> > On Sun, Feb 1, 2026 at 9:21 PM <[email protected]> wrote: > > I hope to get my hands on the 5mhz upgrade though. As much as I > love writing > > on my 200, it can get really sluggish after the file gets past 5k > in size. [...]
> On Sun, 1 Feb 2026, B 9 wrote: > > You mean how the keyboard starts lagging behind your typing when there's > a lot of text after your cursor? And there's no delay when > > you're appending to the end of a long file, right? The sluggishness is > so bad that I think even speeding up the processor 2x may > > not be enough. I think a more fundamental algorithmic change is needed. > > On Mon, Feb 2, 2026 at 11:30 AM <[email protected]> wrote: > Really! That would never have crossed my mind. Makes me wonder how the > text > editor in CP/M handles large files. Large files in the context of this > conversation. You don't think the 5k upgrade would yield much difference? > Well, that was my guess, but it's pretty easy to find out for sure, so I did. I edited src/display.cpp in Virtual T, set the "Very Friendly" speed (VT_SPEED1_FREQ) to 5MHz, recompiled, and used COPY and PASTE to create a large (10K) file in EDIT. I will say that where the original speed (2.46MHz) felt absolutely unusable for inserting text at the top of the file, 5MHz was snappy enough, or at least not too terribly painful. Still, it lagged far enough behind my typing that it distracted my thinking. > Journalists must've dealt with this issue during the device's heyday. It would be interesting to see if there are contemporaneous articles describing how reporters dealt with the Model 100's limitations. I'm guessing they wrote multiple small files as you are doing, but it's possible they simply suffered through it. After all, the advantage of being able to transmit their writing electronically would make it worth putting up with a lot of annoyances. And, it was probably still better than what they had before (TELEX machines). Actually, I just realized that I'm presuming people would edit their thoughts electronically as we do nowadays, but it's possible in the early 1980s that journalists actually did their editing with pencil and paper, perhaps in shorthand. If you use the Model 100 like a typewriter, only appending to the end of the file, you'd never experience the sluggishness I'm talking about. —b9
