ahodgson@hstbme.mit.edu (Antony Hodgson) (10/31/90)
I bought TC++ a couple of months ago and have generally been pleased with it. I have noticed, however, a very annoying delay when I invoke the call stack (Ctrl-F3) while debugging a program of about 20,000 lines. On my 12MHz 286 machine (1MB RAM, 32MB hard disk), it can take upwards of a minute (*YES, 60 SECONDS*) before the call stack info is displayed. In the interim, there seems to be a great deal of disk activity. Even after I get control back, any subsequent command such as trying to use the cursor keys to see more of the current line or moving down to the next line takes another 15, 20, or 45 seconds to respond, and if I make the mistake of pressing a cursor key long enough for it to autorepeat, I don't get control back for several minutes. Is this normal (i.e., has this happened to other people)? Is there anything I can do to improve the response time (I already invoke TC++ with the extended memory switch, so it has the full 384K available, as confirmed by the Get Info menu choice under the File menu item)? Any help anyone can give me would be very much appreciated as the current situation makes it practically impossible to debug my programs efficiently. Please reply via Email. Thanks, Tony Hodgson ahodgson@hstbme.mit.edu
tjr@cbnewsc.att.com (thomas.j.roberts) (11/02/90)
Yes, indeed, TC++ is *A LOT* slower than TC 2.0. You really want MORE than 640K to use it effectively. Adding 1 Meg of Expanded memory increases throughput so much that my 16 MHz 8086 is significantly faster in compiling than a 16 MHz 80286 without any EMS. The EMS improves both compilation times and debugger response times. On an 80386SX with fast IDE drive and 1.25 Meg disk cache, the lack of EMS is not noticeable, and the faster processor makes TC++ a joy. BEWARE: TC++ has a bug when using EMS - it DOES NOT RELEASE THE EMS WHEN EXITING TC++. This is a disaster if you run TC++ twice without rebooting. There is a kludgy work-around - use an EMS debugger to delete the first EMS handle (-511 on my machine) before running TC++ - this assumes there are no other "permanent" EMS users on the system, such as RAMDISKs. Tom Roberts att!ihlpl!tjrob