Hi, rb!
Trying to kill the keyboard, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
([EMAIL PROTECTED]) produced 2,7K in 76 lines:
> However, I'm not sure that I'd recommend the drive. For a start, I
> can only get it to stream (ie. not shoeshine) at a transfer rate of
> 2 Mbps. 3 Mbps causes slight underruns, and 4 Mbps (the maximum)
> simply doesn't work. Consider how many hours this takes for the full 5
> Gb!
(List consensus:)
This is practically the same under windows 95/98, even though
the timing _can_ be monopolized under that non-multitasking
OS. (And yes, that's Mega_Bits_ per Second, with up to 50%
Overhead, so don't try to calculate the speed quite as high.)
> This may be something to do with IO to my hard drive (IDE, slooooow) -
> almost every time it is accessed (ie. makes a noise lasting more than
> 1 second) the tape underruns.
(List consensus:)
The hardware is generating interrupts at an alarming rate and
cries for feeding --- but very tiny bits of data only,
please. That causes the underruns if something else wants a
modest share of interrupts ...
> I was writing a buffering program to help it along at 3 Mbps, as all
> the ones I could find on Freshmeat either didn't work with a fixed
> block size or didn't do exactly what was needed.
(Personal experience:)
'buffer' should have almost everything you need, though. :-)
-Wolfgang
