This utility will increase the throughput of Finder file copies and duplications by up to 320%. Copy speeds of 102 MB per minute have been achieved. Zooming Rectangles may be turned off as well, making Finder windows open and close much more quickly.
These dramatic increases are accomplished by modifying System 7.1. There are no memory resident control panels, extensions, INITs or CDEVs.
Ballon Help will give you the highlights of this manual. This application supports all color and black & white systems.
Operation
Upon launching the F.A.S.T. application, you will be presented with the following dialog:
F.A.S.T. must modify certain aspects of your system software. In order to do this, all applications must be shut down. Clicking Cancel will quit the application without effecting your system or any currently running applications. Quitting all running applications will be done for you by clicking Continue. Once apps have been terminated properly, you will see:
A Title Region:
Clicking in this region will show the applications About Box. This is equivalent to showing the About Box from the Apple Menu.
B Enable Fast Copying:
This option maximizes file transfer block size, allowing the Macintosh to read more information per block, reducing the number of blocks it must read to do the copy. This greatly enhances copying speed.
C Use Maximum Buffer Size:
Checking this box maximizes the copy buffer area, allowing the Macintosh to read more blocks into memory before writing to disk. F.A.S.T. will use all available memory for copying, so having 20MB of RAM allows approximately 17MB file copies with one read and one write. This is over 50 times more efficient than the standard Finder. The larger the file, the more benefit you will see from this option.
D Disable Zooming Rectangles:
The Disable Zooming Rectangles Check Box will enable or disable the drawing of the ghost rectangles that draw to and from opening and closing windows and applications. On slower machines (SI and below), window draw-time is significantly reduced with this option enabled (checked).
E The Remove Button:
This button is used to de-install F.A.S.T. It is used, when for some reason, you wish to no longer have F.A.S.T. running on your computer. It will put your system back to its original state.
F The Cancel Button:
This will exit F.A.S.T., leaving your system unchanged.
G The Install Button:
Clicking Install commands F.A.S.T. to update the System with the settings you have specified.
NOTE: To remove F.A.S.T. from your system, simply click the Remove button.
Anomalies/Troubleshooting:
1. Under certain circumstances you may have memory problems. If you are going to have problems it would most likely occur while you are workling with suitcases such as Fonts or DAs. This problem is very rare and was only seen a couple of times by people running System 7 without the System 7 Tune-up. It has not been observed under System 7.1. If the problem ever does occur, disable the Maximum Buffer Size option, leaving Fast Copying enabled. If that does not take care of the problem then please contact Newer Technology at 800-678-3726 and report it to the Technical Service Department.
2. Users of SpeedyCD may have memory problems since F.A.S.T. and SpeedyCD try to utilize the same memory space. To allow SpeedyCD and F.A.S.T. to work together, simply disable the Maximum Buffer Size option.
3. Users of the 7th Heaven v1.0 or 1.01 Performance feature should install F.A.S.T. on their systems. This should be accomplished by unchecking all options in the Performance module of 7th Heaven v1.0 or 1.01, then installing to remove. Follow the instructions in the F.A.S.T. installation procedure to install F.A.S.T..
4. There is apparently a problem with F.A.S.T. and Bernoulli drivers. This problem was seen a couple of times in early 1992 but has not been reported since then. As with previously stated conflicts, the Bernoulli conflicty appears to go away when you disable the Maximum Buffer Size option in F.A.S.T..
5. There are no anomalies we know of as of this writing when using Fast Copying only. The problems which occassionally show when running F.A.S.T. with Maximum Buffer Size enabled are due to small pieces of software code which are locating themselves in places where they technically should not be. When this occurs F.A.S.T. finds them and you either get a System Lockup or the copy procedure simply doesn't occur.
Who To Call If You Have Questions:
1. Newer Technology's Technical Service Department is ready to handle your calls between the hours of 8:30am through 5:30pm Central Standard Time (CST).
