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Date:      Sat, 5 May 2001 15:54:04 -0700
From:      baz <bsimpson@mediaone.net>
To:        Mike Jeays <jeays@statcan.ca>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re[2]: CD-RW IDE - CPU requirements
Message-ID:  <15326921681.20010505155404@mediaone.net>
In-Reply-To: <3AF357E3.A02B799@statcan.ca>
References:  <3A66CAF3B5D3D4119AFD00508BC286ADE22F0B@msxa4.statcan.ca> <20010504170735.A8492@home.com> <3AF357E3.A02B799@statcan.ca>

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Hello Mike,

Friday, May 04, 2001, 6:31:15 PM, you wrote:

MJ> Thanks for the info.  I was surprised by a recent evaluation of CD-RW
MJ> devices in a local magazine, that specified different levels of 
MJ> Pentium 2 and 3 for various drives as the minimum acceptable - under
MJ> Windows, of course.  I am quite happy to make sure the machine is
MJ> not doing anything else while I write a CD.

i tried a new sony RW 8*4*4  under Win2K.
in the RW's PIO4 mode the cpu sytem 'overhead' was 40% of a P3 550.
in the DMA2 xfer mode 'overhead' dropped to 4%; however the
handshaking proved unreliable even thouh the RW was the only device on
the Secondary IDE channel.

So, if your RW device can negotiate DMA cleanly, the a P100 would have
no problem avoiding buffer under-runs.


MJ> Graywane wrote:
>> 
>> On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 12:01:48PM -0400, Mike.Jeays@statcan.ca wrote:
>> > Has anyone succeeded in running an IDE CD-RW device on a Pentium 120?  I
>> > am not sure if the CPU speed is adequate to keep up the required data
>> > transfer rate.
>> 
>> You can saturate a PCI bus with an old 386 much less a Pentium 120. Any CDRW
>> you get will be incredibly slow compared to the CPU. Just make sure you have
>> enough RAM so that you don't swap heavily while writing your CD's. Free
>> memory and not running programs that read/write the other drives is far more
>> important than processor speed.
>> 
>> As for what drive to get, I have a PLEXTOR CD-RW PX-W1210A (32/12/10) and am
>> very happy with it.
>> 
>> Michael
>> 
>> --
>> Note: See http://www.members.home.net/graywane/ for PGP information.
>> 
>>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>    Part 1.2Type: application/pgp-signature




-- 
Best regards,
 baz                            mailto:bsimpson@mediaone.net



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