Frequently Asked Questions
#2 - February 1995
Drive Drive Rocket
1) Is Drive Drive Rocket a Cache?
Drive Drive Rocket is not a caching software. Caches are predictive -
they assume since you have been loading sectors for fileX, you will
still want to and bring the next sectors into RAM before you ask for
them.
Drive Rocket, on the other hand, gets the bus to take advantage of an
IDE drive's ability to transfer data in multiple block "chunks".
Normally, the bus will transfer data in 512 byte transfers (which was a
limitation of some pre-IDE drives). For every 512 byte transfer, the
bus sends an interrupt. My favorite analogy is to picture a busy
country highway cross- roads. Whenever one car shows up at the
cross-roads, the traffic manager sets the stop light to red and stops
all the traffic on the highway while the one car crosses. Drive Rocket
tells the bus that the drive can transfer data in multiple blocks (the
size of the blocks depends on the drive) and stops the bus from sending
one interrupt per every 512 bytes transferred. In the terms of my
analogy, Drive Rocket tells the traffic manager to wait until there are
8, 16, 32 (etc) cars at the cross-road before stopping all the traffic
on the highway.
2) Does Drive Rocket replace my cache?
As discussed previously, Drive Rocket is not a cache and does not
replace your cache. In fact, with some cache programs, it is possible
to configure the cache to transfer data in the block size that Drive
Rocket best expedites. As an example, Smartdrv has a command line
switch for setting the environment size. If Drive Rocket is causing
data to be transferred in 8 block chunks, you would set the environment
size for Smartdrv to 4096 (8 x 512) so that the Drive Rocket and
Smartdrv were tuned to each other.
3) How does Drive Rocket impact 32 bit disk access (32bda)?
Microsoft followed the WD 1003 standard when developing their 32bda
driver (WDCTRL). This standard follows the traditional BIOS
limitations, including the inability to recognize a drive over 1024
cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors per track. These parameters add up
to 504 megabytes or 528 millions of bytes. Because WDCTRL follows the
WD 1003 standard, it can't address above 504 megabytes either. Disk
Manager provides access to drives that are larger than 504 - WDCTRL
cannot work with these drives. We wrote our own 32bda driver
(Ontrackw.386) which performs the same function, but also knows how to
work with these larger drives.
The first version of Drive Rocket be designed for Ontrackw.386 was
1.14. Version 1.15 of Drive Rocket will go out and upgrade a Disk
Manager 6.02 to be able to work with the Ontrackw.386 (so you don't
have to upgrade Drive Rocket AND Disk Manager).
The Ontrackw.386 driver for Windows version 3.10 and WFW version 3.11,
is not compatible with some hard disk configurations. A typical error
message would be: "The version of Disk Manager (DM) or Drive Drive
Rocket software currently on your system is incompatible with the
Ontrack 32-bit disk driver. Refer to your Ontrack documentation for
more information"
This can be caused by one of the following:
1) Any drive translating to more than 1024 cylinders. This is common
if your drive was installed using a version of Ontrack Disk Manager
prior to version 6.00. Drive Drive Rocket will not install the
32bda drivers if this condition is detected. Again, version 1.15 of
Drive Rocket should overcome this problem.
2) Any system BIOS or controller BIOS which performs hard disk
translation. This is common if you are using an IDE drive which is
larger than 528Mb. Drive Drive Rocket will not install the 32bda
drivers if this condition is detected. IDE drives larger than 528Mb
installed using Ontrack Disk Manager version 6.00 or later using the
Dynamic Drive Overlay are supported.
4) Drive Rocket and QEMM Stealth Mode.
Problem 1: When running Drive Drive Rocket, the QEMM Stealth ROM
feature reports "Disabling Stealth ROM" and then a reference to INT 76.
Solution:
The Stealth ROM feature is monitoring Interrupts and for some reason is
disabling itself when Drive Drive Rocket grabs INT 13 (not sure how
that correlates to INT 76). A temporary solution is to call
QEMM386.sys with the XSTI=76 command line switch (refer to QEMM
documentation for more details). This switch tells Stealth Mode to
ignore INT 76.
5) During Installation, Drive Rocket produces an error which says that it
can't recognize the driver (inconfigurable driver)
Drive Rocket is an extremely complex piece of software and interacts
with your hardware and firmware in a very complex manner. Because of
this, there are some machines which simply will not support the Drive
Rocket software. It is not advisable to try to manually over-ride a
failed installation. Because Rocket is not compatible with every system
we have spread a free copy of the Drive Rocket tester around the world
(literally) and also have the Drive Rocket.exe test for possible
performance benefit (or degradation) before installing.
Specific areas where Rocket might fail, are machines which already have
a lot going on to improve speed, e.g. a Pentium with PCI, LBA, or some
other technology which is translating the parameters of the drive
(PLEASE NOTE: the next release of Drive Rocket will resolve these
conflicts).
6) How do I un-install Drive Rocket?
To un-install Drive Rocket, simply remove the line in Config.sys which
reads "device = Drive Rocket.bin...". Also delete the Drive Rocket.bin
file from the root directory.
7) Drive Rocket says that my drive is not a Western Digital, but it is!?
OEM versions of Drive Rocket check for the specific OEM's hardware. If
your Drive Rocket came bundled with a Western Digital drive, for
example, Drive Rocket starts by sending a "who are you and how big are
you" query. If the response is anything but Western Digital, Drive
Rocket will produce and error message. Some sophisticated IDE cards
will intercept queries and commands sent to the drive. In the case of
my example, the card would respond "the drive is XXX meg and me? I'm
Brand XYZ Card". This will cause Drive Rocket to believe there is no
drive for the OEM, even if there is. The only solution for this is to
obtain a universal (non-OEM) version of Drive Rocket that does not care
who made the hardware.
8) How much memory does it need? (Can it be loaded high?)
Drive Rocket requires about 6k of memory and can be loaded high, though
there have been reports of the QEMM loadhigh statement not working well
with Drive Rocket.
9) How do I verify that I'm really getting the promised increase?
Drive Rocket improvements can be difficult to quantify as not all
benchmark programs look at all MBS and I/O values. Please double check
that your specific benchmark is "looking" at the area where Drive
Rocket is providing improvement.
The following programs were used by the Ontrack Computer Systems
engineers when developing Drive Rocket:
CoreTest
QBench
TDrive
Norton SI
PC Tools Sys Info
10) Drive Rocket says that I will get a -35% increase. That's going the
wrong way!
This typically occurs in the more sophisticated machines. While
disconcerting, it simply means that Drive Rocket is conflicting with
some other driver or device and is probably not a good choice for this
computer.
11) I'm getting a GPF when I try to work with the Control Panel in Windows.
This problem can be resolved by adding a command line switch to the
end of the line in Config.sys that calls the Drive Rocket driver. The
switch is /w=1. If you have Drive Rocket on a Master and a Slave
drive, the command is /w=1,1 (if Drive Rocket were only on the Master,
it would be /w=1, and if Drive Rocket were only on the Slave, it would
be /w=,1).
12) Will Rocket support other operating systems?
Drive Rocket is only compatible with DOS. There are no plans to make
Rocket compatible with other operating systems.
13) What are the command line switches used with rocket.bin?
/w disables writes (multiple block transfers are still done on Reads)
/s tells Rocket to not look for a secondary controller
/m sets the multiple block size.
In Rocket, commas are used to designate values for drive 1 (vs drive
2). So, /m=16,8 would mean that drive 1 was using an mbs of 16 and
drive 2 was using an mbs of 8. In the same fashion, /w=1,1 would say
"disable writes on both drive 1 and drive 2" where /w=1, or /w=,1 would
disable writes on a specific drive.
