CMD CSA-6520W PCI TO SCSI HOST ADAPTER ------------------------------------- If you have allowed the installer to install both the DOS and the Windows versions of the CMD fast disk and ASPI support, then you do not need to read this file. This file is intended for user who wants to install the Windows Fast Disk Drivers manually. Features: --------- Windows 3.1x/Windows for Workgroups 3.11 FastDisk Driver -------------------------------------------------------- Loading the Windows FastDisk driver will yield faster Windows I/O throughput. FastDisk is a true Windows Driver (VxD) which runs in protected mode and implements I/O queuing. With FastDisk installed, you can open many more concurrent DOS boxes than without it (since it makes DOS boxes fully pageable), and Windows will speed up noticeably, especially if you like to open multiple windows running background tasks simultaneously. Installation of FastDisk is recommended only if your system has at least 2MB of memory. If your system has less than 4MB of memory, you may want to tune FastDisk by editing your SYSTEM.INI file after install is done. Find the line reading "CMDCCBCOUNT=200," and change it to 50. See the FastDisk tuning section below for more information. NOTE: FastDisk may be used only in ENHANCED MODE. You should read the rest of this README file to get further information about this release before you do the installation. INSTALLING CSA-65XX WINDOWS FASTDISK DRIVER MANUALLY ---------------------------------------------------- If CMD-65XX Fastdisk driver has been installed by CMD's install program, the SYSTEM.INI will have been updated automatically. Otherwise, users can update the SYSTEM.INI manually as below: 1. Add the following lines to the [386Enh] section of your SYSTEM.INI device=CMDDISK.386 device=INT13.386 device=XPTSIM.386 32BITDISKACCESS=ON CMDCCBCount=200 CMDTimeoutCount=20000 2. Uncomment the following line (if there is) by removing the semicolon at the beginning of the line or add the line just right before device=*PAGEFILE (if there isn't already one) device=*BLOCKDEV 3. Comment out the following lines (if there are any) by placing a semicolon at the start of every line device=*int13 device=*wdctrl device=ios.386 device=vxdldr.386 4. Now run Windows, open the Control Panel, and execute Enhanced. Make sure you have set up a permanent swapfile (or create one) to exercise the 32-bit disk access feature. If you have Windows for Workgroups 3.11, turn on 32-bit file access feature and make sure the amount of RAM allocated for vcache.386 is 2 MB or more. 5. You are ready to utilize both advanced features of Microsoft Windows/WFW 3.11: 32-bit disk access and 32-bit file access. IMPORTANT INFORMATION --------------------- Upgrade/Installation of Microsoft Windows ----------------------------------------- If, subsequent to running QuickSCSI Install, you decide to upgrade or reinstall Windows, the Windows installation program may re-enable the DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\SMARTDRV.EXE /DOUBLE_BUFFER line in your CONFIG.SYS. Since CSA-65XX BIOS fully supports VDS, double-buffering is not needed, and will unnecessarily degrade your performance. To get rid of double-buffering, either edit your CONFIG.SYS and delete the offending line, or re-run QuickSCSI Install. Windows FastDisk Driver Tuning ------------------------------ To reap the maximum performance benefits, it is recommended that you use a permanent Windows swap file. The swap file is adjusted from the 386Enhanced icon in the Windows Control Panel. The I/O queue size is an entity which is configurable from the SYSTEM.INI file. The I/O queue size is the maximum number I/O requests which may be outstanding at any given instant. The default value is 200. The queue size may be adjusted to any value greater than or equal to 50. Each element in the queue will add an additional 140 bytes to non-pageable memory used by FastDisk. To adjust the queue size, change the line which reads CMDCCBCOUNT=200 to correspond to your desired queue size. For systems which have 4MB or less of RAM, you may want to adjust the value lower to free more memory for your applications.