On 10/04/2022 13:30, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> the company
> was bought by Kraft in 2010, at which point their products quickly became
> inedible sweet junk.
Exactly. I used to buy the Bournville chocolate. Occasionally a milk
chocolate fruit and nut bar.
I bought precisely one post takeover and threw it away uneaten

Why marketing people think that the _only_ thing that matters in a
consumer product is the marketing, is beyond me.

--
The New Left are the people they warned you about.

On 08/04/2022 11:12, Vincent Coen wrote:
> Friday April 08 2022 20:50, you wrote to Shaun Buzza:
][Swap parition location]
> > Why ? Putting it dead centre of the tracks would seem to minimise
> > average seek time to the swap area.
>
> For a mainframe easy but for a micro using any O/S almost impossible - they is
> not the control to do so with out being VERY specific what cylinders / sectors
> to use and that means knowing exacting the size of the drive and the use of a
> calculator :)

RISC OS (a microcomputer OS) didn't have a swap partition, but it
formatted all of its discs so the disc map (equivalent of the FAT) was
in the middle of the disc, and allocated files from the middle out to
the edges. This minimised the seek time from the files to the disc map
which would be updated during every operation.

---druck

Shaun Buzza <nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org> wrote:
> Since you brought it up: in the 70s and 80s (and even into the very early 90s),
> 1 MB of RAM was unimaginable, and 1 GB was absolutely impossible.

It didn't take that long to get to 1 MB. The 68K desktops (Mac, Amiga,
etc.) of the second half of the '80s mostly shipped with at least 1 MB. It
wasn't just the 68K boxes, either. While the Apple IIGS shipped with 256K
at its introduction in 1986, it didn't take long for most to conclude it
really needed at least 1 MB if you wished to use it as more than just a
faster IIe.

(I could mention the Lisa, introduced in 1983 with 1 MB, but its $10k
pricetag kept it out of reach of most. It was only two or three years later
that the Macintosh Plus shipped with the same 1 MB for thousands less.)

--
_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 08 Apr 2022 15:05:11 +1200
> nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org (Shaun Buzza) wrote:
>
>> For best performance, I would also ensure the swap partition was at the
>> *front* on a HDD; for a SSD (or SD card), it wouldn't matter.
>
> Why ? Putting it dead centre of the tracks would seem to minimise
> average seek time to the swap area.

For spinning rust, data transfer rates are usually higher at the beginning
of the disk than at the end.

--
_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

On 2022-04-11, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 10/04/2022 13:30, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>
>> the company
>> was bought by Kraft in 2010, at which point their products quickly became
>> inedible sweet junk.
>
> Exactly. I used to buy the Bournville chocolate. Occasionally a milk
> chocolate fruit and nut bar.
> I bought precisely one post takeover and threw it away uneaten
>
> Why marketing people think that the _only_ thing that matters in a
> consumer product is the marketing, is beyond me.

Because it makes them lots of money?

No one in this world, so far as I know - and
I have searched the records for years, and
employed agents to help me - has ever lost
money by underestimating the intelligence of
the great masses of the plain people. Nor
has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
-- H.L. Mencken

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

On 2022-04-11, scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us
<scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> wrote:

> Shaun Buzza <nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org> wrote:
>
>> Since you brought it up: in the 70s and 80s (and even into the very
>> early 90s), 1 MB of RAM was unimaginable, and 1 GB was absolutely
>> impossible.
>
> It didn't take that long to get to 1 MB. The 68K desktops (Mac,
> Amiga, etc.) of the second half of the '80s mostly shipped with at
> least 1 MB. It wasn't just the 68K boxes, either. While the Apple
> IIGS shipped with 256K at its introduction in 1986, it didn't take
> long for most to conclude it really needed at least 1 MB if you wished
> to use it as more than just a faster IIe.
>
> (I could mention the Lisa, introduced in 1983 with 1 MB, but its $10k
> pricetag kept it out of reach of most. It was only two or three years
> later that the Macintosh Plus shipped with the same 1 MB for thousands
> less.)

I still recall reading in a trade rag in the early '70s how IBM rocked
the industry by slashing the price of a megabyte of memory from $75,000
to a mere $15,000. And now I walk around with a thumb drive in my
pocket that cost me $1 per gigabyte. It truly is staggering.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.

On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 12:28:55 +0100
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> Why marketing people think that the _only_ thing that matters in a
> consumer product is the marketing, is beyond me.

They have sales figures to back them up - unfortunately.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:22:47 GMT
scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us wrote:

> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> > On Fri, 08 Apr 2022 15:05:11 +1200
> > nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org (Shaun Buzza) wrote:
> >
> >> For best performance, I would also ensure the swap partition was at the
> >> *front* on a HDD; for a SSD (or SD card), it wouldn't matter.
> >
> > Why ? Putting it dead centre of the tracks would seem to
> > minimise average seek time to the swap area.
>
> For spinning rust, data transfer rates are usually higher at the beginning
> of the disk than at the end.

Sure but seek times matter more than data rate on a busy system.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On 11/04/2022 16:22, scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us wrote:
> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 08 Apr 2022 15:05:11 +1200
>> nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org (Shaun Buzza) wrote:
>>
>>> For best performance, I would also ensure the swap partition was at the
>>> *front* on a HDD; for a SSD (or SD card), it wouldn't matter.
>>
>> Why ? Putting it dead centre of the tracks would seem to minimise
>> average seek time to the swap area.
>
> For spinning rust, data transfer rates are usually higher at the beginning
> of the disk than at the end.
>
Not on a disk with constant sectors per track, it ain't...

I think only early floppy disks on non standard formats featured more
bits per track on the outside...

--
"Nature does not give up the winter because people dislike the cold."

― Confucius

On 11/04/2022 17:06, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:22:47 GMT
> scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us wrote:
>
>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 08 Apr 2022 15:05:11 +1200
>>> nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org (Shaun Buzza) wrote:
>>>
>>>> For best performance, I would also ensure the swap partition was at the
>>>> *front* on a HDD; for a SSD (or SD card), it wouldn't matter.
>>>
>>> Why ? Putting it dead centre of the tracks would seem to
>>> minimise average seek time to the swap area.
>>
>> For spinning rust, data transfer rates are usually higher at the beginning
>> of the disk than at the end.
>
> Sure but seek times matter more than data rate on a busy system.
>
Well that is all down to the exact nature of the data transfer. And what
caching strategies are involved.

Most drive software caches the directory and inode tracks and will
employ a sequential access across the disk to read and write, shuffling
sector orders. as it were, to maximise throughput

Then data transfer becomes the limiting factor

--
"Nature does not give up the winter because people dislike the cold."

― Confucius

On 11/04/2022 17:17, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2022-04-11, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 10/04/2022 13:30, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>>
>>> the company
>>> was bought by Kraft in 2010, at which point their products quickly became
>>> inedible sweet junk.
>>
>> Exactly. I used to buy the Bournville chocolate. Occasionally a milk
>> chocolate fruit and nut bar.
>> I bought precisely one post takeover and threw it away uneaten
>>
>> Why marketing people think that the _only_ thing that matters in a
>> consumer product is the marketing, is beyond me.
>
> Because it makes them lots of money?
>
But great brands with itrterly vile products do not succeed.

> No one in this world, so far as I know - and
> I have searched the records for years, and
> employed agents to help me - has ever lost
> money by underestimating the intelligence of
> the great masses of the plain people.

Hmm. These day's people are beginning to wise up...

Nor
> has anyone ever lost public office thereby.
Oh yes they have

Theresa May.

> -- H.L. Mencken
>

--
Labour - a bunch of rich people convincing poor people to vote for rich
people by telling poor people that "other" rich people are the reason
they are poor.

Peter Thompson

On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:17:26 GMT
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:

> And now I walk around with a thumb drive in my
> pocket that cost me $1 per gigabyte.

An expensive one then, they're running about 35-40c per gigabyte
now in sizes up 512GB for thumb drives and a bit less for 1Tb drives from
reputable suppliers.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

sc> > Since you brought it up: in the 70s and 80s (and even into the very earl
sc> sc> > 90s),
sc> > 1 MB of RAM was unimaginable, and 1 GB was absolutely impossible.
sc>
sc> It didn't take that long to get to 1 MB.

And yet, it was still literally unimaginable for some pretty dominant players
in the field, specifically one Bill Gates. I did some checking, though, and
even the IBM clone army broke the 640k barrier by '85, so it turns out I was
mistaken. Takes a while for technology to reach us savages in Canada, I
guess...

sc> The 68K desktops (Mac, Amiga, etc.) of the second half of the '80s mostly
sc> sc> shipped with at least 1 MB.

I have never been a fan of Crapple, mostly because of their business practices.
And after my first 286, I never looked at a 68k-based machine again. Sure, it
took Intel a while to get there, but when they did, they blew Motorola straight
out of the water.

McDoob
SysOp, PiBBS
pibbs.sytes.net

.... 640K ought to be enough for anybody. -Bill Gates, 1981.

On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:22:47 GMT, scott wrote:

> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 08 Apr 2022 15:05:11 +1200
>> nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org (Shaun Buzza) wrote:
>>
>>> For best performance, I would also ensure the swap partition was at
>>> the *front* on a HDD; for a SSD (or SD card), it wouldn't matter.
>>
>> Why ? Putting it dead centre of the tracks would seem to
>> minimise
>> average seek time to the swap area.
>
> For spinning rust, data transfer rates are usually higher at the
> beginning of the disk than at the end.

Agreed, but for even quite a small disk capacity (I'm thinking of the old
the 14", 20 surface, 3600rpm removable disks as used by mainframes and
minicomputers until the early 1980s), when the relatively sluggish head
movement speed made the difference in read speed between outer and inner
tracks irrelevant.

These disks held around 60 Mchars/Mbytes and typically had 135mS random
access times, or around 7.5 accesses a second. They were pretty much the
norm on smaller manually operated mainframes and minis. Sequential read
wasn't a lot faster: IIRC there was no interleave and a disk revolution
was 16.6 mS at 3600 RPM, so you got around 60 reads a second: a whole 8
times faster than random access. In this era the disk controller was often
several metres away from its drives and AFAIK, although it knew which
cylinder[*] the heads were on it had no way to know which sector was under
the heads.

These numbers I gave are for an ICL 1903 running UDAS, which was typically
used in unitasking mode, with programs either run manually by an operator
or sequentially a stack of job cards by the George 1 single streaming OS.

However, the 1903 could run George 3 if it had at least 32K of 24 bit
words of RAM, and G3 was a full multitasking OS and had an improved disk
accessing system which tracked disk head position and direction of
movement and maintained two sorted queues of access requests: one was for
accesses ahead of the heads and the other was for accesses behind the
heads. It worked by servicing requests from the 'ahead' queue until that
was empty and then switching direction. Even this simple strategy roughly
doubled the disk access rate. The difference was obvious if you stood by
the drives, listened and watched: compared with the heads thrashing in and
out when accessing a random or indexed dataset under UDAS, the volley of
clicks you heard as the heads floated gently in and out across the disk
under George 3 was obviously doing more work in less time.
I don't recall disks being much faster than that until controllers with
built-in track buffering became commonly integrated into 5", 3.5" and 2.5"
disks.
[*] back in the day we talked about 'cylinders' rather than 'tracks'
because, depending on capacity and manufacturer, a 14" removable disk had
anywhere from 1 to 40 recording surfaces and could hold anywhere from 5 MB
to 1 GB.

Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:17:26 GMT
> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>
>> And now I walk around with a thumb drive in my
>> pocket that cost me $1 per gigabyte.
>
> An expensive one then, they're running about 35-40c per gigabyte
> now in sizes up 512GB for thumb drives and a bit less for 1Tb drives from
> reputable suppliers.

....and even cheaper if you're not a stickler for brand names. The 128GB
stick I keep on my keychain was under 18¢/GB, and according to the seller, I
bought it a year ago yesterday.

By comparison, my first MB (as an expansion card for an Apple IIe) was
closer to $200-$300 when I bought it maybe 31-32 years ago.

--
_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 11/04/2022 16:22, scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us wrote:
>> Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 08 Apr 2022 15:05:11 +1200
>>> nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org (Shaun Buzza) wrote:
>>>
>>>> For best performance, I would also ensure the swap partition was at the
>>>> *front* on a HDD; for a SSD (or SD card), it wouldn't matter.
>>>
>>> Why ? Putting it dead centre of the tracks would seem to minimise
>>> average seek time to the swap area.
>>
>> For spinning rust, data transfer rates are usually higher at the beginning
>> of the disk than at the end.
>>
> Not on a disk with constant sectors per track, it ain't...

Try running some disk-benchmarking software on an old hard drive. You'll
see faster transfer rates at the start than at the end.

--
_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?