From: jjk1@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (Konsultant Josh/fuzzy.happy.green.box)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Re: Optimizing 386SX-16's for Windows
Date: 12 Aug 92 20:37:44 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

In article <1992Aug12.121839.12941@uni-paderborn.de>, hosp@uni-paderborn.de (Holger Spangardt) writes:
[...stuff deleted...]

>Though Windows is an graphic-oriented-shell the speed of the graphiccard is not
>important, a Herculescard might be faster than a vga-card, but a colorscreen
>makes more fun working with Windows.(of course expensive)

This is not true.  A faster graphics card (namely a so-called "Windows
Accelerator") can make a dramatic speed difference, often at a
reasonable price.  Observe two machines with/without fast cards, and
you will see the difference.

>The best way to tune the system with Windows is to buy as much RAM as possible.
>A Cachecontroller makes the system much faster,too, but this is not very cheap.

This is true, although there comes a point when extra RAM doesn't help
(100 Meg added to 500 Megs already existing for example :-)

>A coproc has hardly influence on the speed of Windows. There are only few
>apps like Winword that use this coproc.

There are actually quite a number of Windows applications which use
the coprocessor - to tell you the truth, I wasn't aware that Winword
would use a coprocessor for text processing.  However, spreadsheets,
etc., are just as likely to as their DOS counterparts.  As an overall
system improvement, though, it is not as good as the other suggestions
you've made.

>First of all, the WIN.INI and the SYSTEM.INI should be optimized.
>E.g.: You can use the SWAPFILE which makes Windows faster using the tempfiles.
>Do not load any pictures in the Background and start Windows with "win :" which
>suppresses the Windowslogo at the beginning.

Suppressing the Windows Logo at the beginning does not really speed up
the loading time (although it may feel like it does :-).  On a system
with a reasonably large amount of memory (8M +), you may want to
consider turning off swapfiles entirely if you are not running too
many applications because Windows will tend to swap when it shouldn't
really need to.  Optimizing SYSTEM.INI and friends is an excellent idea.

>A fast Harddisk is very important,too. It should be a fast SCSI-HD, cause the
>datatransfer is very important.(SCSI is about 2times faster then IDE)
>The configuration of the system, like HD-Cache,Buffers,...to speed up DOS.

Regardless of the type of controller or interface you have, try
turning on 32-bit disk access.  Although you might think you could not
do so without a 32-bit controller, you can as long as the option is
displayed.  It doesn't ALWAYS work, but with some combinations (most
notably a WD controller), it gives a dramatic performance increase.
The word from Tech Support at MS was that 32-bit disk access "doesn't
really mean 32-bit disk access, it just makes Windows talk more
directly to the hard drive and/or controller" (way to go, Bill, make
them there options crystal clear to us :-)

>Of course the best way to make Windows faster is to sell the 386SX (UUGH)
>and buy 486/50MHz, 256 Cache, 32MB RAM(50ns), 70HzSVGA-Card, 24``Monitor,
>1GB SCSI (12ms,1500Kbps),etc

Well spoken :-)

from Intel VP David House, in EETimes, 16/10/89:
  "Bill Gates says no matter how much more power we can supply, he'll
   develop some really exciting software that will bring the machine
   to its knees."


Just some miscellaneous observations.

--Josh
-- 
____________------------===========------------____________
                     from: Josh Kopper
                      jjk1@lehigh.edu
    
  Computer Engineering, EECS Department, Lehigh University

  Systems Programming - Lehigh University Computing Center