Marco wrote on 2024-03-05, 20:39:

Thanks a lot for your detailed input.

Two points here:
1. from major experiences back in the days I would only recommend smartdrv over all alternatives. Mem isn’t a problem currently

This is correct. Also, smartdrv can be loaded high.

Marco wrote on 2024-03-05, 21:56:

Conclusion: after reinstalling a lot I will switch back to my modern hdd. There is really little to non performance improvements because of the very low DOM/CF access times on a 386sx. Installations take same time as the cpu is bottlenecking expanding files etc. Furthermore having no noise at all takes away the whole retro feeling for me. Anyway a good try. I will stick to m ide hdd with 16mb cache onboard. Lessons learned and evenings spent 😀

Next will be benchmarking smartdrv on/off there.

And I learned about the importance of multisector transfers in the max throughput scenarios.

I re-did some benchmarks with a industrial CF Innodisk card at 16MHz ISA Bus. Most important summary:

- linear read speed IDE HDD: 4400kb/s
- linear read speed CF: 3840kb/s

Differences:
- HDD allows much more multiple r/w at one DRQ (8 or 15 not quite sure) (multi block transfer)
- CF allows only up to 2
- CF has issues at 16 MHz

Further remarks:
- when reducing multiple r/w from 2 to 1 for the CF via tool the performance just drops from 3840 to 3820/s. Measurable but not noticeable.
- I though have my doubts that lower performance is related to that feature only

I will continue to bench further also with PATA SSDs with multi block transfers