#: 40675 S6/Macintosh
    28-Nov-93  13:52:16
Sb: #Accelerators & Stacker
Fm: Jim Niemann 73667,632
To: Ramu Sheshadri 73234,3711 (X)

I ran into the Stacker/Accelerator problem this weekend when I installed an
Applied Engineering 4340 (40Mhz 68030 with FPU) into my Macintosh LC at home.
The system would crash most frequently when I was running an application from a
Stacked disk that was also writing large amounts of data to the same drive. I
found that Speedometer 3.21 (running from and writing to the same Stacked disk)
was failing 100% of the time. I tried changing the disk driver from FWB Hard
Disk Toolkit Personal Edition to Disk Utilities with little improvement.

I found that I could disable the 4340's external cache and the Stacker crashes
went away. Unfortunately, so did about 75% of the performance improvement.

For a more permanent fix, I unStacked my disks and the crashes went away.

Interestingly enough, my Macintosh IIsi at work has a Logicache 50Mhz 68030
with FPU accelerator and has never had any Stacker-related crashes.

I have been a big Stacker advocate and convinced several colleagues to depend
upon it. I now face the prospect of:
 - staying unaccelerated, or
 - buying more disks and avoiding Stacker

I hope Stac has a better answer.

There is 1 Reply.

#: 41123 S6/Macintosh
    02-Dec-93  15:24:34
Sb: #40675-Accelerators & Stacker
Fm: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222
To: Jim Niemann 73667,632 (X)

Jim,

It may have ocurred to you that Stacker's performance with accelerator boards
is spotty.  Disk compression products and accelerators are both items that
Apple did not make provision for in their system software.  They did provide
for rewritable drivers and PDS slots, which allow these products to exist.
Standardized System support for such things does not exist.  Apple is working
on this, and their new SCSI manager implements a lot of "device independence".
This may lead to seamless compatibility for Stacker and accelerators, but both
we and the accelerator makers will need to rework our products.

Edward Nutter
Stac Electronics Product Support 

#: 40688 S6/Macintosh
    28-Nov-93  18:51:39
Sb: Accelerators & Stacker
Fm: John J. Moran 70247,505
To: Ramu Sheshadri 73234,3711

Ramu,

Sorry if I gave you that impression. Stacker was not available before I
installed my accelerator, and of course, it never worked with it.

Looking forward to some follow-up.

--John

#: 41204 S6/Macintosh
    03-Dec-93  01:08:06
Sb: #softpc and stacker
Fm: michael djavaherian 72774,2545
To: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222 (X)

Thanks for the info, it will save me the cost of a new hard drive (or put it
off for a few months, anyway). By "wasting processor cycles" do you mean that
Stacker will noticeably slow down performance of SoftPC Professional? If so,
I'm better off not using it, as I already sacrifice speed to run IBM programs
on a Mac. --Mike P.S. As a fellow San Diegan (I assume Stacker is still in SD),
although I ad that Chipsoft is moving to Arizona), I would like to wish you
good luck in what looks like it will be a huge battle with that monolithic bad
guy, Microsoft.

There is 1 Reply.

#: 41228 S6/Macintosh
    03-Dec-93  12:28:18
Sb: #41204-softpc and stacker
Fm: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222
To: michael djavaherian 72774,2545

Mike,

By "wasting processor cycles" I meant using two levels of compression.  Stacker
for the Mac compressing the SoftPC container file, AND Stacker for DOS
compressing the data in the STACVOL container file inside the SoftPC container
file, in 386 emulation no less.

To use Stacker with SoftPC without wasting cycles...

Install SoftPC on a Mac partition expanded with Stacker for the Mac and just
make a larger SoftPC C: or D: drive.

       or

Install SoftPC on an normal Mac partition and compress C: and D: with Stacker
3.1 for DOS and Windows.

Edward Nutter
Stac Electronics Product Support 

#: 40506 S6/Macintosh
    24-Nov-93  18:39:17
Sb: #Stacker/Jasmine HD
Fm: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222
To: Jim Carpenter 72233,27 (X)

Jim,

Our tech probably mentioned HDSC as an example of a disk driver.  It refuses to
work on anything but Apple drives, so you would need a third party driver.
Shop around.  Call the mail order places.  Download tech note 7404 from our
library.  It has a list of known good drivers.  Buy or order one of them.

Installing a driver simply updates the controlling software for that SCSI
device.  This is stored on the disk surface itself, and so is modifiable.
Though you can format the drive using these utilities, installing a driver does
no neccessarily involve formatting.  Frankly though, with an old drive like
that you would be better off formatting it with your new driver software and
restoring from the backup.

Edward Nutter
Stac Electronics Product Support 

There is 1 Reply.

#: 40529 S6/Macintosh
    24-Nov-93  22:43:13
Sb: #40506-Stacker/Jasmine HD
Fm: Jim Carpenter 72233,27
To: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222 (X)

Edward,
Thanks for the help.  If I can find a driver for a reasonable price, I'll use
it.

Thanks - Jim

#: 40520 S6/Macintosh
    24-Nov-93  21:27:23
Sb: #New bug
Fm: Adam Harris 73047,440
To: Techies

Here is a compatibility problem that you should know about:

I tried using the stacker on syquest drives that I subsequently used as backup
media for Retrospect. Retrospect couldn't format the disks as it wanted to do,
and after Retrospect tried, Stacker couldn't ID the disk to remove itself.

Adam.

There is 1 Reply.

#: 40610 S6/Macintosh
    27-Nov-93  02:35:17
Sb: #40520-New bug
Fm: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222
To: Adam Harris 73047,440 (X)

Adam,

This sounds similar to what DiskFit Pro does.  You may want to take a look at
tech note 7510 for some pointers on working around the Retrospect problem.

Ed Nutter
Stac Product Support

#: 40630 S6/Macintosh
    27-Nov-93  13:52:22
Sb: Stacker 1.01?
Fm: William R. Petro 73132,2300
To: Sysop (X)

I'm new to this forum.  I have Stacker 1.0 for the Macintosh, but
I've heard there is a 1.0.1 version.  Is this upgrade available
online?

Thanks,
Bill Petro

#: 40676 S6/Macintosh
    28-Nov-93  13:52:17
Sb: #Speedometer and Stacker
Fm: Jim Niemann 73667,632
To: all

Using a Stacked disk for a Speedometer performance run provides some
interesting results:

                      performance (larger is better)
  Disk 1 (unStacked)    1.706
  Disk 2 (Stacked)      7.851

This test was run on two identical disk drives. One was Stacked and the other
was not. On the Stacked drive, the access light never comes on during the test.

So now I can tell all my friends that Stacker made my disk drives 5 times
faster.

There is 1 Reply.

#: 40720 S6/Macintosh
    29-Nov-93  17:07:33
Sb: #40676-Speedometer and Stacker
Fm: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222
To: Jim Niemann 73667,632 (X)

Jim,

It's amazing what a big cache will do, isn't it?

Edward Nutter
Stac Electronics Product Support 

#: 41094 S6/Macintosh
    01-Dec-93  23:45:46
Sb: #840av
Fm: Neal Kaforey 75046,226
To: All

I have Stacker for Macintosh Version 1.0. I also have a Mac 840av. Are their
any known problems with this combination ? Is a later version available ?

Neal

There is 1 Reply.

#: 41124 S6/Macintosh
    02-Dec-93  15:24:43
Sb: #41094-840av
Fm: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222
To: Neal Kaforey 75046,226

Neal,

As shipped, most AV Macs have their internal drives formatted by HDSC Setup
version 7.2. They also have SCSI Manager 4.3 in ROM.  His combination of driver
and SCSI manager is incompatible with Stacker due to a bug in HDSC Setup 7.2.

Apple has responded to the problem and has released HDSC Setup version 7.2.2.
This is available as part of Software Update 2.0.1, is probably available
through your Apple dealer, and may be installed on your machine depending on
it's date of manufacture.

Look on the Disk Tools diskette that is part of your System Software package.
Get Info on the HD SC Setup application. If it is 7.2.2 you should use that
version to update the driver on your internal hard drive.  You'll have to start
the Mac from that diskette to do this, but the procedure is not destructive to
your data.  If the HD SC version is 7.2, then you should obtain version 7.2.2
and update before installing Stacker.

Edward Nutter
Stac Electronics Product Support 

#: 41112 S6/Macintosh
    02-Dec-93  09:54:09
Sb: #Mac Compt. Upgrade
Fm: Mike Umberger 70665,1267
To: Keith Dunlea 75300,2755 (X)

I was watching Mac TV last night and a representitive from Stac was
demonstrating Stacker for the mac.    He mentioned a "Competitive Upgrade"
which should run about $40.   None of the mail order places list a competitive
upgrade.    Can you give me the details?    I have Stuffit Spacesaver and would
like to upgrade to Stacker.   The $40 price sounds attractive.    Who, what
where when and how?

               Thanks,
                Mike

There is 1 Reply.

#: 41122 S6/Macintosh
    02-Dec-93  15:24:26
Sb: #41112-Mac Compt. Upgrade
Fm: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222
To: Mike Umberger 70665,1267 (X)

Mike,

Make a photocopy of your Spacesaver receipt.  Write your name, mailing address,
and credit card number (VISA, Mastercard, or AmEx with expiration date) on the
sheet.  Mail or fax it with a request for the competitive upgrade to:

Stac Electronics
Customer Service Dept.
5993 Avenida Encinas
Carlsbad, CA  92008

        or

(619) 431-1973 fax

The price is $49.95 plus shipping ($5.50 via U.S. Mail)

#: 41294 S6/Macintosh
    04-Dec-93  00:42:58
Sb: #Audio files and Stacker
Fm: Everett Marshall 70334,3511
To: All

Has anyone else attempted using Stacker (or any other compressor) for expanding
hard disk capacities for audio recording/editing applications?

I'm using Audiomedia II with a 1.0 Digital drive compressed with Stacker, and
have found that it won't operate properly unless you trade off sample rates?
So, instead of a sample rate of 44.1k (CD quality), you can only do about 8k
(slightly better than telephone audio).

I realize that this thing is processing enormous amounts of data, but I think
that there must be a way to make it work.


Any ideas?

Everett

There is 1 Reply.

#: 41378 S6/Macintosh
    06-Dec-93  12:07:51
Sb: #41294-#Audio files and Stacker
Fm: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222
To: Everett Marshall 70334,3511 (X)

Everett,

There is a LOT of data processing going on there.  Depending on your CPU and
memory you can try playing with the caching to improve speed.

What are you working with?

Mac Type:
RAM:
Drives...
Internal:
External:
External:

Depending on the above, we may be able bump your sampling rate back to 44KHz.

Edward Nutter
Stac Electronics Product Support 

There is 1 Reply.

#: 41382 S6/Macintosh
    06-Dec-93  14:39:44
Sb: #41378-Audio files and Stacker
Fm: Everett Marshall 70334,3511
To: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222

Edward,

Sorry...I should have included that info.

Mac IIsi
9megs RAM

40mb Connor INTERNAL
1.0g Digital EXTERNAL
WangDAT 3100 Tape drive

No accelerators.

The only extention running is QuickTime.

I should also mention that the Digital drive is the startup drive when I'm
recording.

Hope this helps,


Everett

#: 41320 S6/Macintosh
    04-Dec-93  18:49:58
Sb: #Stacker & System 7pro
Fm: Michael Guncheon 76703,552
To: all

I have a PB180 14/120.  I am planning on putting System 7pro on.
I have just purchased Stacker.... which should I install first???

There is 1 Reply.

#: 41379 S6/Macintosh
    06-Dec-93  12:07:59
Sb: #41320-Stacker & System 7pro
Fm: Edward Nutter [Stac] 75330,2222
To: Michael Guncheon 76703,552

Michael,

When we installed System 7.1 Pro here, we did it on top of existing Stacker
installations.  We've since had occasion to uninstall and reinstall Stacker on
some of those systems as technicians have moved to different assignments.  It
appears to work both ways.  So, base your installation decision on which is
more convenient for you.

Edward Nutter
Stac Electronics Product Support 

