[MiNT] New MiNT updates

[Mario Becroft <mb@tos.pl.net>]

I just obtained the Minixfs 0.70 pl9, the new ramfs and mint 1.15.1, and I
can't beleive what an improvement it is!

Everything seems to be vastly speeded up, presumably owing to the new
Minixfs with improved cache (I set the cache size to 4 MB). Just logging
in happens much faster, and Pine seems to load mailboxes in a flash.

And not only that, but disc access doesn't seem to jam up the machine so
much like it used to with 0.6. With minixfs 0.60 I could hardly use my TT
while it was expiring news, for example, but now while the response is a
little bit more jerky its is not very noticable. The only thing is that
during such disc accesses, it does seem to freeze for one or two seconds
now and again (I take it this is when it flushes the cache, or something
like that), but this is far preferable to what used to happen!

But I wonder why it needs to freeze at all during disc access?

So my congratulations to the helpful MiNT developers who enable all this
to happen!

There is one thing, however, which was a problem with previous versions
and still is, although it appears slightly improved. I have a PPP link via
a null modem cable between the serial 2 port of my TT and my Linux PC.
Sending data from the PC to the TT works as expected, for example ftp can
transfer files at about 10 to 11 K /second. But when sending from the TT
to the PC, I only get about half that rate. For example sending a file to
the PC via ftp used to happen at about 4.5 to 5 K/second, since installing
the new version I recorded 5.5K per second, but this is about half the
expected throughput.

Any ideas about what might be causing this slowness?

-- 
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| Mario Becroft                * Tariland, New Zealand Atari User Group |
| mb@tos.pl.net                * Atari Hardware Developments            |
| http://www.pl.net/~mario/    * Atari Serial Mouse Interface           |
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