VOGONS


First post, by smevans526

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Title speaks for itself. I generally have a negative view towards SMARTDRV. Most early CD games I remember say 'turn it off'.

But it was defended in the 'Conventional Memory Trick' thread under the DOS section.

I actually can't find anything on specific games benefiting from SMARTDRV enabled. Did I overlook it? If not, can anybody provide some examples?

Reply 2 of 30, by dr_st

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Generally, Smartdrive can make things better, but not worse (unless there is a bug). The only reason to turn it off would be due to the memory it consumes. However, there are plenty of ways to generate enough upper memory blocks to shove it there and leave enough conventional memory free.

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Reply 3 of 30, by derSammler

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dr_st wrote:

Generally, Smartdrive can make things better, but not worse

That's not exactly right. It will make things worse if you enable it for removable or optical media, as that simply does not work well with what SMARTDRV does.

Reply 4 of 30, by Zup

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Wasn't there a switch to disable cache on specific drives?

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Reply 6 of 30, by Dominus

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Yes, once I made sure to have enough low memory (umbpci or whatever that tool was called) I did use smartdrv with Ultima 7. it was noticeable. And Ultima 8 as well.

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Reply 7 of 30, by keropi

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It's the /U switch that you are referring to - it does not load smartdrive's CD-ROM caching module - it really does cause issues in some games so it's a good idea to have this switch always enabled

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Reply 8 of 30, by dr_st

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derSammler wrote:

It will make things worse if you enable it for removable or optical media, as that simply does not work well with what SMARTDRV does.

Well, removable media was not really a thing back then. Optical - yes, and as was mentioned there is a special switch to control whether to load it or not.

What downsides can there be on enabling Smartdrive on CD-ROM drives? Are there games with known issues?

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Reply 9 of 30, by derSammler

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dr_st wrote:

What downsides can there be on enabling Smartdrive on CD-ROM drives?

Loading times will be worse, as SMARTDRV does read-ahead, which isn't something you want on media with very slow seeking.

Reply 11 of 30, by clueless1

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I've had a few issues with file corruption with smartdrv. I think if you're using a period correct hard drive, smartdrv can make a big difference. But even a hard drive from the late 90s is fast enough to negate many of the smartdrv benefits. If I do use it, I make sure to disable write caching, just to keep my files safe.

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Reply 13 of 30, by clueless1

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Errius wrote:

Isn't there danger of data loss if a computer running SMARTDRV is shut down without first clearing cache?

Yes. Only if you don't disable write caching though. In my instance, file corruption happened when I was playing a game in DOS with smartdrv write caching enabled, and the game crashed. Games sometimes crash, and if data is not written back to disk before that, bye bye data. 🤣

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Let's benchmark our systems with cache disabled
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Reply 14 of 30, by smevans526

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I have found that SMARTDRV slows WAKE OF THE RAVAGER and the SIERRA games the on run on WINDOWS 386 EXTENDED. Examples include TORIN'S PASSAGE and PHANTASMAGORIA. Their manuals specifically state to turn off SMARTDRV. This is on a system with 64mb of ram -- maybe even that's not enough memory. When I get the chance, I want to try LUCASARTS protected more games.

Reply 15 of 30, by Dominus

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When it is on Windows you should indeed turn off smartdrv, I think.

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Reply 16 of 30, by Errius

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Running wcd -s on a large DOSBox partition takes a long time the first time it's done after Windows startup. Subsequent calls of the same command complete very quickly however. That happens even without SMARTDRV in memory, and across different instances of DOSBox, so clearly Windows is doing the caching.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 17 of 30, by Azarien

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dr_st wrote:

Well, removable media was not really a thing back then.

Floppies are removable media.

I always had smartdrv enabled, it really improved loading times on 486-era hardware.

Dominus wrote:

When it is on Windows you should indeed turn off smartdrv, I think.

Not need to. Windows 3.x and 9x is compatible with smartdrv.

Reply 18 of 30, by Jo22

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SmartDrive can be counter-productive on slow systems.
Especially if you've got a fast HDD or a flash medium already.

I think SmartDrive makes sense for single-speed CD-ROM drives, though.
150KB/s are barely enough for CD-ROM games with FMVs.

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Reply 19 of 30, by smevans526

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Sounds like people on this forum use SMARTDRV about 5 different ways. I didn't use /u, inefficient. The Windows 3.11 system I have contains 64mb of ram, and probably uses only about 16mb at most. I think I'll set aside about 40mb and see how that influences operation. I have a large hard drive, so I configured games like KQVII to call data found in RESOURCESND and RESOURCESFX from the hard drive instead of the cd. They come as one big file, larger than 40mb.

Can SMARTDRV work with with files bigger than what's been allocated for the cache?