In the old days, (I remember when I was a lad ....) slaving was a good use
of unused memory. When dealing with large files, like the Quanta library
guide for instance, it is a boon. Try a scan first and see how slowly it
goes from start to finish. Then do another and see how much faster it is !
Look also at DataDesign, Archive etc - they all benefit from slaving, in
fact everything does to some extent - memeory access being far more
efficient that disc - thats how my Oracle databases work so well :o) (Well,
apart from me tuning them to 'perfecvtion' that is !).
I don't think Sir Clive was that far wrong - it was 1983 (84 ?) after all.
Now, in today's machines, where we have fast floppy discs, ZIP drives, IDE
hard drives, loads of memory - sounds like a PC doesn't it ? - we really
should have an interrupt drived I/O system which gets on with things in the
back ground - as we are used to - but allows us to continue what we are
doing at the same time.
Lights blue touch paper, dons Nomex flame proof suit & retires to a safe
distance :o)
Norman.
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Norman Dunbar EMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Database/Unix administrator Phone: 0113 289 6265
Lynx Financial Systems Ltd. Fax: 0113 201 7265
URL: http://www.LynxFinancialSystems.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: Peter S Tillier [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2001 7:49 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [ql-users] CDROM driver for Q40/Q60 and Qubide
>> It's a
>> pity that Sir Clive didn't put a single floppy into the QL instead of the
>> microdrives with an adequate power supply he would have sold millions.
And
>> there would have been (less/no) need for the slave blocks.
