Path: menudo.uh.edu!menudo.uh.edu!usenet From: salmi@augs.se (Per Salmi) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: HyperCache Professional Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.applications Date: 8 Mar 1993 04:20:25 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 248 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <1nehi9INNm5@menudo.uh.edu> Reply-To: salmi@augs.se (Per Salmi) NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.7.128.1 Keywords: cache, hard disk, floppy, disk speed, commercial PRODUCT NAME HyperCache Professional version 1.01B BRIEF DESCRIPTION HyperCache is a software disk cache for the Amiga computer. Its purpose is to speed up disk performance. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Silicon Prairie Software Address: 2326 Francis Street Regina, SK S4N 2P7 Canada Telephone: (306) 352-0358 E-mail: plummer@hercules.cs.uregina.ca LIST PRICE US $49.95 SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Memory requirements: 512 KB RAM, but 1 MB RAM is recommended for better performance Hard drive requirements: NONE. Works great for floppies, but the value is a lot better if you have a hard drive. HyperCache works with 68000 and faster CPU's. The faster CPU you have, the better performance you get. SOFTWARE Amiga OS version 1.2 or higher is required according to the documentation, but I have only been able to test it with Amiga OS version 2.04. HyperCache works great under the 3.0 release of the OS. I tried this on one of my friend's machines. COPY PROTECTION The executables has an embedded serial number for tracking pirates down. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 3000 2 MB CHIP RAM and 8 MB FAST RAM Quantum hard drives: 52LPS and 425S REVIEW I first read about HyperCache on comp.sys.amiga.announce and thought that it could be the thing I needed to speed up my system. The reason I need more speed for the filesystem is that I run a BBS for the Amiga User Group in Sweden. We use DLG Professional BBS software, and it uses a lot of files for storing messages and other information. The BBS has three 14400 BPS modems connected and about 150 callers per day. After reading about HyperCache, I contacted SPS and bought the software. We were 8 buyers from Sweden, so we got a slightly better price. After a few days, I received my copy and installed it on the BBS. The next thing to do was to try it out with DiskSpeed. Wow! I got about 4.7 MB/sec transfer rate with the first version! Without HyperCache, I got 1.6 MB/sec. Quite a speedup! The directory scanning was also much faster than before (about 6-15 times depending on the partition's size and the number of files on it), and that made the BBS users happy. One of them asked me if we had gotten a new Zorro III SCSI-2 controller and a SCSI-2 drive...! On the program disk, there are two versions of HyperCache: one for 68000 machines, and one optimized version for accelerated Amigas. There is also a utility called Summary or HCSummary that is used to get statistics about cache hit-ratio, the total number of reads made to that device since HC was installed, and such things. To install HyperCache I copied the files to C: and inserted the Hypercache command with options in the s:User-Startup file. On startup, the program patches the appropriate device driver and inserts the caching routines. The cache can be removed if you are going to do low level repairs on the drive or something like that. There is no graphical user interface for HyperCache, and that would be nice to have when changing the options. To change the options for a device that already has got a cache installed, you have to remove the cache for it and restart HC with the new options. The caching is done at the device level, so the cache affects the whole drive and not just the partition that is named when installing. I experimented with the options for some time to get most speed out of it. The default cache size is 512 KB, which is recommended for 50-80 MB drives, so I increased the number of pre-fetch sectors in my startup to get a better hit-ratio. I use 2 MB of cache for the 425 MB drive. You can also change the number of sets and lines used for the cache to get optimal preformance for your own system. I don't know very much about the theory behind the caching, but I tested different settings until I got the best performance. The options were not very well documented in the first release I got, but in the latest one there is a text file included that explains prefetch, sets and lines of the cache. The amount of memory that is used for caching depends on how you set the options. I tried a 32 KB cache for my floppy drive and that made it fly when I listed the disk contents and such things. I get a cache hit-ratio of 95-98% on my system. This figure is depending on how fragmented the files are on the device and how much memory you use for caching. To get high performance, the drive should be optimized with some disk optimizer like ReOrg or QuarterBack Tools. This makes the pre-fetch work better, as it will read more than one block from the drive each time. When the system is told to read new blocks from the drive, they will be found in the cache. HyperCache works on any device with 512-byte sectors. However, I tried to use it on a CD-ROM hooked up to the BBS, and it would not work. When I talked to Silicon Prairie about it, I was told that there will be a version that works with all sector sizes, but that was not yet included in the distribution package. HyperCache is a read-cache in its current state. It does write to the disk with write retention, but it doesn't cache writes for a long time. Writes are done to disk and also kept in the cache. I don't know what to say more about the usage... HyperCache works in the background giving me a very fast disk environment. Any user that wants more speed from the drives could use HyperCache: even a small cache gives quite high performance. BBS Sysops and people who use the Amiga for programming are the ones that would get the most out of the product, I think. Scanning message bases or include files for a compiler is really fast with this software. I have heard that it gives a lot of speed on A1200 systems with the IDE-AT controller, someone went from 250KB/sec to over 3.5 MB/sec. I am waiting for an A4000 and will try it out on that IDE-AT controller to see how fast it will become! DOCUMENTATION HyperCache comes with a 10 page printed manual that is quite nice. It covers system requirements, installation, usage, advanced options, error messages and troubleshooting. There is a README file provided on the distribution disk that covers changes made to the software after the manual was printed. All parts of the manual are quite clear and easy to understand, but the section for advanced options could be better. The information in the manual is not that good on the different options, and you have to read the files on the disk to get the latest information on the options and settings (some of them has changed). I have heard from Silicon Prairie that the documentation will be revised in a future upgrade. LIKES AND DISLIKES What I really like about HyperCache is THE SPEEEEED!!!!!! For applications with a lot of small files like BBS usage, this is a real dream! One thing that could be hard for users with little RAM available is that it takes a bit of memory to get really high performance from it. 512 KB is recommended for 50 - 80 MB drives. You could, however, optimize the parameters for your own setup to make it use less RAM. A Prefs program for 2.x would be nice to have, including a GUI to make the settings; but when Hypercache is installed, you don't change the settings that often. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS There is no other cache software available for the Amiga today that gives this high performance. There is however a PD program called SmartDisk that I tried to use once, but it did not work with my system, so I dumped that one right away. BUGS The first version I used had some minor bugs that did not affect the functionality of the software (Enforcer read hits on startup), but they were removed in an upgrade that I received soon after telling SPS about the problems. HyperCache does not work with Microbotics HardFrame SCSI host adapter. This is the only SCSI board that I have heard of that doesn't work together with HyperCache. I think this is because the HardFrame uses some kind of strange hardware/software hack to move the device driver into FAST RAM, so the patch made by HyperCache doesn't take effect. VENDOR SUPPORT Silicon Prairie has been very nice to talk to and very fast to come up with answers to all of my questions. I used e-mail to contact them and it seems like that is the fastest way. They provide upgrades and bug-fixes to the registered owners. WARRANTY As this is a software package, there are no real warranties, but Silicon Prairie Software is quite nice when it comes to support. CONCLUSIONS HyperCache is a very nice product. It is aimed at high end users with heavy applications that cause a lot of disk thrashing. It gives an excellent performance boost. I give the product a rating of 8 out of 10. A GUI and a revised version of the documentation would add at least one more point. If you feel the need for speed, you won't be disappointed! COPYRIGHT NOTICE This review is Copyright 1993 Per Salmi. All rights reserved. It is freely distributable. If you want to use it for some reason, please send me e-mail and we will work out the details. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Per Salmi (salmi@augs.se, d89persa@und.ida.liu.se) /|| 4000 - '040 Power! | | snail-mail: Bjornkarrsgatan 15B:12 / || . _ _ | | S-58251 Linkoping /--|| |-|-| | / | _| | | Sweden / || | | | | \_| (_| | | phone: +46-(0)13-172267 _| | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | "Powered by Motorola: Life starts at '030, fun at '040! | | Intel Inside: Impotence at '86" - unknown genious 1992 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu