> Yup, and I think a RAM disk might have been faster than the solid state > "disks" we use now.
Absolutely. These would have been RAM, either directly addressed (Mac) or indirectly via a bank-selector (CP/M, etc.), which was at full bus speed. Today's SSD's are indirectly addressed flash EEPROM, usually through a load-balancing controller of some sort, and through an I/O interface like SATA. Very fast, to be sure, but still not anywhere near as fast as UN-managed raw RAM on the bus. And, writing is much much slower than reading, that's just basic flash-memory physics. Plus, today's software is metric crap-tons less efficient than software of yore. You can even see this over the lifetime of one computer, such as my old Pismo. That was a machine that was pretty fast when it came out, capable of playing DVDs (via software only) using about 25% of the CPU, and browsing the web quite satisfactorily. Yet by the time I retired it, web browsing was painfully, wheezingly slow. Same machine, still played DVDs well. In fact, still did everything BUT browse the web well. -- Jim _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
