                      NOAH HARDWARE REVIEWS
              Information for ADAM hardware buyers.
                        By Ronald Collins
              President: Northern Ohio Adam Hackers

                       September 19, 1988

I  recently  read  the following excerpts from  an  Adam  journal 
called  "ADAM'S ALIVE".  This was the JULY/AUGUST 1988 issue  and 
this  text  is found on page 4.  By the way, this  newsletter  is 
published  by  Ed Jenkins of E.& T. Software, and  is  very  well 
done.  The excerpts of interest to me read as follows:

     "Since  ALL our Drives format up to FOUR TIMES  faster  than 
those sold from Orphanware, several people have called requesting 
the purchase of our faster 320K and 720K EPROMS."

The paragraph goes on to say that this EPROM sold by E.& T. "will 
work with a 320K Orphanware Drive, decreasing the format time  by 
some 29 seconds".

As  a  regular  user  of WordSTAR,(used  almost  daily  to  write 
documentation  and  description  files  for  Adam  Software   and 
Hardware, as well as numerous articles for the many Adam  related 
journals),  I  am  always looking for ways to cut  down  my  disk 
access time.  This along with the rather "pointed" wording of the 
article  were  all it took to start me on the several  hour  long 
task of testing EPROMs.  Out of curiosity, I "just wanted to know 
the truth of the matter!"

To make sure the test was done the same for each EPROM format,  I 
selected  ONE drive to do the changes on.  This one drive  is  my 
old  IHS double sided disk drive.  I selected this drive for  two 
reasons:  1st,  because  it was from  NEITHER  VENDOR,  and  2nd, 
because it has always  proven to be a highly reliable disk drive. 
The  disks  used in the test were  TOTALLY  UNFORMATTED  VERBATIM 
disks.   The  format program was Tony Morehen's  FILEMANAGER.   I 
chose FILEMANAGER for three reasons: 1st, because as the original 
author  of  the  320K  Disk  Drive  EPROM,  I  felt  he  deserved 
participation  in  the test, 2nd, because the program is  an  EOS 
program, and 3rd, because this program first formats, then does a 
verify (if pre-selected) and finally, FILEMANAGER initializes the 
disk.  I did three types of format testing: 320K with NO  verify, 
320K WITH verify, and RE-FORMAT with NO verify.

To cover the CP/M users out there, I decided to check the drives' 
read/write  function times by copying 11 WordSTAR 4.0 files  that 
totaled  226K  from  my 512K RAMDISK over to  the  modified  disk 
drives.  To finalize the test, I booted the WordSTAR 4.0 program 
from the disk just copied.

The  following  chart will give you an idea  of  the  differences 
between  the  various  types  of  320K  disk  drives  under   the 
conditions of my test.

                         The FORMAT TEST
     =======================================================
      TYPE        | Format/nv  | Format/wv  | Re-format/nv
     =======================================================
      Normal 320     | 2min,13sec | 5min,10sec | 36 seconds
      E&T FAST       | 37 seconds | 3min,17sec | 33 seconds
      OBS FastPACK   | 37 seconds | 3min,21sec | 35 seconds
      OBS Pre360K    | 36 seconds | 3min,31sic | 34 seconds

                      The WordSTAR 4.0 TEST     
     =======================================================
        TYPE      | Copy 226K of files   | Boot WordSTAR
     =======================================================
        Normal 320    | 4 minutes/7 seconds  | 39 seconds
        E&T FAST      | 3 minutes/46 seconds | 36 seconds
        OBS FastPACK  | 3 minutes/59 seconds | 35 seconds
        OBS Pre360K   | 3 minutes/37 seconds | 31 seconds

As an incidental addition to the test, E&T advertises the  format 
speed of their 720K drive to be 1 minute and 5 seconds.  The  OBS 
(Orphanware Business Systems) 720K drive that I have formatted in 
1  minute  and  6 seconds.  I had no E&T 720  drive  for  further 
testing, but while I was in the mood to do the tests, it took  54 
seconds  to boot WordSTAR 4.0 from the 720K OBS drive and only  5 
seconds to boot the same program from the RAMDISK!
 
I  will let you draw your own conclusions as to the  accuracy  of 
the  claims made by any one vendor.  I am skeptical when  I  read 
that "all" our drives format faster.  This just doesn't apply  to 
the  720K  drives at all.  As for the 320K drives,  the  original 
version is indeed "close" to 4 times slower when formatted  with-
out a verification.  When compared to any of the new OBS  drives, 
however, the difference is one of only a couple of seconds or so.  
This held true for both with and with-out verification.  

I'm  very glad to see that I will now be able to spend less  time 
formatting my disks.  The problem is, "I only format once!"   The 
only real consideration I have in using a disk drive is "how long 
will it take to USE the programs I have on the disk?"

As the above charts indicate, the differences in these  respects, 
whether the original or the new of either vendor's EPROM is used, 
is  NEGLIGIBLE!  When you consider the more than $40  dollars  in 
cost  difference between the two disk drive dealers, I think  the 
deciding factor on "which to buy" is no longer one of SPEED!  

I myself will wait until the release of the OBS 360K disk  drives 
later  this week before making MY NEXT PURCHASE!  I welcome  your 
comments  or  questions.  Those wishing to reprint  this  article 
have  advance permission from me to do so provided it is  printed 
in it's entirety.

                                        Ronald W. Collins
                                        President: NOAH
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