Once more into the breach, o Galacticus.....

[RDS]

A question:

Is it possible to increase the size of the native cache on a Mac from the standard 2mb? If so... How is it done?

My thanks,
Drake

[terryj]

sorry, not galactica, but willing to help..
by which cache do you mean?
The Native disc cache? This can be adjusted via Memory control Panel
in OS9, but not in OS X.

Are you talking about the native Buffer Cache for burning CDs
in Toast 6? It can be adjusted in Preferences by selecting a generous volume/partition for Toast to use.

or are you talking Internet Cache?

[galactica]

I too would like to know what you mean by "native cache"
that will help in answering your ?

[tgpo]

Do you mean the Cache size? It is up to the burner I believe. Mine is 4mb.

[galactica]

Phillips cdd5101 boasts 8megs according to my specs.

But i wonder what he poster meant by "native cache"......

[RDS]

Hi, guys.

Sorry for not being specific with my question. I meant in Toast. Right now I've upgraded my system to 10.2.8, and Toast Titanium 6. The burning programs cache is set at 2mb, and I'd like to know if it's possible to increase the size of the cache, and if this will make any difference in the stability of the burn.

Thanks,
Drake

[terryj]

You can adjust your buffer ( disc cache) in Toast 6,
just pick a large partition, where the media you are
burning is NOT stored, and assign that in Preferences.
I have a partition off of my main HD, that is 5GB,
that is called "Toast Scratch". Its assigned as the
disc cache for Toast to use, nothing else.
Assigning a dedicated partition or freespace CAN help
with burning discs, especially in Toast 6, which uses
the assigned disc cache to temporarily write its
converting files ( movie to MPEG-1, mp3 to AIFF)
when creating DVDs.

The native buffer (onboard cache), like tgpo and galactica
pointed out, is hardwired RAM soldered onto the control board
of the optical drive. My Pioneer a04/-104 has a native
buffer of 2MB. No way to change that. However you can
affect its efficency by the speed at which you burn discs;
ie. don't burn at a speed that will be faster than your
processor and optical drive can spool things out of the
assigned disc cache to the native buffer and out to burn to the disc.
This is what causes "buffer underrrn" errors.
I have a 48x CD_RW I burn discs at 40x, and my Superdrive
I burn DVDs at 1x ( for reasons that have to do with wider compatablity,
more than anything else) and do not get any buffer underruns.

hope this helps.

[RDS]

I appreciate the information, gents. Especially yours, Terry. The real problem seems to have arisen when I switched to 2X DVD-R's. Apparently I'm going to have to go back, and deal with the incredibly slow time of 1X. Ah, well. Thanks, again.

Regards,
Drake