[Virtualacorn-list] New Beta HostFS for VirtualRPC on Mac OS X

[Tim Powys-Lybbe]

In message of 18 Feb, ATimbrell at aol.com wrote:

> A new beta version of HostFS for VirtualRPC running under  Mac OS X
> is now available from  :
>
> http://www.riscworld.co.uk/virtualacorn/vrpc-mac/hostfs.bundle_beta18thfeb09.zip

Wow again!

I have repeated the tests that I last did in August of last year which measured some disc access speeds to be well below that of an Iyonix.  The speeds are now anything from twice to ninety times those of an Iyonix: (HFS stands for Host Filing System)

                        HFS II     HFS I         RPC
  Test                  on Mac     on Mac        SA
  Type                 % of Iyo   % of Iyo   % of Iyo
  ----                 --------   --------   --------

  Read of small file      247         38         46
  Write small file       1081         58         35
  Read large file        9222          9          8
  Write large file       3280         17         16

These test were done with 128 Byte and 394 kByte files for small and large.  Each file operation was done 10 to 1000 times and the averages are for all of these.  The file operations were done by OSCLI commands within BASIC loops.  The comparisons are of the bytes/sec in each case.

So many congratulations are in order to all who have been involved in this development (Red Squirrel Technologies and Virtual Acorn?).

My next concern is to see if these massively faster file operations leads to a reduction (or cure, even) of the VARPC on Mac crashes I have been experiencing when editing text in any application.  So far I have had no crashes but they have been highly unpredictable in the past with good days and bad days.  Watch this space.

-- 
Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim at powys.org
             For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/