Multi drive program issues or not?

[Mclaneinc]

Hi peeps,

 

This annoys me as I was a technical sales guy for Atari bits in the day but here goes.

 

Can anyone remember if any programs had issues with multiple drives enabled, I know on the Amgia there were some games on low mem systems that failed to run if multiple drives were enabled, also some programs didn't like extra drives as a protection issue.

 

Did the Atari 8 bits have any issues say on a 16K system with multiple drives causing an issue?

 

Memory says NO to me but hell, I'm nigh on 50 (a seriously YOUNG 50 I might add )

[spookt]

I always thought you needed more than 16K for one drive. I guess if you're using DOS there's not much left after it's loaded?

 

I don't think there's a per drive memory overhead is there?

[Rybags]

With DOS, you have more RAM usage when extra drives are enabled (drive buffers), and also when the number of simultaneous OPEN files is increased (file buffers).

 

I forget the formula, but it was something like 128 bytes per item, possibly a few more.

 

On a 16K system that could make or break the loading of a game, especially if it was in Basic.

 

Compact file menus and the fact that most commercial games were on boot disk anyway made it less of an issue for assembler programs.

 

So, with the old DOS 2.x versions, you could run on a trimmed down system e.g. only enable one drive with one file buffer.

[spookt]

With DOS, you have more RAM usage when extra drives are enabled (drive buffers), and also when the number of simultaneous OPEN files is increased (file buffers).

 

I forget the formula, but it was something like 128 bytes per item, possibly a few more.

 

On a 16K system that could make or break the loading of a game, especially if it was in Basic.

 

Compact file menus and the fact that most commercial games were on boot disk anyway made it less of an issue for assembler programs.

 

So, with the old DOS 2.x versions, you could run on a trimmed down system e.g. only enable one drive with one file buffer.

 

Thanks Rybags - I'd wondered about buffers.

[Mclaneinc]

If anyone is wondering why I asked its to do with Altirra and how many drives are selected as active, I've not asked Phaeron if drives are only classed as enabled if they have an image in them or all 8 are classed as being online if disk drive is ticked as enabled...

 

If so I wondered if a low end spec fussy program might not run due to the allocation of ram to each external drive?

 

Just trying to think out of the box re compatibility, I don't think I have ever come across a program issue but thinking about the Amiga which did have issues made me wonder.

Edited February 1, 2010 by Mclaneinc