Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 23 Feb 2001 19:25:01 -0300
From:      Rafael Rodrigues Obelheiro <obelix@lcmi.ufsc.br>
To:        Peter Pentchev <roam@orbitel.bg>
Cc:        Torbjorn Kristoffersen <sgt@netcom.no>, "Michael C . Wu" <keichii@peorth.iteration.net>, FreeBSD-Hackers <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: IOmega ZIP problem
Message-ID:  <20010223192501.G199@lcmi.ufsc.br>
In-Reply-To: <20010223093943.A1899@ringworld.oblivion.bg>; from roam@orbitel.bg on Fri, Feb 23, 2001 at 09:39:43AM %2B0200
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.30.0102221930510.685-100000@hal.netforce.no> <20010222131933.C20955@peorth.iteration.net> <20010223093943.A1899@ringworld.oblivion.bg>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Fri, Feb 23, 2001 at 09:39:43AM +0200, Peter Pentchev wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 01:19:33PM -0600, Michael C . Wu wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 22, 2001 at 07:40:16PM +0100, Torbjorn Kristoffersen scribbled:
> > | Hi I'm using 4.2-RELEASE, with a parallel port ZIP drive (100M).
> > | Whenever I copy a large file from the zip drive (for example /dev/da0s1),
> > | the "cp" process eats 98% of the system resources. What's behind all this?
> > | Is there a way to fix it?
> > | 
> > |   711 root      54   0   280K   168K RUN      0:45 93.87% 93.21% cp
> > | 
> > | A 'renice' won't help.
> > 
> > 
> > That's natural with "parallel".  No way around it.  
> 
> To clarify a bit, parallel port hardware depends on the system processor
> doing all the data transfers, every single byte, and spending even more
> time checking if it's time for the next byte to go.  There's no DMA, there's
> not even a controller you can tell 'here's a 512-byte block, let it fly'.
> 
> There's no way around it indeed.

AFAIK, ZIP drives support parallel ports in EPP mode (uncertain about ECP),
which is much faster than conventional (either nibble or bidirectional) 
modes. According to imm(4), FreeBSD supports EPP mode for ZIP drives. 
You might want to check if you can enable EPP in your BIOS.

Regards,

--
Rafael Rodrigues Obelheiro		obelix@lcmi.ufsc.br
Florianopolis, SC, Brasil

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010223192501.G199>