SLVQC@CUNYVM (Salvatore Saieva) (10/12/90)
I was just helping a friend configure Win3.0 to run on his Zenith 386SX. Boy, is it slooowww... The Zenith is running at 16MHz and has 1MB of memory installed. I'd like to hear from others running Win3.0 on an SX: how much memory do you have installed and does Windows run at an acceptable speed. My friend's machine seems to be swapping a lot, but, before I recommend that he go out and fill up his empty memory slots I'd like to get an idea of how much of an improvement extra memory will provide. Thanks in advance. (Direct or followup replies are ok). Sal. ------- Salvatore Saieva Internet: slvqc@cunyvm.cuny.edu Queens College, Academic Computer Center BITNET: slvqc@cunyvm.bitnet 65-30 Kissena Blvd, Flushing, N.Y. 11367 DeskNet: (718) 520-7662
dve@zooid.UUCP (David Mason) (10/13/90)
SLVQC@CUNYVM (Salvatore Saieva) writes: > I was just helping a friend configure Win3.0 to run on his > Zenith 386SX. Boy, is it slooowww... The Zenith is running > at 16MHz and has 1MB of memory installed. I'd like to hear > from others running Win3.0 on an SX: how much memory do you > have installed and does Windows run at an acceptable speed. > My friend's machine seems to be swapping a lot, but, before I > recommend that he go out and fill up his empty memory slots > I'd like to get an idea of how much of an improvement extra > memory will provide. Thanks in advance. (Direct or followup > replies are ok). Adding just 1 meg of memory will make a huge difference. So will running in standard mode instead of enhanced (WIN/S) but you will lose the 386 advantages. Another suggestion which no one seems to think about is running in a lower resolution. Most of our machines are 12mhz ATs with 2 megs and a Hercules monochrome display and the speed is fine. Since you are normally just printing to a B&W printer it's fine, except it doesn't look as nice. But I would say, yes, you will definately notice a big difference by adding memory.
ernst_witter@eva.slu.se (10/18/90)
In reply to some queries about how much memory on a 386(SX) to run Win3.0, the only useful information I can give is my set up, (I'm not an expert) and saying that this does work (at speed). I have 386SX with a total of 5Mb (0 Wait state, setting it to 1 will slow things down appreciably). In the config.sys himem is loaded after which comes Smartdrive at 1024/768 (768 is the value Windows recommended during SetUp). I run Windows in enhanced mode, and typically have 3-4 quite large programs loaded (WP51, Reflex, QPro, and sometimes SAS) and often also the Norton Commander (still much easier and faster to use than File Manager). All of these larger programs typically require at least 400Kb conventiol memory to run, and may (and also do) use EMS or XMS. Access to EMS and XMS memory is regulated through their pif file settings. As long as I stick to no more than 3 large applications switching between them (using a Hot Key combination) is instantaneous. More applications than that make switching a bit slower, especially if the application is in graphic mode as things have to be swapped to and from disk (using a permanent swap file). All applications work at what seems to be about normal speed compared when run 'normally' from DOS (ie without Windows) as long as I set their run mode to EXCLUSIVE in their Pif files. Having them run in non-exclusive mode with one or two background tasks, will slow the foreground program down to about the speed of my old XT, the programs in the background run even slower then. This speed is however sometimes quite adequate for things like communications or simple Word processing, so that a number crunching program can then be active in the background (exclusive means nothing is active in background). Another thing to remember with the Pif files is the monitoring of the Video ports, these should be off whenever possible (always with the programs I use) as monitoring of ports does definitely slow things down to a crawl. Does this help? (all this info and more about memory vs speed can be foud in the Windows manual). Ernst Witter
steve@clmqt.marquette.Mi.US (Steve Lasich) (10/18/90)
SLVQC@CUNYVM (Salvatore Saieva) writes: > I was just helping a friend configure Win3.0 to run on his > Zenith 386SX. Boy, is it slooowww... The Zenith is running > at 16MHz and has 1MB of memory installed. I'd like to hear > from others running Win3.0 on an SX: how much memory do you > have installed and does Windows run at an acceptable speed. "Acceptable speed" is very subjective. Especially where Windows is concerned. Two megs of RAM makes Windows tolerable. Barely. What I found is that the Zenith COMPRESS utility did more to speed up Windows than I would have thought possible. I did a side-by-side comparison of Windows on a Zenith 386SX (16 MHz) and a Zenith 386/20MHz. Both machines had two megabytes of RAM and 40 meg hard disks and ran Windows in the enhanced 386 mode. The SX machine initially ran Windows apps two to three times faster than the 386/20! It was unbelieveable. What happened was I had reformatted the SX machine with DOS 4.0 for the test. Then I ran the Windows install. This is why Windows ran so quickly. It was the first and only thing on the disk. There was almost zero seek time from the FAT to C:\WINDOWS. The 386/20 already had about 25 megs of files on its disk when Windows 3.0 arrived. The Windows installation placed the new directories out in the middle of the hard disk. This made for a LOT of seek time. With all of Windows' disk-swapping, this seek time really added up. My COMPRESS came with Zenith-Microsoft DOS 3.3. It runs under DOS 4.0 but is not shipped with 4.0. The hard disk on my 386/20 was NOT fragmented. However, the COMPRESS utility reported "9 directories were relocated." The 386/20 Windows directories were shifted outward, nearer the FAT. After the optimization, the 386/20 machine ran Windows applications twice as fast as the SX machine. The optimized setup is OK for multi-tasking DOS applications, but with just two megabytes Toolbook just crawls. The drive light is on almost constantly. Your friend's mileage may vary, but a disk tune-up might rev up his/her machine. At least until the new memory comes.