Figuring out the causes of slow disk access on the TF536

[GadgetUK164]

Tested 5 x 68030RP33's today, with MMU enabled. All performed identically and ran at 50MHz for 20 to 30 mins of intense testing without issue.

IDE speed increased from ~800KB/s to 2.6MB/s - I honestly don't think there's a speed issue on these boards related to IDE. That's unbuffered btw. I need to order the IC's to add buffering at some point.

[terriblefire]

Its been noted that this fix for slow audio has improved boot times..

https://github.com/terriblefire/terribl ... 01_RC1.zip

[go0se]

The improved boot times were reported incorrectly by me. Further tests show that average boot time is equivalent on previous firmwares and the Turrican sound fix version.

Apologies for the misinformation.

[arkadiusz.makarenko]

There is speed boost on IDE with this firmware, mainly visible on SD2IDE.
My image loads 2 seconds quicker, and SysInfo values are 0.5 - 1 MB highier on MMULibs and SD2IDE.
On CF it is 0.2-0.5 mb/s boost.

I will poke it a little bit more with DiskSpeed to see how it behaves on more precise benchmarks.

[Lynxman]

I get 6,5 MB/s in SYSinfo, and between 1,6 and 2,8 MB/s in the various SYSspeed tests with the card I'm running now. It's blistering and boots to WB in 17 seconds. 4096 block size

I also have a CF card that boots in 17 seconds with 512 block size. It gets ~50 kB speed in tests in both Sysinfo and SYSspeed. It doesn't feel that slow though. Just a little slower than the above SD Card. Going to try 4096 with it now to see what happens. Another CF card I have behaves completely differently with the same settings.

[Lynxman]

Setting the CF to 4096 block size gave me 15 s boot times. That's the fastest yet. Transfer speed is still super slow when testing. 50 kB/s. Takes several minutes to complete a Sysinfo or SYSspeed benchmark. I still like runnign it because it boots so fast. Games load slightly slower but just a few seconds. It's a weird one.

[richx]

Setting the CF to 4096 block size gave me 15 s boot times. That's the fastest yet. Transfer speed is still super slow when testing. 50 kB/s. Takes several minutes to complete a Sysinfo or SYSspeed benchmark. I still like runnign it because it boots so fast. Games load slightly slower but just a few seconds. It's a weird one.

Did you have FastRom on or off for the 50kB/s time? I've seen weird CF issues with a couple of smaller CF cards I have when FastRom is on. A 256MB card, for example, gets 800kB/s in SysInfo with no FastRom, but seems to never finish with FastRom on. No such issues on 8GB cards, getting around 4MB/sec there with FastRom on (960kB/sec without FastRom), RP33B/RP25C-1f91c CPUs.

Did a quick test, plugged the 256MB card into a PC with 3.5-to-2.5 cable, and "hdparm -t" gets 1.25MB/s, so maybe when FastRom is on the access speed is too fast/negotiation is failing, don't know. Other odd thing with this 256MB card is that the CF adapter LED is constantly on (both Amiga and PC), on another even smaller card and the 8GBs, the LED is only on during access. Also for the 256MB, there is a CC0: device on the Amiga.

[Lynxman]

On I believe. It's running Workbench Classic 68k. Exact same basic install as the other cards.