joel@peora.ccur.com (Joel Upchurch) (03/01/88)
I've read a lot of people saying that it isn't practical to
run Microsoft Windows on a XT clone. I've got a 8MHZ XT clone
at home and I've had pretty good results running Windows. You
do need to tune the system a little more carefully than you
would with an AT clone. Here are a few things I've noticed
that will improve your performance on a XT clone.
1. Replace the 8088-2 with a V20 chip. I've noticed that
Windows speeds up a lot when you use a V20 chip instead of
the 8088. Normally a V20 chip will speed up an application 5
to 10% at most, but I've noticed that scrolling in Windows
Write is two or three times faster with the V20 in there. I
suspect that MULT/DIV/SHIFT type instructions that the V20
does very well may be heavily used in the Windows display
drivers.
2. Use Windows 2.0. The new version is distinctly faster than
1.0x versions of Windows. I remember trying to run two copies
of Windows Draw under 1.01 was hard to distinguish from a
system crash, but they run fine under 2.0. The screen updates
are noticeably quicker also.
3. Get an EEMS memory board. Windows comes with EMS 4.0
drivers for the INTEL and AST boards. Loading multiple
applications and switching between them is much faster with
this feature. I haven't even tried disabling any of my
motherboard memory like they suggested, to speed up the
task switching.
Some other comments. Windows Write is probably the closest
thing to true WYSIWYG word processing available on the PC.
The 1.0x version worked pretty well with laser printers and
the 2.0 version even does font downloading. Windows 2.0
includes a utility to analyze a softfont file and build the
width table for Write. PC Magazine in it's word processing
issue recently said that you could buy Windows just for Write
and consider the rest of it just thrown in for free. Write
doesn't have a lot of fancy features, but it is easy to use,
has good laser support, and lets you mix text and graphics
easily.
A question. Has anyone noticed peculiar behavior when using
the SMARTDRV program included with 2.0? After a while the
disk seemed to be thrashing when I tried to do a file save.
When I went back to using the disk caching utility included
with the Mace Utilities the problem went away.
Now if Genoa would finish the 2.0 driver for their Super EGA
HiRes + card so I can go back to using 800x600 resolution.
--
Joel Upchurch/Concurrent Computer Corp/2486 Sand Lake Rd/Orlando, Fl 32809
joel@peora.ccur.com {cbosgd!codas,uiucuxc,hoptoad,petsd}!peora!joel (3058501040)brunke@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Jim Brunke) (03/02/88)
I have been thinking about getting V2.0 but I need to know if Microsoft still includes a driver for cga???? In V1.04 (I think) their was no cga support. Jim Brunke -- ARPA: brunke@vax1.acs.udel.edu
dennis@se-sd.sandiego.NCR.COM (Dennis Foster) (03/03/88)
In article <750@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> brunke@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Jim Brunke) writes: >I have been thinking about getting V2.0 but I need to know if Microsoft >still includes a driver for cga???? > >In V1.04 (I think) their was no cga support. > >Jim Brunke I think there was support for CGA in v1.04. Anyway, contrary to the information printed on the box, MS-Windows v2.03 does contain the drivers necessary for running on CGA. How do I know? I bought one for a CGA based system and make use of it every day.