🚀 go-pugleaf

kwrohrer@ta7.cs.uiuc.edu (Keith Rohrer) wrote:

>In article <5raMSlpJUjB@irata.Jena.Thur.De>,

>If the OS actually multitasks, software cache is far from nonsense, esp.
>when the hard drive controller can do DMA.  If you're using anything better
>than Windows, the machine goes on to do any other tasks that need doing
>while it waits for a slow I/O device like the hard drive, the floppies,
>the keyboard, etc.  Plus, the money you don't spend on an expensive
>controller can go to buy RAM for the mainboard (if you don't have 32
>megs), which can be used for both cacheing file I/O and keeping more of
>programs in memory, and more programs in memory (making better use of
>CPU resources and eliminating even the overhead of an interrupt and
>context switch for gobs and gobs of page faults) 

etc etc  - big SNIP

All this  is true and acknowledged - but it ignores the special case
(like me) where because of mother board limitations  the next RAM
upgrade is *expensive*.  I would have to buy 16Mb to go from 8Mb to 20
Mb, and finish up with 4 * 1Mb SIMMS left over.  (Admittedly I could
put 2 of them on my caching controller, and 1 on my video board) - at
current RAM prices that is hard to justify for the home user.

If you are speccing a new machine things are completely different.

I currently have a Promise VL4030 with 2Mb, and 8Mb on the motherboard
- it serves me well especially since one of my drives (Maxtor 850AV)
has only a small cache (cheapo drive!).  Smartdrv is set up to only
512Kb for the CDROM and Floppies only.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Finney
Petersfield, Hampshire, England