🚀 go-pugleaf

goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca (Majeed  Goldrick) writes:

>Hi everyone,

>I am doing a bit of work for an office with a bunch of 386SX 16MHz machines.
>They are using monochrome monitors (!!!).I would like to get them going on
>some Windows applications, but it would seem to me that this would be 
>extremely slow in the current setup.  The question is - how can I optimize
>these machines for Windows at a reasonable price.  Do I:

>1) Buy new vga/svga cards/monitors for them - how much faster would
>   this make them?
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)

>2) Add lots of ram (would RAM + a Cache be a good way to go?)
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.

>3) Invest in coprocessors?
A coproc has hardly influence on the speed of Windows. There are only few
apps like Winword that use this coproc.

>4) Try something else (suggestions anyone???), or
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.
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.

>5) Give up and go home?
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

>Please keep in mind that cost IS a factor.  I would appreciate hearing what
>your opinions are - if there is sufficient interest (ie. if this question
>isn't too trivial) I'll summarize on le net.
"There are no trivial questions" (don`t know who said that)

>Later,

>Majeed.

In article <Bsu89r.3K6@cs.dal.ca> goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca (Majeed  Goldrick) writes:
>I am doing a bit of work for an office with a bunch of 386SX 16MHz machines.
>They are using monochrome monitors (!!!).I would like to get them going on
>some Windows applications, but it would seem to me that this would be 
>extremely slow in the current setup.  The question is - how can I optimize
>these machines for Windows at a reasonable price.  Do I:
>
>1) Buy new vga/svga cards/monitors for them - how much faster would
>   this make them?
>
Well, at least make them color-VGA capable, I don't think that windows supports
monochrome very well (if at all).  An accelerated SVGA card will help speed
up the graphics parts of windows (opening and moving windows, etc.) quite a
bit.

However:

>2) Add lots of ram (would RAM + a Cache be a good way to go?)
>

Windows will be very slow without lots of RAM to work with.  It can run one
app at a time at very fast speeds with 4 MB RAM (512 K cache), and will meet
all your needs with 8 MB RAM (1MB Cache and optionally 1 MB RAM disk, with
the temp variable set to a dir on it).

>3) Invest in coprocessors?

Well, a co-processor (math-type, not video or any other) will only help if
the windows apps you plan to use were written to talk to it.  Otherwise, it's
basically a waste of money.

>
>4) Try something else (suggestions anyone???), or

Well, RAM is way to low for OS/2, wrong hardware for Amiga-OS and others,
UNIX is stable, but might not have the apps you want.

>
>5) Give up and go home?

Nah, give up and take a vacation in Tahaiti!

In article <Bsu89r.3K6@cs.dal.ca>, goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca (Majeed  Goldrick) writes:

>They are using monochrome monitors (!!!).I would like to get them going on
>some Windows applications, but it would seem to me that this would be 
>extremely slow in the current setup.  The question is - how can I optimize
>these machines for Windows at a reasonable price.  Do I:


I realize that I am treading on dangerous ground here (I will probably catch
it from the Windows zealots), so I am donning my asbestos underwear...

Doesn't the fact that you have to optimize the hardware to make a given
piece of software run with acceptable speed raise questions in anybody's
mind?  This immediately raises a warning flag in my brain that perhaps
the software in question is not the best answer to the problem!
Especially when there are better solutions on the market.

Please, I am interested in discussions on this, but send your flames
to /dev/null.


-- 
John Martin                                        johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu
Institute of Neuroscience,   University of Oregon,    Eugene, OR,    97402

In <Bsu89r.3K6@cs.dal.ca> goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca (Majeed  Goldrick) writes:

>Hi everyone,

>I am doing a bit of work for an office with a bunch of 386SX 16MHz machines.
>They are using monochrome monitors (!!!).I would like to get them going on
>some Windows applications, but it would seem to me that this would be 
>extremely slow in the current setup.  The question is - how can I optimize
>these machines for Windows at a reasonable price.  Do I:

 No problem, I own a 386SX-16...

>1) Buy new vga/svga cards/monitors for them - how much faster would
>   this make them?

 I take it you mean that the monochrome monitors are Herc TTL?
I have a Everex mono VGA, with a Trident 8900 card, and it works fine.
You're talking about $150 for VGA card(256K does fine), and mono
VGA monitors.
  This would probably give you a better display.  I don't know if
performance would increase.

>2) Add lots of ram (would RAM + a Cache be a good way to go?)

 Bingo!  4 Megs minimum.  I have 5 Megs of RAM in my machine, and it
is running faster than any DX machine I've seen with only 2 Megs of
RAM under windows.

>3) Invest in coprocessors?

 No, won't help too much.

>4) Try something else (suggestions anyone???), or

>5) Give up and go home?

 Grab yourself something to eat, and then come back.

 I'll tell ya.  With a 386SX-16, monochrome VGA monitor, 256K video
card, and 5 Megs of RAM, Windows is perfectly useable on my machine.
I almost think that the fancy 386DX machines are slightly overrated,
there are too many things they have to stop and wait for, that real
world performance is negligible.  IMO, anyway.

 So, if you can upgrade the RAM easily.  RAM is cheap at $40/Meg.
Otherwise, forget it.

 Better yet, scrap the Windows kludge.  The normal DOS applications work
a hell of a lot faster, using less resources.

-- 
Steve Sheldon         sheldon@iastate.edu
Iowa Cooperative Soil Survey Resource Unit
2142 Agronomy, Iowa State University  (515) 294-5429

-- 
Steve Sheldon         sheldon@iastate.edu
Iowa Cooperative Soil Survey Resource Unit
2142 Agronomy, Iowa State University  (515) 294-5429

In article <1992Aug13.035324.24260@nntp.uoregon.edu> johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu
(John Martin) writes:
>In article <Bsu89r.3K6@cs.dal.ca>, goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca (Majeed  Goldrick)
writes:
>
>>They are using monochrome monitors (!!!).I would like to get them going on
>>some Windows applications, but it would seem to me that this would be 
>>extremely slow in the current setup.  The question is - how can I optimize
>>these machines for Windows at a reasonable price.  Do I:
>
>
>I realize that I am treading on dangerous ground here (I will probably catch
>it from the Windows zealots), so I am donning my asbestos underwear...

First off I'm not a windows zealot so you can be assured that my comments are
completely unbiased :-).
>
>Doesn't the fact that you have to optimize the hardware to make a given
>piece of software run with acceptable speed raise questions in anybody's
>mind?  This immediately raises a warning flag in my brain that perhaps
>the software in question is not the best answer to the problem!
>Especially when there are better solutions on the market.
>
>Please, I am interested in discussions on this, but send your flames
>to /dev/null.

Why does optimizing a given hardware setup send up any warning flags?  Every
software package out there has a minimum configuration and places different
demands on a system.  Windows is a rather demanding (overblown, overhyped...)
shell, however, its requirements are not that unreasonable.  Unless we are to
stay in the stone ages, advanced software applications will require
investments in hardware.

Should every software package written work with 8 bit processors and run in
64k of RAM??????

But then what about PC GEOS?? The GUI that runs fine on XT class PCs,
but that's another discussion.

regards
Greg
-- 

In article <sheldon.713715436@pv141b.vincent.iastate.edu> sheldon@iastate.edu (Steve Sheldon) writes:
>
>>1) Buy new vga/svga cards/monitors for them - how much faster would
>>   this make them?
>
> I take it you mean that the monochrome monitors are Herc TTL?
>I have a Everex mono VGA, with a Trident 8900 card, and it works fine.
>You're talking about $150 for VGA card(256K does fine), and mono
>VGA monitors.
>  This would probably give you a better display.  I don't know if
>performance would increase.


Nope.  To be honest, if you have a newer monochrome adapter (the ones that
use VVLSI instead of TTL), Windows video is just about as fast as you can
make it.  The older (including the original) Herc cards are slower because
of the technology/memory/circuitry used in the cards--but even so, herc
cards are usually more than four times faster.  Why, you ask?  Simple:
Monochrome graphics cards only have to move 720x320 pixels that have only
two states: on or off.   A VGA card has to do 640x480x16, an SVGA has to 
do 640x480x256, 800x600x16 (or 256), or 1024x768x16 (or 256)--there is
much much more junk to shove across the bus.  SVGA is probably the slowest
of the slow: in order to fit the 256K, 512K, or one Meg of video RAM into
a mappable area, SVGA's employ a rather elaborate planing scheme (mappable
pages) which also add to speed deficiency.

The problem with Monochrome graphics/Windows is that Windows tends to
try to "dither" colors to achieve a rudimentary greyscale... this cuts down
the overall resolution so that some Windows Apps cannot fit on the desktop
at all (I'm thinking about Corel Draw here).  Others work simply mahvelous
(Winword 2.0 and Excel 4.0)... but appear to be slow because the system
I'm running them on is slow.


>
>>2) Add lots of ram (would RAM + a Cache be a good way to go?)
>
> Bingo!  4 Megs minimum.  I have 5 Megs of RAM in my machine, and it
>is running faster than any DX machine I've seen with only 2 Megs of
>RAM under windows.

Hear Hear!  RAM is probably the best way to increase speed (next to
purchasing a 486/50, of course).   I've also found that Smartdrv.sys
with sufficient RAM also adds immensely to Windows efficiency.

> Better yet, scrap the Windows kludge.  The normal DOS applications work
>a hell of a lot faster, using less resources.


If GUI isn't necessary, this is a good alternative.  Using Word 5.5 versus
WordWin is always viable, using Quatro Pro instead of Excel 4.0 works well
too.  But if you need particular applications because you really NEED them,
a 386sx-16 should work just fine until you can afford to get something 
better.

In article <sheldon.713715436@pv141b.vincent.iastate.edu> sheldon@iastate.edu (Steve Sheldon) writes:
>In <Bsu89r.3K6@cs.dal.ca> goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca (Majeed  Goldrick) writes:
>
>>2) Add lots of ram (would RAM + a Cache be a good way to go?)
>
> Bingo!  4 Megs minimum.  I have 5 Megs of RAM in my machine, and it
>is running faster than any DX machine I've seen with only 2 Megs of
>RAM under windows.

I am running with 8 MB, with 2MB in a Hyperdisk cache.  Windows may not be
"blindingly fast", but I'm not about to upgrade my 386SX-16 yet.  I think the
cache is as important as the unallocated memory for Window's usage.

>>3) Invest in coprocessors?
>
> No, won't help too much.

Here I beg to differ.  A friend gave me a 387 (good friend!), despite my
protests that it was a waste.  For most applications it is, but not for
printing to a dot-matrix printer in graphics mode.  Pages that took 2 minutes
to be rasterized now get done in 10-20 seconds.  Wintach didn't report any
screen speedup (Diamond Speedstar Plus - Tseng 4000).  At $79 a Cyrix chip
might be worth looking into if you are experiencing agonizing print delay.
-- 
     Jerry Natowitz
     Guest user on:
ARPA jin@ursa-major.spdcc.com
UUCP {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!jin

In article <Bsu89r.3K6@cs.dal.ca>, goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca (Majeed  Goldrick) writes:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I am doing a bit of work for an office with a bunch of 386SX 16MHz machines.
> They are using monochrome monitors (!!!).I would like to get them going on
> some Windows applications, but it would seem to me that this would be 
> extremely slow in the current setup.  The question is - how can I optimize
> these machines for Windows at a reasonable price.  Do I:
O.K my 2 cents worth, note, I'm no expert, but thats never stopped
me before 8-)
> 
> 1) Buy new vga/svga cards/monitors for them - how much faster would
>    this make them?


VGA cards may make the machines more usable, (colors, people like
colors).  SVGA is'nt a good idea, it slows the machines down
by alot, (it needs to squeeze alot more info across the bus than
VGA). As to weather it's cost effective, dunno thats a HCI problem
I think
> 
> 2) Add lots of ram (would RAM + a Cache be a good way to go?)
RAM yes, deffinately RAM, (this is comming from a man who spent
half the night waiting for a 5 min excel tutorial to load on a 
2Mb 386SX).  I suggest at least 4MB if you plan to run any recent
Windows package, e.g W4W 2.0, excel 4.0 etc.  With the price of
RAM nowadays, I think it's the cheapest way to get more speed.
> 
Co-processors?, do you meant maths or graphics/ windows cp_procs?
if you meant the latter I think you're better off getting new
motherboards. reason, to specific and expensive, if you mean
the former, the windows environment uses only integer maths, so
a math coprocessor wont help, (note it will speed up applications
which require real number appilcations though.
> 3) Invest in coprocessors?
> 
> 4) Try something else (suggestions anyone???), or
> 
> 5) Give up and go home?
I really thinks 16MHz SX are still quite usable provided you have
a decent sized hard disk and memory, if all you plan to do are
things like word processing, I say keep'em.
> 
> Please keep in mind that cost IS a factor.  I would appreciate hearing what
> your opinions are - if there is sufficient interest (ie. if this question
> isn't too trivial) I'll summarize on le net.
> 
> 
> Later,
> 
> Majeed.
> 
-- 
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