david@gisatl.FIDONET.ORG (David Deitch) (05/25/90)
In a message of <May 21 21:51> Peter Nelson (nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM ) writes: > I've been running Desqview 386 with 2 Megs of RAM but things > were just a *little* too cramped for the applications I run so > I recently upgraded to 4 megs. Since I have a 386SX (16 bit > bus) and I was using 1 Meg SIPS, the minimum increment was > 2 megs. Anyway I don't really NEED 4 megs --about 2.5 megs > of RAM is sufficient-- so now I have a Meg and a half of "spare" > RAM and I'm looking for ideas of how to use it. > > Most of my programs are not very disk intensive. My Zortech > C++ compiler and (B)linker sometimes set the disk a-chattering > and sometimes so does my Publish-It! DTP software, but that's > about it. So I'm not really sure how much benefit a disk-caching > > scheme would be, or whether it would give me any better > improvement > than just setting my BUFFERS= value a little higher (DOS's own > crude form of disk caching). Ditto with a RAM disk. How can > I tell if the speedup is worth the trouble of setting one up > and the overhead of loading it every time I power up? > > What about other off-the-wall applications of big, fast (80ns) > RAM? Is it fast enough to map (remember this is a 386) to the > VGA display address space and do some kind of animation? How > 'bout using it to store audio data (1.5 Megabytes = 17 seconds > @ 44000 16 bit samples per second (CD quality)). Any other > ideas? I just want to to have fun. Thanks in advance. Setting buffers higher could actually slow things down. I would recommend first of all creating a large virtual disk. Store things like libraries and include files there for much faster compiling and linking. If you do a lot of desktop publishing, try to configure your software to find its fonts and overlays up in the RAM disk. This will greatly speed up graphics processing. If you do a lot of printing, set up a large spooler. The overhead involved is rather minor. So what if it takes 1 full minute to boot rather than 30 seconds. I usually use half of that just turning on both monitors and the printer. If you can, configure the 1.5 Meg as extended so that whatever you use it does lose speed running through the EMS driver. One thing to remember is that there is never too much RAM - it costs too much to get what you got! David Deitch (GIS) deitch@gisatl.fidonet.org 1:133/411@fidonet -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Deitch - via FidoNet node 1:133/411 UUCP: galbp!gisatl!david INTERNET: david@gisatl.FIDONET.ORG