How fast is SIO2PC?
Because the Atari is running in its fully native mode (no drivers or modifications needed) when using SIO2PC, the serial bus is running at the same 19,200 bits/second speed it uses with real drives. But with SIO2PC, disk latency is eliminated. (This refers to the time it takes for the disk to spin around and position the correct sector under the head.) When I timed typical file loads, SIO2PC was approximately twice as fast as an 810 drive as a result of this. Could it be made faster? Yes, there are a couple of ways this could be done. One way is to increase the speed of the serial bus. There is a version of SPARTADOS which does this with specially modified Atari drives. I have programmed SIO2PC to work with this DOS and jump to about 38,000 bits/second when it is used. There’s a limit to how fast we can go with this method, primarily because the discrete speeds attainable on the Atari and the PC start to diverge as we move much above 19,200. Another method would be to use some sort of
