> I tried hard coding the flags (0d00) on wd0 to force Ultra/100.
> Indeed, the dmesg then showed Ultra/100 everywhere, but the time to
> compile userland (59 mins) was nearly identical (within seconds) to
> the case where dmesg is as above, so I am not sure I believe anything
> other than the messages really changed.

Ultra/100 is a win if you have multiple disks on the ATA bus or if you
have a big fat raid pretending to be a single disk.  It just isn't
going to do much for you unless you have a bottleneck at your ATA bus.

The limiting speed if you have a single disk is still going to be
dominated by the seek time, the rotational latency, and the data-rate
at the head.  The delay to get stuff across the ATA bus is essentially
lost in the noise.

-wolfgang
-- 
       Wolfgang Rupprecht <wolfgang+gnus@dailyplanet.wsrcc.com>
		    http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/
Coming soon: GPS mapping tools for Open Systems. http://www.gnomad-mapping.com/