. Hmmm. That's 10K!
Don't worry. Fire up DISKBUF and let it work on your Buffers. It will find
the optimal Buffers setting for your PC, and plot you a pretty picture
afterwards.
USE: Diskbuf assumes that you no NOTHING about Buffers. This is such a good
feature for software, because sometimes a package may "assume" that
you know what you are doing. See, Diskbuf takes an updated "hit and
miss" style of finding what is best for your buffer settings. It will
sequentially boot from your floppy, change the Buffer size, run a
small seek/retrieve test, then log the results contain figures of
"merit." The lower the merit number, the better that Buffer setting.
To use Diskbuf you must format a disk for drive A with the system on
it (Bootable), then copy over the Diskbuf distribution files
(DISKBUF.COM and AUTOEXEC.BAT.) The only user defined variables are
controlled through the new autoexec.bat file on the floppy drive,
which summons DISKBUF.COM. The option available are as follows:
/TARGET: What disk will be tested
/MAXBUF: Upper Buffer Limit
/MINBUF: Lower, or starting, Buffer limit
/PLOT : Keep a graphic screen of results
After booting your PC leave for about an hour. (That is what it took
to run through 20 different Buffer settings) The computer will boot,
run, boot, boot, run for a while. After the program finishes the
figures of merit are displayed. (My best was 6. I originall had it set
to 25) You can even use another program included, PLOTBUF, to read the
graphics screen saved.
The program runs exceptionally well, but I ran into one SERIOUS
problem. What about a Cache? If the program, upon rebooting, erases
and rewrites the config.sys you lose the loading of a Cache, which
definitely helps disk performance. This is a tragic, missing element
in an otherwise fine piece of software.
SUMMARY: GOOD POINTS BAD POINTS
----------- ----------
√ Public Domain ≈ No Cache Provision
√ Great Documentation ≈ Slowwww
RATING FOR DISKBUF.ZIP:
1----------5---------10:
███████████████████
8.5
The missing Cache feature really impeded DISKBUF's ascent to a perfect
10.0. Adding that feature,and making the program a bit faster would help.
(C) 1989 Patrick Grote