IDE versus ST506
Subject : Timings
Machine : BBC model B
Page requirements : Adobe flash player (for video)
Devices used here : BBC IDE Interface (Retro Clinic)
: Western Digital caviar 33200-00LA Hard disc
: Sandisk Ultra II 2 GB CF card
: Adaptec card + ST506 compatible drive
Recommended browser : Firefox
| At the end of 2010, and with only one working ST-506 drive left (out of 4), I decided to find some sort of replacement before it was too late! I purchased and installed a BBC IDE 1Mhz bus interface from Retroclinic with a CF card adaptor. What a blinding little (1"x 2") device this is! Recently I added on an IDE hard disc. The HD is logical drive 0, CF is 1. It all works perfectly, however I was a bit surprised to find the speed of LOAD and SAVE to be a lot slower than using the ST-506.
I decided to conduct a test to see what the time difference was. So I connected the ST506, and the IDE card (with the HD snd CF) to the 1Mhz bus. Below is a flash video of the time it takes to SAVE and LOAD 16k. TIME is set to zero immediately before each load / save, then TIME is printed on completion. |
| If you have watched the video, you will have seen that the ST-506 is 5 times quicker.. This /really/ is not a grumble, as the new IDE setup is future proof, whereas the ST-506 will only last as long as the drive does.
Incidentally HADFS did rather better. I couldn't run the test at the same time as the above because HADFS addresses the 1Mhz bus using &FC4x, whereas I've modified ADFS 1.33 to access the 1Mhz bus using FC5x allowing the ST-506 to co-exist with the IDE board fitted with the appropriate PAL. Below is a snapshot of the HADFS result (accessing the same IDE hard disc). |
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Device
ST506
IDEHD
IDECF
IDEHD
ST506
IDEHD
IDECF
IDEHD
Filing System
ADFS 1.30
HADFS 5.50
ADFS 1.33 (&FC5x)
ADFS 1.33 (&FC5x)
ADFS 1.30
HADFS 5.50
ADFS 1.33 (&FC5x)
ADFS 1.33 (&FC5x)
Read 16k (csec)
20
34
99
99
20
34
99
99
Write 16k (csec)
28
125
153
168
28
125
153
168