Info-IBMPC Digest       Wednesday, 27 May 1987        Volume 6 : Issue 39
      INFO-IBMPC BBS Phone Numbers: (213)827-2635 (213)827-2515
>How do I configure 720K 3.5" floppies on an AT system under DOS 3.3?

I have an IBM AT 339, with external 3.5" IBM drive. I made no
changes for 3.3: the drive came with two drivers, which I installed
in config.sys as follows:

device=c:\exdskbio.drv
device=c:\driver.sys /d:2 /t:80 /s:9 /h:2 /c

I don't have the documentation for those switches at hand, but I
can get it. As above, you get 720K. Now I wish I had waited for
a 1.4M drive!


For many boards, such as the Vega & the Qega, Codeview wreaks havoc on the
palette.  To fix this
 
 copy cv.exe cv.dat
 debug cv.dat        -- Note that SYMDEB cannot necessarily be used for this.
 e 2f37
 0                   -- This changes a flag value in a move from 1 to 0.
 
 e 2f6b
 c3                  -- This change a CALL to a RETURN.  You can instead do
                        90 90 90 to nop the entire call and drop through to
                        the following return.
 w
 q
 
 copy cv.exe cv.bak  -- just for safety
 copy cv.dat cv.exe 

From: lowey%sask.UUCP%relay.cs.net@RCA.COM
Subject: Benchmark Wars Round 2
Organization: University of Saskatchewan

Hi,
  Back by Popular Demand . . .

  Here are the results of my more "scientific" benchmark tests.  I did the
tests on 13 different machines covering a wide variety of configurations.
I'll be posting the program used to do these tests in another message, so that
you can pick apart my methodology at your leisure.

  Before I get started, please, no flames about not enough information about
clock speed, graphics card used, manufacturer of the disk drives, or other
equipment information.  Most of these were done in a computer store just
before closing, with sales people who didn't even know what MHz stands for.

  The results are shown in two tables.  The first table shows mainly the
computational intensive tasks.  These tests could be run on all machines
tested so they form a good basis for comparison.  The second table compares
disk speed and graphics speed, which vary a lot between machines.  For
example, one machine used a Monochrome card, so the graphics tests could not
be done.  The second table also gives more info on the Whetstone results.

The Systems Tested:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Each system is numbered for reference in the tables.  Numbers with a "*"
beside them in the tables indicates that the 80287 Numeric co-processor
was present.

The systems are numbered in order of increasing speed when the Math
Coprocessor is not included.  All systems have an IBM-CGA compatible card,
produced by the same manufacturer as the computer.  The exception is
the IBM-XT computer, which has an IBM Monochrome card.


Benchmark Tests:

All the tests were performed by booting my test diskette.  This removed the
problems encountered with memory resident programs, etc.  The disks had
no autoexec.bat or config.sys files.  I used PC-DOS 3.2 on all disks requiring
a 5.25 inch disk.  I used PC-DOS 3.3 on disks booting from a 3.5" disk.
PC-DOS probably gives an unfair advantage to IBM machines.

The test program is written in Turbo Pascal.  I compiled it under Turbo
version 3.01A for PC-DOS.  I did two versions, one for 8087 machines and 
another one for normal machines.  The source code used was identical.

All tests on floppy diskettes were done on either a 360K formatted 5.25" or
720K formatted 3.5" diskette.

I performed 11 tests.  The following is a short description of each:

TEXT:
  Tested the time required to display 100 79 column lines in text mode.

MEMORY:
  Moved a 4000 byte array from the data segment to the heap segment and
  back 2000 times.

Sieve:
  Calculated prime numbers up to 16383 ten times
  Adapted from C program in byte magazine, November 1985 page 322

fibonacci
 Calculate 24th fibonacci number, from BYTE mag, Nov. 1985, p.280

Whetstone
  Do one iteration of the Whetstone test.
  Times are recorded for the entire test in the first table.
  Timer for the first and second pass, as well as whetstone Instructions
  per Second (WIPS) are stored in the second table.

Intmath
  integer mathematics test, adapted from BYTE mag. Nov. 1985 p. 292

Float
  Test multiply and divide operations,   from BYTE mag, Nov. 1985, p.284

transcendental
  Do tan(arctan(exp(ln(sqrt(i*1.0*i))))) 2500 times

Disk Test
  Times how long it takes to write 160K to the disk.  The possibility of
  buffering was not taken into account.

Graphic Text:
  Same as the TEXT test above, except done in 640 by 200 Graphics mode

Points test:
  plot all the points on the screen, in 640 by 200 graphics mode,
  starting from the bottom and working towards the top.

============================================================================
 # | Model                   | CPU   |  NDP  | Clock | Notes
============================================================================
 1 | Compaq 386 (Model 2570) | 80386 | 80287 |       |
 2 | IBM Model 60 (8560)     | 80286 |  ---  |       | White Mono Display
 3 | IBM Model 50 (8550)     | 80286 |  ---  |       | White Mono Display
 4 | IBM AT       (5170)     | 80286 | 80287 |  8    |
 5 | DEC VAXMATE             | 80286 | 80287 |  8    |
 6 | TANDY 3000 HD           | 80286 |  ---  |  8    |
 7 | IBM MODEL 30 (8530)     | 8086  |  ---  |       |
 8 | AT&T 6300               | 8086  |  ---  |       | AT&T Mono Graphics
 9 | TANDY 1000 SX           | 8088  |  ---  |  7.16 | 20M Hardcard
10 | ZENITH ZM-151-52        |  V20  |  ---  |  4.77 | Identical to unit 13
11 | IBM-XT (5160)           | 8088  |  ---  |  4.77 | IBM Mono
12 | AMIGA 100 + Sidecar     | 8088  |  ---  |  4.77 | Dysan 20M Filecard
13 | ZENITH ZM-151-22        | 8088  |  ---  |  4.77 | Identical to unit 10
============================================================================

Notes:
 - There are no 80387 chips out yet, so the Compaq 386 uses the 80286 chip
 - Units 10 and 13 are identical except for the V20 chip
 - All new IBM machines used the "paper white" monitor.
 - I'm not sure how accurate the clock speeds are
 - The Amiga tests were done emulating a Colour PC with 16 colours.  The
   speed can be improved if less colours or the mono PC emulator is used.
 - The AMIGA had a 20M Dysan filecard partitioned for 10M for the amiga and
   10M for the sidecar.
 - Unit 9 had a 20M hardcard for a hard disk.
 - All the 286 machines had 1.2M floppy disks, but all my tests were done
   using a 360K floppy.

The Results:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Main Tests (Computers with a * are the 80x87 versions)
==============================================================================
 # |  text |  mem  | sieve |  fib  |  whet  |  int  |  float | trans  |  total
==============================================================================
 1*|  3.46 |  8.35 |  1.49 |  7.36 |  12.58 |  2.58 |  15.60 |   5.93 |  57.35
 4*|  4.72 | 12.97 |  3.46 | 18.18 |  15.55 |  5.71 |  18.78 |   5.54 |  84.91
 5*|  4.45 | 12.96 |  3.51 | 18.29 |  16.70 |  5.71 |  20.10 |   5.88 |  87.60
 1 |  3.46 |  8.35 |  1.38 |  7.31 |  20.33 |  2.59 |  26.96 |  22.69 |  93.07
 2 |  3.13 | 10.27 |  2.80 | 14.50 |  37.67 |  4.51 |  48.55 |  42.34 | 163.77
 3 |  3.14 | 10.30 |  2.80 | 14.61 |  38.01 |  4.55 |  48.67 |  42.68 | 164.84
 4 |  4.67 | 12.91 |  3.52 | 18.18 |  47.40 |  5.66 |  60.81 |  53.06 | 206.21
 5 |  4.45 | 12.96 |  3.52 | 18.23 |  47.67 |  5.66 |  60.91 |  53.22 | 206.62
 6 |  6.26 | 12.96 |  3.51 | 18.18 |  47.68 |  5.66 |  60.75 |  53.11 | 208.11
 7 |  5.49 | 34.72 |  6.21 | 29.22 |  68.60 | 17.30 |  88.21 |  74.59 | 324.34
 8 |  7.41 | 39.44 |  6.87 | 32.40 |  77.17 | 18.68 |  99.69 |  83.98 | 365.64
 9 | 10.77 | 48.72 | 13.51 | 69.81 | 153.79 | 30.26 | 191.25 | 165.54 | 683.65
10 | 10.28 | 29.39 | 13.40 | 68.93 | 169.78 | 25.76 | 212.78 | 187.35 | 717.67
11 |  9.83 | 60.91 | 13.68 | 72.62 | 175.37 | 34.38 | 220.42 | 192.89 | 780.10
12 | 10.76 | 60.91 | 13.62 | 72.67 | 175.60 | 34.44 | 220.48 | 192.89 | 781.37
13 | 10.44 | 60.97 | 13.62 | 72.72 | 175.65 | 34.44 | 220.69 | 193.06 | 781.59
==============================================================================

Other Tests (Disk speed and Graphics):
==============================================================================
   |  Floppy Disk  |   Fixed Disk |    Graphics    ||   Whetstone test
 # |  Time  | Size | Time  | Size | graph | points || Pass 1 | Pass 2 | WIPS
==============================================================================
 1*|  57.56 | 360K |  6.15 | 20M  |  8.02 |  5.77  ||   1.26 |  11.32 | 99.40
 4*|  60.47 | 360K | 11.70 | 32M  |  6.16 | 11.64  ||   1.54 |  13.95 | 80.58
 5*|  72.61 | 360K | 11.59 | 20M  |  9.33 | 17.79  ||   1.65 |  14.94 | 75.24
 1 |  56.18 | 360K |  6.26 | 20M  |  8.02 |  5.77  ||   1.82 |  18.51 | 59.92
 2 |  71.46 | 720K | 11.04 | 44M  |  6.54 | 10.21  ||   3.29 |  34.38 | 32.16
 3 |  71.40 | 720K | 14.61 | 20M  |  6.53 | 10.27  ||   3.30 |  34.66 | 31.89
 4 |  59.32 | 360K | 11.76 | 32M  |  6.16 | 11.70  ||   4.18 |  43.17 | 25.65
 5 |  71.23 | 360K | 12.85 | 20M  |  9.29 | 17.80  ||   4.23 |  43.34 | 25.57
 6 |  59.38 | 360K |  --   |  --  |  7.91 | 13.01  ||   4.29 |  43.34 | 25.61
 7 |  71.90 | 720K |  --   |  --  |  9.67 | 19.05  ||   6.04 |  62.51 | 17.71
 8 |  73.11 | 360K | 33.01 | 10M  | 12.63 | 25.92  ||   6.81 |  70.36 | 15.74
 9 |  71.07 | 360K | 60.86 | 20M H| 20.11 | 62.67  ||  13.51 | 140.22 |  7.89
10 |  70.86 | 360K | 45.92 | 10M  | 24.00 | 66.73  ||  14.78 | 154.89 |  7.14
11 |  71.07 | 360K | 49.60 | 10M  |   --  |   --   ||  15.21 | 160.06 |  6.90
12 |  74.92 | 360K | 38.39 | 20M  | 18.67 | 49.44  ||  15.33 | 160.22 |  6.90
13 |  70.63 | 360K | 46.96 | 10M  | 17.69 | 49.59  ||  15.27 | 160.27 |  6.90
=============================================================================


Conclusions:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Compare unit 10 with unit 13.  These are identical machines except for the
NEC V20 chip in one and the 8088 chip in the other.  The tests show how the
V20 is much faster at memory moves and mathematic calculations.

  Compare the results for the 80287 version of a machine versus the
Non 80287 machine.  It looks like the 80287 greatly increases floating math,
especially in Transcendental functions.  It is interesting though that it
consistently slows down disk speeds.  I don't know if this is the chip or
the 8087 version of Turbo Pascal.

  It looks like IBM's new bios does speed up the machines a bit.
  If anyone else runs the benchmarks, I'd appreciate getting the results.

Happy Trails . . .