| peranders |
Hi!
Subject only eyecatcher...
Can anybody explain why 585 MB (x40 CD P4, 1,8 GHz) takes 9 minutes, 15 sec. to copy from CD to harddisk? It takes 80 minuter with a Compaq Celeron 800(?) MHz.
Both XP
With a tired old Beige 266 MHz G3 Macintosh it takes only 5 minutes. 5400 rpm disk and x8 CD!
Why is PC so slow? Is something not trimmed? |
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| peranders |
What is the PC doing when the CD is not spinning and there is no writing on the harddisk?? Very noticable on the Celeron PC.
If the PC had desktop files (which Mac has) which is updated all the time I could understand the whole thing PC hasn't any, or? |
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| tiroth |
Most likely the CDROM is at fault. Most CDROMs are of extremely low quality.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Mac CDROM was better than the average PC one. Have you tried a better brand? (Plextor, VeloCD?) |
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| UrSv |
| quote: | Originally posted by peranders
Hi!
Subject only eyecatcher...
Can anybody explain why 585 MB (x40 CD P4, 1,8 GHz) takes 9 minutes, 15 sec. to copy from CD to harddisk? It takes 80 minuter with a Compaq Celeron 800(?) MHz.
Both XP
With a tired old Beige 266 MHz G3 Macintosh it takes only 5 minutes. 5400 rpm disk and x8 CD!
Why is PC so slow? Is something not trimmed? |
That performance depends on a lot of things. My guess would be bad drivers/incorrect installation with respect to IDE channels/bad CD drive. I hope you are not serious that it takes 80 minutes on the Celeron. There is something seriously wrong if it does. The difference should not be that big for the two PC systems.
Obviously also very common is that the CD is scratched and there is a huge difference in how diffferent drives behave when that is the case. Swap the drives in the Windows PCs (should be easy swap)...
/Urban
/UrSv |
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| fezz |
ok i dont know how technical you want me to go into this but here goes:
looking at the specks (i know them off hand) the MAC uses a 66MHz FSB, with IDE 33MB/S hard disk transfers - this limits the whole transfer of data from the hard disk or CD drive to CD writer to 33MB/s at this is only a theritecal speed, and there will be two devices on the same IDE cable - this is 1/2 of that - 16.75MB/s top
in comparison the celeron system can (depending on motherboard) have a 100MHz FSB, and can transfer data from the hard disk to other thing (such as CD writer) at speeds of up to 100MB/s
again in real life this will be halved to 50MB/s
modern P4's can transfer data around their motherbaord at speeds of up to 533MHz and data at speeds of up to 133MB/s
macs ARE NOT faster - the speed difference you see is down to the mac operating system only being able to do one thing at once - so all the speed of the back is put into buring the CD - the pc's can do other things at once so do both tasks slower then they would normally |
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| peranders |
| quote: | Originally posted by UrSv
That performance depends on a lot of things. My guess would be bad drivers/incorrect installation with respect to IDE channels/bad CD drive. I hope you are not serious that it takes 80 minutes on the Celeron. There is something seriously wrong if it does. The difference should not be that big for the two PC systems.
Obviously also very common is that the CD is scratched and there is a huge difference in how diffferent drives behave when that is the case. Swap the drives in the Windows PCs (should be easy swap)...
|
The CD is in perfect condition. The same CD was used in all machines. The Celeron is painfully slow when it comes to larger files. I'm not kidding, the Celeron is soooo slow.
I think also something isn't at optimum. The P4 is a Dell but since the XP was 2001 and not updated when I bought the PC recently I suspect drivers also maybe outdated. When you compress files the P4 is 8 times faster than the old Mac (266 MHz compared to 1,8 GHz) so there you experience a normal difference in the right direction. |
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| peranders |
| The CD is HL-DT-CD-ROM GCR-8481B Brand?? My DVD burner is Philips, equally slow! |
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| UrSv |
| quote: | Originally posted by peranders
What is the PC doing when the CD is not spinning and there is no writing on the harddisk?? Very noticable on the Celeron PC.
If the PC had desktop files (which Mac has) which is updated all the time I could understand the whole thing PC hasn't any, or? |
It depends. If it is the standard PC the it will be doing things like running MS (Office) indexing services, MS Windows Update checks , all software that has automatic update checks will be checking Internet connections, the desktop and other refresh will be done (yes, it does do that) and most importantly I think it will think about what the **ll all those entries in the registry REALLY are for (joke?).
/UrSv |
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| peranders |
| quote: | Originally posted by fezz
macs ARE NOT faster - the speed difference you see is down to the mac operating system only being able to do one thing at once - so all the speed of the back is put into buring the CD - the pc's can do other things at once so do both tasks slower then they would normally |
No Mac aren't very faster than PC. Tests show that certain things are faster and some other are slower... The hardware is the same in many cases.
This multitasking stuff. My P4 isn't very usefull when it's copying! Sloooow in other things. Mac is notiable slower but the copying speed is reduced when copying in the background. I don't know though how a G4 and Mac Unix is in this copying business. I suspect that UNIX is better than XP in many things. |
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| Christer |
Could be millions of things. For instance,
1) do you have the CD and harddisk on the same IDE channel
on the slow machine? (should not be the case)
2) Is DMA enabled for both devices? (should be faster when
enabled, although the opposite may also happen if there are
incompatibility problems).
3) Are latest drivers installed for all devices?
4) the other n millions minus three possibilities. :) |
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| Havoc |
| Got a virus scanner running? |
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| moses |
Peranders: You probably have the default windows install, which is probably dirty of bloated with included manufactor's ****, reformat put a fresh install of windows. Next, if you have the harddrive and CD-ROM on the same ATA chain, it will be very slow, as ATA can't handle interleaved I/O on the same channel very well at all. Update your chipset drivers, as this can make a huge difference. If you're running WinXP make sure you have SP1. Make sure DMA is enabled for both devices, other wise it will be doing PIO(if the computer is extremely slow when ripping the CD, it could very likely be that the CD-ROM is in PIO mode which will eat all of the CPU cycles it can).
fezz: Err. Most modern HD's really can't sustain *squential* transfers faster then 35MB/s or so. While ATA/66 and ATA/100 add some useful features, along with faster cache bursts, the overall bandwidth they provide isn't much of a blessing. Aso a Pentium 4 Celeron with a 100Mhz QDR bus(Capable of transfering the same amount of data as a 400Mhz, not quite the same latency however) with a 64 bit wide data bus. That provides 3.2GB/s of theorytical bandwidth. Going upto a 133Mhz QDR bus provides a health 4.2GB/s of bandwidth, quite a set from 133MB/s :). |
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| tiroth |
| quote: | Originally posted by fezz
ok i dont know how technical you want me to go into this but here goes: |
I think you are mistaken about a great many things. |
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| peranders |
Thank you guys and for the input. I suspect that Dell hasn't trimmed the performance at all. Is it normal for instance that a PC manufacturer install not the newest OS? Normal would be the newest available OS!
I have a Dell 8200 with DVD-burner, CD, ZIP, Turtle Beach Sound Card, Firewire and USB and some graphic (OK performance, don't remember the type, nVidia???) |
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| Christer |
I have no personal experience with Dell, I don't like those brand
name PCs. However, one should not assume they are always
competent to install the software right. I friend told me a few
years ago that they had bought a large number of Dell machines
at his work, and they were all terribly slow. Dell never managed
to solve the problem, as I understand it. I don't know what
happened eventually, but one should not accept it. It can be
that the software is not correctly installed, or the wrong drivers
are used, but it can also be that some pieces of hardware don't
get along very well. Whatever the case, if one buys a whole
machine with OS installed, it should work. It is up to the seller
to fix the problems. |
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| Christer |
[QUOTE]Originally posted by fezz
looking at the specks (i know them off hand) the MAC uses a 66MHz FSB, with IDE 33MB/S hard disk transfers - this limits the whole transfer of data from the hard disk or CD drive to CD writer to 33MB/s at this is only a theritecal speed, and there will be two devices on the same IDE cable - this is 1/2 of that - 16.75MB/s top
The FSB does not decide the transfer speed on the IDE channels,
although the FSB will usually be a multiple of the IDE speed. There
are various ATA standards for the IDE channels, using transfer
speeds of 33, 66 and 100 MB/s (maybe there are even faster
ones now). You cannot choose this arbitrarily depending on
which CPU you put in the machine, since both motherboard and
IDE devices must be specified for the particular ATA standard
you are using.
You are right, though, that two devices on the same channel
will compete for the bandwidth, which is why one usually puts
hard disk and CD writer on different IDE channels.
in comparison the celeron system can (depending on motherboard) have a 100MHz FSB, and can transfer data from the hard disk to other thing (such as CD writer) at speeds of up to 100MB/s
again in real life this will be halved to 50MB/s
No, as I said above, there is no such correlation between FSB
and IDE channels. The FSB specifies the clock frequency on the
bus between the processor and the chip set. This is often, but
not always the same as the clock frequency on the memory bus.
The PCI and IDE buses must usually be synchronized with the
FSB so that the FSB is a multiple of both these. The chipset used
determines how much flexibility there is in choosing different
multiples.
modern P4's can transfer data around their motherbaord at speeds of up to 533MHz and data at speeds of up to 133MB/s
What do you mean???
I think, however, you are assuming that the FSB figure refers to
the number of bytes per second that can be transferred, which
is not the case. The FSB is the clock frequency on the bus
between the CPU and the chip set. The actual transfer rate
depends on the width of this bus and how often data can be
transferred (once per clock cycle, twice,...) On the memory bus
(which need not have the same clock frequency) you usually do
not transfer data every clock cycle, since dynamic RAM are used,
and these need several clock cycles per access. |
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| ThingyNess |
Listen to Christer. The problem is very likely either that DMA is disabled on one or more of your IDE devices (hard drive or CD-ROM/RW), or that the hard drive you're trying to copy to and the CD-ROM are on the same IDE channel.
Go into your system control panel, open your device manager, and enable dma for all devices on your hard disk controller, and reboot.
If it's still slow, they're most likely sharing an IDE channel.
If it's set up right, any PC will have little difficulty maxing out the cd-rom speed, whether it's a Pentium 100, or a Dual P4 Xeon.
It's also possible (albeit not likely) that they have the cd-rom and/or hard drive forced into PIO (instead of DMA) mode in the BIOS. Why they'd do that is beyond me, but stranger things have happened.
The other possibility of course, is the virus scanner - make *sure* that's disabled.
Now, since your computer has 4 ide devices (an atapi cd-rw, an atapi DVD-rom, an ATAPI Zip drive, and a hard drive), they're guaranteed to all be sharing an ide channel unless dell put a second ide controller in the machine.
Try copying from the DVD-rom instead of the CD-RW, or vice versa. Only one of them can share an ide channel with the hard drive, so one of the two will be significantly faster than the other. |
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| jean-paul |
Am I the only one that doesn't like these eyecatchers ?
I remember some time ago someone opened a thread stating : "Black Gate sucks" just to get attention. A lot of discussion about the topic title troubled the thread.
There is nothing really wrong with it, but there might be a chance people give reactions on the "eyecatcher" and the thread might develop a debate concerning the topic title.
BTW: If you think pc's suck and Mac's are OK I think the s*cker is the Mac-guy that bought the pc, don't you ? :D |
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| peranders |
I think my eyecatcher wasn't too off-topic though.
I don't mind PC if it has cooler features than Mac but in many things Microsoft can't manage to steal the whole idea, just parts of it.
Take a good example: The desktop! Rather confused concept. You can't work from the desktop with windows covering it, because of the windows concept which they didn't understand fully. Some programs can't be opened by double clicking and file (Microchip MPLAB).
Take the user concept and the networking concept. Not easy to understand, compared to Mac.
Why have MS no (or almost no) short commands? How do I create a new folder with the keyboard only? CMD-N on a Mac.
The reason why I bought this new PC was that the old 486 was too old.... I do some programming on the PC. |
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| jgwinner |
Defrag your hard drive!
It makes a HUGE difference in speed. If you send / receive a lot of email, or surf the web ;) it'll fragment a hard drive fast.
Be happy, most Unix servers I deal with don't have defrag utilities. We recently had to rebuild a large client's hard drives from scratch for this (backup all shipping data for a major PC manufacturer to tape, format the RAID array, restore from tape). |
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| peranders |
| quote: | Originally posted by jgwinner
Defrag your hard drive!
It makes a HUGE difference in speed. If you send / receive a lot of email, or surf the web ;) it'll fragment a hard drive fast. |
The disc is almost empty. The problem I suspect is the communication.
I think defragmentation problem is overrated when we talk speed for normal applications. My experience on Mac is that you can win a little and only when the disk is almost full.
If you need large free spaces, erase the disk and have partitions or separate disk for video, audio and similar.
Defragmention is a vaste of time I think (for normal users). |
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| jean-paul |
| quote: | | Take the user concept and the networking concept. Not easy to understand, compared to Mac. |
Never talk with technicians about the Appletalk protocol ! Or Appletalk over IP. :yuck:
It works immediately because the machines are talking to eachother like old ladies the whole time. Because of that it creates more overhead than Netbeui. And networking on a Mac really is not transparent. Ever tried to combine a dialup connection and a ethernet connection on a Mac ? Please stop this nonsense. Both platforms have their ups and downs. A discussion like this always end up the Mac-guys being the underdogs that are very productive and creative and the pc-guys that are slaves of M$ etc. etc. And that Mac runs on Unix nowadays of course !
If your pc is slower than your old Mac there simply is something wrong with your hardware or a software-setting. It can't be that a 800 MHz pc is slower than a G3. Or are we talking about a 800 MHz LAPTOP with a 2,5 inch disk ? Turn on UltraDMA, check if there are updates for your pc's BIOS, learn your OS for God's sake and stop whining that Mac is better, faster, nicer etc. Or throw the damn pc away and buy the newest G4. I already hear the stories on birthdays that pc's really are nothing compared to Mac's and that you're glad you returned to those beautiful machines that are so userfriendly :yummy:
| quote: | | Defragmention is a vaste of time I think (for normal users). |
I don't even comment on that one. I service Mac's and I know better.
The point of making new folders with your keyboard only I don't see as I think the makers ( and the users ) of Windows intended to do everything with a mouse combined with a keyboard. There are however a lot of short commands. Buy a book about XP and read and learn the same way you learnt your MacOS. It will pay itself back. :yes:
I don't see what this all has to do with DIY audio. |
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| planet10 |
| quote: | Originally posted by fezz
looking at the specks (i know them off hand) the MAC uses a 66MHz FSB, with IDE 33MB/S hard disk transfers - this limits the whole transfer of data from the hard disk or CD drive to CD writer to 33MB/s at this is only a theritecal speed, and there will be two devices on the same IDE cable - this is 1/2 of that - 16.75MB/s top |
Just a point of interest. Beige G3s (and all desktop macs since) have a separate IDE bus for the CD & the HD. (matter of fact Rev A & B Beige do not support slaves on the IDE bus so there can only be one device per IDE... in the Rev C this was fixed, but broke again in the 1st generation of Smurf G3)
dave |
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| Digi |
I think the problem lies between the keyboard and the chair.
Rob |
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| planet10 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Digi
I think ... |
I think your post lacks respect...
dave :captain:
(moderator hat on) |
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| jean-paul |
| quote: | | I think the problem lies between the keyboard and the chair. |
:wave: |
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| Digi |
| quote: | Originally posted by planet10
I think your posts lacks respect...
dave :captain:
(moderator hat on) |
I think your post lacks foresight...
Where was your hat when you read the subject header for this thread? My response was to that, which as computer geeks all know instigates CONTROVERSY. Sorry that I'm not touchy feely, I call it like I see it, I will try to be more sensitive next time.
:grouphug:
Rob |
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| peranders |
Jean-Paul and everybody else: Take a full CD 600 MB or so and copy the whole thing into a harddisk. How long will it take at your machines? Just a test. I'm happy for you if I'm beaten with my tired old Mac.
My problem was very practical: I had a visit from a sales guy and we waited for the **** machine to get ready to work with. |
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| jean-paul |
I did what you suggested, Per-Anders.
I took the TI Designers Guide June 2001 which is 665 mb big cd. It is a "difficult" cd in the sense that it has a enormous amount of very small *.pdf files. I am sure a cd with just a few big files will give better results. The pc I used is a 1100 MHz Tualatin Celeron, 256 mb SDRAM on a Epox mainboard with UDMA 100. Harddisk is a cheap WD400EB 5400 rpm ATA100 disk.
From my cdrw drive ( Aopen CRW3248 limited to 40x reading for reduction of noise, firmware 1.17 ) it took almost 7 minutes to copy all files to the HD.
From my NEC 5800A DVD drive ( firmware 1.0B ) it took 3.30 minutes.
Windows XP Home edition dutch was used. Outlook Express was open and diyaudio.com was open too in a IE6 session.
Results with CDR's are worse than with normal CD's but that won't surprise anybody I think. |
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| fezz |
| quote: | Originally posted by Christer
[QUOTE]Originally posted by fezz
looking at the specks (i know them off hand) the MAC uses a 66MHz FSB, with IDE 33MB/S hard disk transfers - this limits the whole transfer of data from the hard disk or CD drive to CD writer to 33MB/s at this is only a theritecal speed, and there will be two devices on the same IDE cable - this is 1/2 of that - 16.75MB/s top
The FSB does not decide the transfer speed on the IDE channels,
although the FSB will usually be a multiple of the IDE speed. There
are various ATA standards for the IDE channels, using transfer
speeds of 33, 66 and 100 MB/s (maybe there are even faster
ones now). You cannot choose this arbitrarily depending on
which CPU you put in the machine, since both motherboard and
IDE devices must be specified for the particular ATA standard
you are using.
You are right, though, that two devices on the same channel
will compete for the bandwidth, which is why one usually puts
hard disk and CD writer on different IDE channels.
in comparison the celeron system can (depending on motherboard) have a 100MHz FSB, and can transfer data from the hard disk to other thing (such as CD writer) at speeds of up to 100MB/s
again in real life this will be halved to 50MB/s
No, as I said above, there is no such correlation between FSB
and IDE channels. The FSB specifies the clock frequency on the
bus between the processor and the chip set. This is often, but
not always the same as the clock frequency on the memory bus.
The PCI and IDE buses must usually be synchronized with the
FSB so that the FSB is a multiple of both these. The chipset used
determines how much flexibility there is in choosing different
multiples.
modern P4's can transfer data around their motherbaord at speeds of up to 533MHz and data at speeds of up to 133MB/s
What do you mean???
I think, however, you are assuming that the FSB figure refers to
the number of bytes per second that can be transferred, which
is not the case. The FSB is the clock frequency on the bus
between the CPU and the chip set. The actual transfer rate
depends on the width of this bus and how often data can be
transferred (once per clock cycle, twice,...) On the memory bus
(which need not have the same clock frequency) you usually do
not transfer data every clock cycle, since dynamic RAM are used,
and these need several clock cycles per access. |
the front side bus does effect the transfer of data, this is because the IDE (or SCSI in the case of old macs) is on the motherboard and instructions are sent to it at the FSB speed - this is limiting the speed of the data transfer - for example underclock a modern computer so the front side bus is 50MHz, but increase the multiplier so the cpu speed stays the same, this will effect all the computer operations as data is being stored in ram when transfers are being made and the ram will operate at a slower speed creating a bottle neck in the system
I did not say that Front Side Bus speeds bear a direction corrolation with the IDE speeds, justreducing the speed of one WILL create a bottleneck for the simple reason memory is used to transfer data from one place to another.
One point i think no one has picked up on is that some (if not all of the old G3 macs) used a SCSI hard disk, i do not know which type but i can say that is WAS faster then the IDE specification at the time - however as the CD drive and probably the CD RW are on an IDE bus (for simple reasons of avalablitity and price) and this will limit the transfer speed of the data to IDE speeds. |
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| jean-paul |
For comparison:
It took 2.20 minutes to copy the same files from my pc to an external Firewire Harddisk (cheap Quantum 10 Gb LCT harddisk ). |
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| fdegrove |
Hello folks,
Per,
All factory standard machines I've seen (and I see about 10.000/year) have their bios settings set to default.
What this means in the real world is that they play it safe and rather put out a slowish PC then an optimally working one.
Optimal setting will vary form one configuration to the next so some understanding of what does what are nessecary.
Not always easy,especially when the machine is not accompanied by a clearly written guide.
Things to look for are memory (RAM) timings,video and bios caching and ,would you believe it, some even hit the market with processor caching disabled.
Naturally correct DMA settings will play an important role and are often not set either in bios nor in software.
Havoc mentioned also virus scanning software and depending on how smart this is it will often slow down transfers of files considerably.
However I can't recommend disabling it since it would then be rendered useless and leave the machine unprotected.
Also there is little point in asking members to do some copying unless every single one of them would use the same CD for this.
The quoted transfer rates on IDE channels are labtested BURST readings and usually a far cry from what is realistic for everyday work.
Also,as mentioned before: stupid indexing services (developed for mega companies) such as MS Office indexer are absolutely useless even when you would create a dozen files everyday in Office.
It can be disabled in "Control Panel".
So what does the OS do when you copy a file from one location to another?
-File integrety gets checked at source (CRC).
-File gets opened.
-File gets checked for viri by software you may have installed.
-File gets copied in memory.
-File gets written to the new location.
-File gets checked for integrety.
-New file gets checked for viri.
-File remains in memory untill overwritten by a new user request.
A last point is to check for needless tasks running in the background,scheduled tasks,backup software, whatever.
These usually eat up quite a bit of the available resources.
Oh,fragmented files do require much more head movement from the drive so will definitely slow down read and write actions.
Glad to back, |
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| bob4 |
Hey Bud!!
Nice to have you back!!! :cheerful: :hug:
| quote: | | Also,as mentioned before: stupid indexing services (developed for mega companies) such as MS Office indexer are absolutely useless even when you would create a dozen files everyday in Office. |
How exactly? By using the "Add/remove program" function?? |
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| fdegrove |
Hi,
Thanks Bob!
I don't have that part of it installed on my machine but from the top of my head here goes:
Open up "Control Panel",within the collection of icons there should be one related to Ms Office.
Open it and it will show you what it has currently indexed (default is any partition/drive you have).
You can now safely delete all those indexes,then check stop indexing and close.
End of story and you have a much quieter and resourceful machine.
Sorry if what I explain does not really correspond with what you actually see but you should be able to figure it out.
I'm not sure this is installed with Office 2002 but on 2000 and some previous versions it definitely should be there.
Ciao,;) |
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| bob4 |
Thanks for the help Frank,
I looked for some icon related to MS Office before asking, but couldn't find any :eek: :confused:
Not my prob, I'm surfing on my mums machine ;) |
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| fdegrove |
Hi,
As per Office 2000,the user is given a choice to install it or not.
MS got the message,I guess.
It will most likely affect users of versions prior to Office 2000.
Ciao,:cool: |
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| peranders |
Thank you Frank for a little bit more ideas. This indexing can be something, also the virus checking. Especially the Celeron was thinking much without CD or harddisk access.
I appreciate real tips instead of that I'm an underdog. Since I have a speed monster I also want it to feel like one.
Since I use both platforms I also know the differencies but I haven't used XP so much yet. I don't want PC to suck more than a Mac. I just want technology that really can perform. I don't care about MHz or GHz (says nothing!). I care about user experience. |
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| peranders |
| quote: | Originally posted by jean-paul
The point of making new folders with your keyboard only I don't see as I think the makers ( and the users ) of Windows intended to do everything with a mouse combined with a keyboard. There are however a lot of short commands. Buy a book about XP and read and learn the same way you learnt your MacOS. It will pay itself back. :yes:
I don't see what this all has to do with DIY audio. |
This was a sensitive subject, Jean-Paul, I gather.
In the beginning Mac had almost none shortcuts via key strokes, DOS was ONLY that. Eventually Mac got more and more CMD-something and DOS became Windows. Later Windows got less and less short commands in favour for "right-clicking". Mac has kept the short commands AND implemented "right-clicking (or CMD-clickning). Mac users can choose what they like in this matter.
I understand that you don't know what I'm talking about cause PC users usually don't use the desktop very much but have a cool file handler is really important. "Finder" along with ACTION Utilities is something a PC user only can dream about. If you haven't seen it you don't know what to except. If only ACTION was availible on XP.....!
I use still use Mac OS 9 and haven't yet understood the coolness of MacOS X (UNIX). The UNIX (and LINUX) nerds are drewling over it. I have seen a little of it and it looks nice.
And yes, this thread has absolutely nothing to do with audio but I stirred up emotions and got some good answers.
Haveone tested audio editing and music on MacOS X? I read a musician magazine and they almost wet thier pants when they come into MacOS X. I gather that Mac works really good in the audio business. |
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| jean-paul |
Hi Frank,
Glad you're back to stirr things up a little. I started to miss your witty remarks a bit :eek:
| quote: | | Mac has kept the short commands AND implemented "right-clicking (or CMD-clickning) |
That is if you get rid of the original one button mouse I guess.
| quote: | | I understand that you don't know what I'm talking about cause PC users usually don't use the desktop very much but have a cool file handler is really important. |
I work with Macintosh machines too Per-Anders. I don't come from another planet. Although I sometimes feel that way if I stay too long between genuine Mac users that are discussing what colour their new Mac is gonna be. :boggled:
BTW you use Mac OS 9 and haven't yet understood the coolness of MacOS X !?!? Buy Jaguar next monday and you really have something exceptionally good in your hands compared to MacOS 9. Do it, as a Mac user you certainly won't be disappointed. Oh wait, don't do it. I already can see the new topics about MacOS X problems... You will be disappointed though about speed and responsiveness of the system. It feels more like eh... Windows XP perhaps ?
| quote: | | Haveone tested audio editing and music on MacOS X? I read a musician magazine and they almost wet thier pants when they come into MacOS X. I gather that Mac works really good in the audio business. |
OMG, Per-Anders does it again :yikes:
Jean-Paul |
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| fdegrove |
Hi guys,
Hello Jean-Paul,good to see you around as well.;)
Per-Anders,
I'm familair with older Mac OS versions so I know what Finder does but these Action Utilities,what do these do and did they come with the OS itself?
| quote: | | And yes, this thread has absolutely nothing to do with audio but I stirred up emotions and got some good answers. |
If I'm not mistaken,isn't this why this section exists?
And for the record,even the very first Mac OS was based on Unix,Steve Jobbs did most of that pioneering so I reckon this OS X is a further development of that.
I could be wrong about this but it sure reaks as if Mac wants to grab the attention of the Linux crowd with this marketing trick.
Now I just hope I haven't stirred too much up....:rolleyes:
Cherio,:cool: |
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| ThingyNess |
(to fezz)
Just to reiterate -- the maximum transfer rate of a 40x cd-rom is 6 MB/s. The maximum sustained transfer rate of a hard drive lies anywhere between 5 and 20MB/s for a modern drive. The PCI bus (upon which the ide controller lies), is capable of 133MB/s peak, assuming a 33mhz PCI bus speed. It's not physically possible to underclock your PCI bus enough to make it become even close to a bottleneck to the ide transfers in this scenario. Nor is it possible to make the memory or FSB speed become the bottleneck - they are 100% ignorable for our purposes here.
As I said before, a Pentium 100 (with a 66mhz FSB, versus the 400mhz of the P4) is fully capable of copying files from the cd at the exact same rate (fast enough to saturate the cd reader and the hard drive) as the P4. Physical media is so much slower than the supporting hardware that it renders it nearly irrelevant. The only thing that could cause his problems here are a software configuration error (such as a virus scanner in the background), or a hardware configuration error related to the ide bus (such as pio instead of DMA mode, or having the hd and cd-rom share a channel, having block/burst mode disabled, etc.)
I you have one car driving down Interstate 5, and decide to close 3 of the five lanes, you've "technically" created a bottleneck, very similarly to your FSB/memory speed argument. The car isn't going to go any slower however, becuase it was using so little of the available resources already that taking half of them away makes no difference. Same concept applies here. If you had a dual-channel caching scsi raid controller on the PCI bus, with 8 drives hooked up to it, we might be looking at a difference, but not in this case.
The SCSI versus IDE debate is moot as well in this scenario, as long as the hard drive and cd-rom were mounted on separate channels. We're talking about 6MB/s transfer here, which is easily sustainable by any modern incarnation of the ide standard. |
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| jean-paul |
Doei is the sound dutch cows make, Frank !
MacOS X is based on FreeBSD for PowerPC ( called Darwin at Apple ) with a shell on it that's called Aqua. There is a fair bit of NextStep in it too. It is a very well thought-out OS. Take for example the screenoutput in PDF format ! Stepless zooming in or out the icon of the harddisk really shows you a picture of a harddisk ! Regardless of the fact that we might not really need this it technically is impressive. IMO the looks are a bit overdone. But I will buy it the day that it is available for X86 ( and that day will come ! ) :lickface:
| quote: | | I could be wrong about this but it sure reaks as if Mac wants to grab the attention of the Linux crowd with this marketing trick. |
You're very right about this one. Please see the advertisements for Apple's beautyful first real servers. The words Unix/Linux return a lot and I even read "NT compatibility" :bigeyes: |
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| jgwinner |
I'll say it again:
DEFRAGMENT!
| quote: | | Defragmention is a vaste of time I think (for normal users). |
Not true at all, espeically if he's copying a lot of little files to the hard drive, buring to CD, deleting them, burning CD's .. that's a recipie for disaster.
It can double the apparent speed of your PC. I've seen this in the real world and in bench marks.
Virus checking and the indexing software can make a difference also, as others noted. |
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| fezz |
| quote: | Originally posted by ThingyNess
(to fezz)
Just to reiterate -- the maximum transfer rate of a 40x cd-rom is 6 MB/s. The maximum sustained transfer rate of a hard drive lies anywhere between 5 and 20MB/s for a modern drive. The PCI bus (upon which the ide controller lies), is capable of 133MB/s peak, assuming a 33mhz PCI bus speed. It's not physically possible to underclock your PCI bus enough to make it become even close to a bottleneck to the ide transfers in this scenario. Nor is it possible to make the memory or FSB speed become the bottleneck - they are 100% ignorable for our purposes here.
As I said before, a Pentium 100 (with a 66mhz FSB, versus the 400mhz of the P4) is fully capable of copying files from the cd at the exact same rate (fast enough to saturate the cd reader and the hard drive) as the P4. Physical media is so much slower than the supporting hardware that it renders it nearly irrelevant. The only thing that could cause his problems here are a software configuration error (such as a virus scanner in the background), or a hardware configuration error related to the ide bus (such as pio instead of DMA mode, or having the hd and cd-rom share a channel, having block/burst mode disabled, etc.)
I you have one car driving down Interstate 5, and decide to close 3 of the five lanes, you've "technically" created a bottleneck, very similarly to your FSB/memory speed argument. The car isn't going to go any slower however, becuase it was using so little of the available resources already that taking half of them away makes no difference. Same concept applies here. If you had a dual-channel caching scsi raid controller on the PCI bus, with 8 drives hooked up to it, we might be looking at a difference, but not in this case.
The SCSI versus IDE debate is moot as well in this scenario, as long as the hard drive and cd-rom were mounted on separate channels. We're talking about 6MB/s transfer here, which is easily sustainable by any modern incarnation of the ide standard. |
i see your point, but we are not talking about just one car, we are talking about many cars - 6MB/s may not sound much, but remember that it is about the same at the average home network (10Mbit - 8 bits in a byte)
and also remember that we are using theroy - a slower front side bus will result in a slower data transfer - this is due to the chipset and ram - also remember that we canot get up to 100% efficant - you are looking at between 70-90% in most cases
i suggest you download a benchmarking program by SISoft called SANDRA, it can test the maximum data transfer rate rate for computers - a P233MMX achives around 16MB/s - this computer is close to a beige G3 - bear in ming my computer - and most mordern computer are not limited by the ront side bus anymore - mine achives 1700MB/s
SiSoft also benchmarks harddisks and CD drives - my CD drive achived much greater then 6MB/s - 29MB/s! my hard disk also achives a substainable transfer rate of 41.7MB/s |
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| peranders |
| quote: | Originally posted by jgwinner
I'll say it again:
DEFRAGMENT!
Not true at all, espeically if he's copying a lot of little files to the hard drive, buring to CD, deleting them, burning CD's .. that's a recipie for disaster.
It can double the apparent speed of your PC. I've seen this in the real world and in bench marks.
|
I don't say that defragmentation is useless but some people do it too often. My disk 27 GB, 7200 rpm is probely fragmentated but I can't feel a thing when it comes to speed. I feel it's still very fast.
I have never(!) failed burning a CD with my Yamaha x6 and I have never defragmented before a burning. |
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| jean-paul |
| I know a guy that buys a new Toyota van and never, really never changes oil or filters. Yes, only when he sells it after 3 years. He never had engine problems. |
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| MRehorst |
| quote: | Originally posted by jean-paul
I know a guy that buys a new Toyota van and never, really never changes oil or filters. Yes, only when he sells it after 3 years. He never had engine problems. |
Quick! Tell me his name so I can put it on my list of people from whom I should NEVER buy a used car! (That list is page two- page one is the list of people whose dinner invitations I should NEVER accept - it includes people who use their toaster ovens to solder PCBs)
MR |
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| peranders |
| The difference is that this Toyota has a very special motor. When it is slow, just push a certain button and "vips" the motor is new again. The motor is fantastic, it needs no oil filter....:cool: |
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| Circlotron |
| PC's are ok just as mac's are ok, just that pc's very often get polluted with Windows.:rolleyes: So it's not entirely the fault of the machine. BTW, I run NT4 (on a P200MMX :xeye: ) which is not a toy OSlike some other MS stuff, IMHO. If all *Windowed* pc's ran it maybe the mac crowd would have less to laugh about. |
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| Circlotron |
| I think you can tell whether you have a "toy" or a serious operating system simply by watching the things that appear on the screen while it is installing. If it tells you it is exorcising daemons, creating file systems, reticulating splines etc then you are on the right path, but if it uses the word "rich" and "experience" together anywhere then look out.:yuck: |
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| fdegrove |
Hi,
NT4,Windozs2000 and XP are all based on the same kernell and can't be compared to the DOS based W9X OS.
NT was targeted for the pro market and is indeed a very stable OS,none of my Win2K machines have ever crashed for the past 2 years.
A record for MS I guess?
Gone are the blue screens and clueless error messages.
It is actually so good I often catch myself neglecting to take backups and snaps of the system.
We have come a long way in the past five years....how else could we spend so much time on DIYAudio?:D
Cheers,;) |
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| grataku |
NT4 was the best operating system ever created by microsoft, IMHO. It run fast, never crashed, needed very little hardware. Real OS for doing real work. I have XP home edition on my laptop now and it feels like win95. Full of crud and overhead service programs that I never use and make the machine snail slow. Nonetheless, that is still faster than any mac OSX 10.2 I use at school.
Frank are you sure that all XP are based on NT? Professional edition is. I am not so sure about the Home Edition. |
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| fdegrove |
Salut,
Yes,'fraid so.
The Pro edition doesn't suffer from all the hybrid clutter though.
Always go for XP Pro it is so much better.
A la prochaine,;) |
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| moses |
| quote: | | exorcising daemons, creating file systems, reticulating splines |
Circlotron: Heh, do we play the Sims a bit too much? :P |
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| Circlotron |
| Nah. Actually the rest of the family does. I'm not game oriented at all. I get all hyped up drawing schematics, simulating speaker boxes, playing with spreadsheets etc. That is very dull to them. |
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| jean-paul |
| quote: | | The Pro edition doesn't suffer from all the hybrid clutter though. |
Hi Frank,
Please explain this. IMO the differences aren't that big. Yes, Home edition isn't able to log on to domains. They are the same OS to a large extent. I have both Home and Pro editions and I think a lot of home-users decide for the Pro just for the name ;)
And yes all new Windows versions are based on the NT kernel.
So Windows 2000 and XP Home and Pro are NT in a refined form with all original NT's problems removed. And a lot of features like Plug and Play were added. Manufacturers of PCI cards and other hardware are told to make better drivers for their hardware and those drivers are digitally signed by Microsoft to guarantee the stability of your system.
This was in fact THE big problem with Windows NT. At least 50 % of the blue screens were created by bad written drivers. Apart from that I can still live with NT as it really still is a very good OS that deserves more than all the complaining a lot of people do about it. :grumpy: |
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| fdegrove |
Hi,
| quote: | | Please explain this. |
Don't read too much into that remark.
What I meant is that XP Home Edition inherited some of those half hearted utilities and gimmicks from previous OS versions that cluttered those.
The main differences between Home and Pro editions are mainly felt when you need to administer them.
On the Home edition you just don't have the same power to share folders,administrator rights and so on as a user.
Things can get tricky with that version.
| quote: | | At least 50 % of the blue screens were created by bad written drivers. Apart from that I can still live with NT as it really still is a very good OS that deserves more than all the complaining a lot of people do about it. |
NT4 is an excellent platform as per SP3,I'd even say that if you like a bit of a more spartan environment it has a lot to offer in sheer speed and simplicity.
The server version is even more stable.
If you have a bit dated hardware,say from around 1998,NT4 would be my prefered platform.
I had a software program from Steve Gibson that disabled all plug and pray for NT and all was bliss in the hardware department.
Once you have it properly set up it wil just run and run and run....
Win2K has a fair share of problems but nothing really major.
In my case for instance Explorer sometimes doesn't properly refresh because the machine has too much RAM.
Most of the other problems are more related with badly written software for the OS then the OS itself though.
One example is the very slow response I get for writing to UDF formatted media.
So slow that you would even consider not using that anymore.
It turns out to be largely self-healing and very stable,good,but not excellent at load balancing.
As with NT4,the server version is better but far more expensive to run, some software I use on the Workstation edition refuses to install on the server edition which is a pain.
Again this is due to how that piece of SW is written,NOT the OS fault.
| quote: | | very good OS that deserves more than all the complaining a lot of people do about it. |
Yes,complaining is sooo easy and doesn't cost a penny.
Moreover most of the time it's the users' own fault.
Remember ****?:D
Ciao,;) |
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| jean-paul |
| quote: | | What I meant is that XP Home Edition inherited some of those half hearted utilities and gimmicks from previous OS versions that cluttered those. |
Aren't these the same in the Pro and Home edition ?
Ok, fair enough. You're making a mistake however with this one:
| quote: | | I had a software program from Steve Gibson that disabled all plug and pray for NT and all was bliss in the hardware department. |
NT 4 never had Plug and Play !!!! Only items that were connected to the serial ports were "recognised".
Stability of the Workstation and Server version doesn't differ much as they are nearly the same. Some software, especially Backup software, recognises the version and refuses to install if you have the "wrong" one.
Plug and Play was introduced in Windows 2000 after more or less having success :xeye: in the W9x versions.
People still running NT4 better upgrade to SP6a and the Security Rollup Package. Less problems and more stability after the update. |
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| fdegrove |
Hi,
Well,that depends mostly on the way you define the concept.
I agree that the OS itself did not not offer any support for it initially.
However the main problem stemmed from the machines that had a bios with P&P support and even when turned off in bios didn't release the INT lines to the OS.
That little piece of software from GRC went along to sort things out.
Although I am not 100% sure about it,didn't SP3 offer better P&P support amongst other major improvements?
| quote: | | Some software, especially Backup software, recognises the version and refuses to install if you have the "wrong" one. |
I can readily accept that for backup software as it's server version needs to be a lot more extended for network support.
However,when I see that anti-virus soft and even a silly firewall do the same version checks I can get a a little :mad: .
Cheers,;) |
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| jgwinner |
| quote: | | Most of the other problems are more related with badly written software for the OS then the OS itself though. |
That's true (especially drivers), and there's 10x of the stuff (both hardware and software) for the Windows platforms so .... 10x the problems. It's math, not the O/S.
My favorite thing when Unix guys go off about how better their platform is, is to ask this: Would you want your Grandmother to use Unix? When the answer is yes, THEN we'll talk :D |
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| peranders |
Guys, this thread is now totally flipped out. The original question was about copying speed between CD and harddisk and how to increase the extremely slow speed. Everyone with a little bit of knowledge realize that a Mac from 1997 can't be MUCH better than a 2 GHz P4.
I haven't tested yet but I suspect the Panda Antivirus. |
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| jean-paul |
| quote: | | Everyone with a little bit of knowledge realize that a Mac from 1997 can't be MUCH better than a 2 GHz P4. |
Per-Anders, it was you that came up with the comparison. You stated that your G3 was faster copying files from cd than the P4.:bigeyes: |
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| theChris |
on the topic of CDrom drives: i've had one come apart while in use... a cd somehow came apart inside the drive while the drive was spinning up. amazingly, a piece flew 18ft out the front of the case. what's even more remarkable is the angle on it, as it missed many objects on the way.
my experience with macs hasn't been good. 1 mouse button is "simple" but i feel i can distinguish between left and right. also the macs i used were the slowest things on earth, probably due to the NOS or protocols in use. i assume the ones people buy for home use aren't as bad as the educational versions. I have nothing agianst macs, but i enjoy building things and there isn't much choice for mac parts... |
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| peranders |
| quote: | Originally posted by theChris
my experience with macs hasn't been good. 1 mouse button is "simple" but i feel i can distinguish between left and right. also the macs i used were the slowest things on earth, probably due to the NOS or protocols in use. i assume the ones people buy for home use aren't as bad as the educational versions. I have nothing agianst macs, but i enjoy building things and there isn't much choice for mac parts... |
You know, you CAN replace mouse, keyboard, whatever, with something else. 2 button mouse isn't very expensive, the same as for PC.
If you talk about slow, maybe you used an OLD Mac with MS Office 4 with was really slow. Later Office software were better in this respect. |
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| planet10 |
| quote: | Originally posted by theChris
1 mouse button is "simple" but i feel i can distinguish between left and right. |
Those multi-botton mice drive me crazy. One button (and the modifier keys on the keyboard) makes a lot more sense to me.
| quote: | | also the macs i used were the slowest things on earth, probably due to the NOS or protocols in use. |
Ones found in schools are often very old. One school i deal with still has Macs in use that are 10 years old. They are very slow compared to new ones, but get a job done.
dave |
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| theChris |
the problem with 1 button mice is: games. most first person shooters need buttons to really get into the action, or you have to learn a trackball/joystick combo. i have 5 buttons and mousewheel on my mouse, and have a hard time with the simpler 2 button designs, and won't touch something without a wheel.
i can navigate most websites painlessly with just my mouse, forums excluded. i only wish i could find another mouse like mine for the living room. |
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| peranders |
| quote: | Originally posted by planet10
Those multi-botton mice drive me crazy. One button (and the modifier keys on the keyboard) makes a lot more sense to me. |
My experience is also that mouse + modifier key is much faster and more ergonomical than shifting between left and right button. But mouse with wheel (note this was advantage PC!) in the middle is very comfortable when scrolling. |
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| R. McAnally |
the right/right buttons are much easier to deal with once you get used to it. with a modifier key you need both hands to do some things -- which are rather basic and should require anything more than a mouse click - like pulling up a menu of options.
and the wheel is VERY cool =)
btw, you can use either mouse you want on either system. USB is USB. |
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| rendisha |
Just copied 700+ MB file to HDD. Time it took:
1) from ASUS DVD drive 16x DVD/48x CD - 3:20
2) from NEC 32x CD - 6:40
Machine - celeron 366 running on 412 MHz, 160 MB RAM, Abit ZM motherboard (ZX chipset - crippled BX), DVD - second IDE master, CD second IDE slave, HDD - first IDE slave. HDD - 10 GB LCT Quantum.
XP pro installed, ftp connection running, when copying from NEC CD, system response was wery slow.
Peranders, you screwed something up ;) |
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| Nelson Pass |
I don't know. I bought an iMac just for the hell of it, and
nobody in my family can figure it out.
Where did they find those guys in the ads, anyway?
;) |
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| peranders |
| quote: | Originally posted by Nelson Pass
I don't know. I bought an iMac just for the hell of it, and
nobody in my family can figure it out. |
Nelson, Unix (in Mac clothes) isn't like Macintosh 1984/85. Then it was really easy to understand. Now it takes some time to get things, even with a Mac.
Compare the Dock vs. The task Bar for instance. The Dock much cooler or maybe I have missed cool features with the task bar. |
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| peranders |
| quote: | Originally posted by rendisha
Peranders, you screwed something up ;) |
Yes, something isn't right but the machine is just taken out from the box (from Dell). I suspect the Panda Antivirus. |
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| Christer |
| quote: | Originally posted by peranders
Yes, something isn't right but the machine is just taken out from the box (from Dell). I suspect the Panda Antivirus. |
But that is easy to check. Just shut down the antivirus prog
and try copying. |
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| theChris |
i'm not a fan of any of the purcashed PCs (except alienware, read on) for the reason that the P4 can benefit from faster, lower latency memory. my friend has a 1.5Ghz p4 with sdram. my 1.53 Athlon XP burns his systems so bad it literally disentegrates into component subatomic particles... While the atlhon does have a higher IPC, there is no excuse to how bad his computer is. (actually it may be mostly due to winXP now that i think of it...)
I'm sure one day i'll own a mac.
BTW, you want hard to learn, try linux... once i find out how to adjust the mouse speed i'll be on my way. someone suggested adding an option "resolution 3000" to my /ect/x11/xf86config-4 file in the mouse section... that's just what i had thought of, after all it is so obvious that you have to manually edit config files to do anything... |
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| jean-paul |
| Did Dell put Panda antivirus in the box ??? :confused: |
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| Neutron Bob |
Nelson! You hit the nail on the head. For those with a few minutes to spare, and a need for a good laugh...especially of you just discovered pin 1 on that last IC you just soldered so perfectly is pointing backwards...
Look at the apple.com/switch/ads site, and click on the various TV ads. Check out my favorite: Ellen Feiss ! Draw your own conclusions about the future of our college students.
Be sure to check out the ones in Japanese too...they are a riot!!!
Bob |
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