Speedcheck

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This article provides information about the real measured speeds of the CPC's hardware using different software. The abbreviaton "n.f." means "not feasible", since some software is not capable of performing a particular task. Numbers in bold indicate the smallest needed time. All experiments have been repeated 10 times, the statistic mean of the 10 experiments is given. Time is measured in seconds. This is true for values provided by TFM, but not for values from others (see history).

On CPC emulators the times can vary, for this tests only real CPCs had been used. For this tests the Dobbertin HD20 hard disc had been used.

The used PC had a AMD Duron CPU running at 900 MHz. It's OS was Windows2000. Instead of Vortex format 720K DOS format has been used.

Disc management

Various measurements of the floppy disc speed (3" internal or 3.5" external) or hard disc speed (Dobbertin HD20) have been taken.

Format a disc: 40 tracks (Data) or 80 tracks (Vortex or 720K Dos)

Format FutureOS XD-DOS Disc'o'Magic ParaDOS CP/M 2.2 CP/M 3.1 Utopia Windows 2000 AtariSTF
Data 16 17 18 20 33 33 43 n.f. n.f.
Vortex 64 65 n.f. 68 65 n.f. n.f. 104 100

To format a disc in DS/DD/80 track Vortex format VaraDOS needed to be used instead of ParaDOS.

Copy a disc: 40 / 80 tracks, one or two drives

Tracks & Drives FutureOS XD-DOS Disc'o'Magic CP/M 2.2 CP/M 3.1 Utopia AtariSTF
40 tracks, 1 drive 20 n.f. 42 66 63 71 n.f.
40 tracks, 2 drives 20 n.f. 42 69 69 69 n.f.
80 tracks, 1 drive 77 n.f. n.f. 257 n.f. n.f. 162
80 tracks, 2 drives 76 n.f. n.f. 207 n.f. n.f.

Copy a file of 40 KB, 176 KB or 400 KB with two drives or partitions (HD20 hard disc)

Size & Device FutureOS XD-DOS Disc'o'Magic CP/M 2.2 CP/M 3.1 SymbOS
40 KB, floppy 6 19 10 33 18 12
40 KB, hard-disc 2,5 13 n.f. 12 4 -
176 KB, floppy 25 74 34 132 70 45
176 KB, hard-disc 9 42 n.f. 38 18 -
400 KB, floppy 55 n.f. n.f. 147 107 n.f.
400 KB, hard-disc 20 94 n.f. 80 42 n.f.

Read a file of 40 KB, 176 KB or 400 KB from floppy-disc or hard-disc (HD20)

Size & Device FutureOS XD-DOS Disc'o'Magic AMSDOS
40 KB, floppy 2,5 9 5 9
40 KB, hard-disc 1 4 n.f. n.f.
176 KB, floppy 9 n.f. 17 n.f.
176 KB, hard-disc 2,5 n.f. n.f. n.f.
400 KB, floppy 21 n.f. n.f. n.f.
400 KB, hard-disc 6 n.f. n.f. n.f.

Write a file of 40 KB, 176 KB or 400 KB to floppy-disc or hard-disc (HD20)

Size & Device FutureOS XD-DOS Disc'o'Magic AMSDOS
40 KB, floppy 2,5 12 5 12
40 KB, hard-disc 1 4 n.f. n.f.
176 KB, floppy 9 n.f. 17 n.f.
176 KB, hard-disc 3 n.f. n.f. n.f.
400 KB, floppy 22 n.f. n.f. n.f.
400 KB, hard-disc 6 n.f. n.f. n.f.

Read a full directory, sort it and display it on screen

Format FutureOS XD-DOS Disc'o'Magic CP/M 2.2 CP/M 3.1 AMSDOS SymbOS Windows 2000
Data 1 3 2,5 3,5 12 5 2,3 1,2
Vortex 1,5 6 n.f. 6,3 23 n.f. n.f. n.f.
HD20 12 20 n.f. 18,9 85 n.f. n.f. 1

In this examples X-DDOS was speeded up using the !FAST RSX command. CP/M 2.2 did not sort the directory.

Erase 64 (Data format), 128 (Vortex format) or 512 files (HD20 hard-disc) at once

Entries FutureOS X-DDOS Disc'o'Magic CP/M 2.2 CP/M 3.1 AMSDOS SymbOS Windows 2000
64 entries 1,0 27 1,5 26 15 27 1,3 33
128 entries 1,0 52 n.f. 51 29 n.f. n.f. n.f.
512 entries 2,0 43 n.f. 25 11 n.f. n.f. 6

FutureOS clearly beats Windows 2000.

Display / Print characters on Screen / Printer

Load and type a file of 40 KB, 176 KB or 400 KB on the screen (TYPE)

Size & Device FutureOS XD-DOS AMSDOS CP/M 2.2 CP/M 3.1 SymbOS
40 KB, floppy 8 80 139 139 220 54
40 KB, hard-disc 7 76 n.f. 126 124,5 -
176 KB, floppy 36 349 618 618 969 166
176 KB, hard-disc 30 328 n.f. 556 548 -
400 KB, floppy 80 768 n.f. 1402 2203 -
400 KB, hard-disc 68 746 n.f. 1259 1246 -

Load and print a file of 40 KB on the printer

Device FutureOS XD-DOS AMSDOS CP/M 2.2 CP/M 3.1
Floppy 7 65 63 88 78
Hard-disc 4,5 61 n.f. 74,5 62

Other speed checks

Display 64 KB in hexadecimal and ASCII chars (DUMP)

FutureOS Softbrenner MAXAM UTOPIA
34 65 106 106

Missing data

Some speed checks using ParaDOS remain to be performed (on a real CPC).