From: swesterback@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi (Sten Westerback, Nokia Telecommunications, FINLAND)
Subject: Re: Hard drive problems w/Win3.1 & DOS 5.0
Organization: Nokia Telecommunications.
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 10:52:23 GMT

In article <Pine.3.05.9211201106.A17749-c100000@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu>,         CSJDN@ECNUXA.BITNET writes:
> On Fri, 20 Nov 1992, Craig Bull wrote:
> 
>> I've got a Zenith 386/20 with a 70MB hard drive and 8MB of RAM.  I
>> noticed a slow down in performance of the system.  So, on a whim, I
>> ran Norton's SI utility on it.  The hard drive throughput was extremely
>> low, about 58.7 KB/sec.  If I boot the computer clean, throughput leaps
>> to about 690 KB/sec.
>>
>> So, after some fooling around with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, I've
>> determined that the culprit of this change in performance is EMM386.EXE.
>>
> I requested a solution to a similar problem of speed loss.
> Could the problems be related?
> The only response I got from my earlier post was to increase RAM and
> upgrade to DOS 5.0.  This is not possible.
> 
> I loose 80% of my CPU
> Speed as measured by NORTON SI.EXE Benchmark test when I am in windows (or
> an application) and access drive A.
> 
> This happens without exception as a result of the following actions:
> 
> When I start Windows and run si.exe the benchmark test of the CPU speed is
> 13-15. If I then access drive A;, such as through the DOS Shell, Then
> access drive C: again, the si.exe benchmark speed drops to 2-3. It stays
> at this speed until I close Windows.
> 
We have noticed the same phenomena on some of the computers here at work.
But both my work-386sx-25 and my 486 at home has no difference. My, not yet
checked, hypothesis is that the problem is caused by the BIOS no being in
RAM. This could possibly be corrected (apart from setup screens) by adding 
the /shadowram:on switch to the himem.sys command line in config.sys.

Have you tested QEMM386 instead? I have heard that it would be faster but
i have not seen any difference other than BC3.1 crashing now and then and 
QEMM displaying a message with Continue/Retry/Stop options with practically 
no other option than ctrl-alt-del. So i don't use it! ;)

BTW. Does the weitek enable/disable option in EMM386 provide some sort of
interface to an waitek or does it just exclude the memory used to communicate
with it (it is memory mapped isn't it)?

> I am running a 2 yr old Zenith with the following:
> Intel 80386-16 CPU
sx or dx?
> 2mg RAM
milligrams?  :)

> MS-DOS 4.01 with BIOS VER 4.00.06
Zeniths own BIOS? I think that's the problem.

> Windows 3.1 in 386 enhanced mode.
What about standard mode?

Sten
============================================================================
Sten Westerback (BSc. electronics)          Telephone: +358+0 +5115891(work)
X400      : c=fi, a=Elisa, p=Nokia Telecom, S=Westerback, G=Sten, (u=SWS)
Internet  : swesterback@tnclus.tele.nokia.fi        Time zone : EET (=GMT+3)
Snailmail : Konalantie  12 A16, SF-00370 HELSINKI, FINLAND (EUROPE, EARTH) 
 Test the utility at WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.mil::pd1:<msdos.dirutl>swxd303d.zip
   Note that i am working, but not speaking for Nokia Telecommunications!
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