forrest@sybase.com (12/04/90)
I recently took advantage of Borland's upgrade offer to Quatro Pro
2.0. So far I'm very happy with it except for one minor detail.
It appears that my hard disk is being accessed much more often than
I would expect. For example, when I'm entering numbers into a cell,
the red access light on my disk drive goes on as I enter each number.
Plus, as I do small tasks the light goes on. I suspect that this is
due to the VROOM technology swapping out parts of Quatro Pro in
its attempt to emulate virtual memory.
What I'm wondering about is if it's possible to have VROOM use my
RAM disk to do its swapping. I have 8 Megs of memory of which
7 Megs is configured as expanded memory. Since I'm using the wonderful
PC-KWIK Power Pack, I could have almost a 7 Meg RAM disk which I'd
rather swap to than to my real disk. I've read everything that came
with Quatro Pro and I didn't find anything that tells me how to do
this. I haven't called Borland Tech support partially because I'm
lazy and partially because the answer to this question might be
of interest to other readers of this group.
Here's Hopping,
----
Anything you read here is my opinion and in no way represents Sybase, Inc.
Jon Forrest WB6EDM
forrest@sybase.com
{pacbell,sun,{uunet,ucbvax}!mtxinu}!sybase!forrest
415-596-3422ergo@netcom.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch) (12/05/90)
In <11984@sybase.sybase.com> forrest@sybase.com writes: >[excessive disk swapping by Quatro Pro (VROOM). >What I'm wondering about is if it's possible to have VROOM use my >RAM disk to do its swapping. I have 8 Megs of memory of which >7 Megs is configured as expanded memory. Since I'm using the wonderful >PC-KWIK Power Pack, I could have almost a 7 Meg RAM disk which I'd >rather swap to than to my real disk. I've read everything that came >with Quatro Pro and I didn't find anything that tells me how to do >this. I haven't called Borland Tech support partially because I'm >lazy and partially because the answer to this question might be >of interest to other readers of this group. I have Paradox (same kind of promotional "upgrade"), which is also a VROOM program. First of all, here's a specific answer to your problem: remove or shrink that RAM disk. VROOM will use expanded memory before it will resort to any kind of disk. Here's a more general answer, and a gripe. If Paradox 3.5 is typical, Borland's VROOM software doesn't deal with the various memory options with any smarts at all. I have a 386 beast, with about half my extended memory converted to expanded by MS's emm386.sys driver. (Yes, I know there are better drivers, I'll probably buy one eventually.) Now, when it needs to decide where it's going to keep its swap space, Paradox looks for extended memory, expanded memory, or disk space, in that order. In my case, it sees all that free extended, and starts up all that fancy protected-mode stuff it needs to access extended memory. Then it discovers that some program using extended memory (namely emm386) doesn't use the right conventions and isn't a safe protected-mode partner. It then recovers and functions like it's running on a 8086 instead of a 80386. The only practical effect of all this are some scary error messages when I run Paradox and when Paradox exits. (Finally got rid of these by reconfiguring Paradox not to use extended memory at all.) Not a major bug, but a sign that somebody was excessively clever. In the name of "user friendliness" they make the program make all the decisions, depriving the user of important options. -- ergo@netcom.uucp Isaac Rabinovitch netcom!ergo@apple.com Silicon Valley, CA {apple,amdahl,claris}!netcom!ergo THIS STATEMENT IS VERIFIABLY, IRREFUTABLY TRUE!
ted@helios.ucsc.edu (Ted Cantrall) (12/06/90)
>I recently took advantage of Borland's upgrade offer to Quatro Pro 2.0. >What I'm wondering about is if it's possible to have VROOM use my >RAM disk to do its swapping. > I could have almost a 7 Meg RAM disk which I'd >rather swap to than to my real disk. ---------------------------------------------------- Start Q-Pro with a batch file that re-installs QP on your RAM disk, change to that disk and start QP as you normally would. This should work unlessQP has some internal knowledge of where it was first installed. Good Luck. -ted- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ted@helios.ucsc.edu |"He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the W (408)459-2110 |Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness H (408)423-2444 |and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8 (RSV)
davels@hplsla.HP.COM (Dave L Sherrer) (12/07/90)
>What I'm wondering about is if it's possible to have VROOM use my >RAM disk to do its swapping. With almost 7 megs of expanded memory, why would you want to swap to a ram disk. Quattro Pro checks whether you have expanded memory and will use it. Surely, this would be preferable over swapping (I know, I know, it doesn't answer your question ...)
ergo@netcom.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch) (12/07/90)
Here's a followup on the little weirdnesses of VROOM. Earlier I noted
how Paradox 3.5 issued various dire error messages if it got in
trouble trying to use extended memory, such as an incompatible
expanded memory manager. You can get rid of these messages by telling
Paradox not to use extended memory, but Paradox seems to function OK
whether you do or not.
Recently, I started useing Windows 3.0. Here's what happens if you
run Paradox 3.5 under Windows 3.0: the window minimizes and Windows
acerbically reminds you that protected mode programs can't run in
Windows' Enhanced Mode. This happens even if Paradox has been
configured as I described, which ought to prevent it from going into
protected mode. However, if you expand Paradox's icon, you'll find it
running quite happily.
I wonder if Quatro users have seen a similar problem? There must be some
running Quatro under Windows 3.0, assuming anybody's actually
purchased DAK's famous 386/software bundle.
--
ergo@netcom.uucp Isaac Rabinovitch
netcom!ergo@apple.com Silicon Valley, CA
{apple,amdahl,claris}!netcom!ergo
THIS STATEMENT IS VERIFIABLY, IRREFUTABLY TRUE!forrest@orion.sybase.com (Jon Forrest) (12/13/90)
In article <12990003@hplsla.HP.COM> davels@hplsla.HP.COM (Dave L Sherrer) writes: > >With almost 7 megs of expanded memory, why would you want to swap to a ram >disk. Quattro Pro checks whether you have expanded memory and will use it. >Surely, this would be preferable over swapping (I know, I know, it doesn't >answer your question ...) (I'm the person who started this topic.) After several enlightening mail messages, and some reflection, I now realize that there were two fundemendal problems here. They are: 1. My stupidity. Of course QPRO couldn't swap to expanded memory because it didn't see enough free expanded memory since, as I had said, I had allocated 6 megs of expanded memory to the PC-KWIK disk cache. The amount of free expanded memory left over wasn't enough for QPRO to assume it could swap to expanded memory. I did fool around with changing the amount of free expanded memory, and also with using the /x flag to use extended memory, and things worked better. 2. Borland's lack of forethought. Even after I realized my mistake I still thought it should be possible to tell VROOM to swap to a specific disk, maybe by using an environment variable. So, I looked all through my documentation, found nothing about how to do this, and then called Borland. It turns out there is no way to do this. (If someone knows how please let me know.) I was a little disappointed at Borland Tech Support. At first the guy I talked to gave me some jive about how disk cache's shouldn't be used because they don't cause writes to actually appear on a disk. I pointed out that most, if not all, of the popular disk cache programs today have write through caching and that, in any case, this should be something that the user should decide to live with. He also didn't seem to appreciate how useful it would be to be able to tell VROOM where to swap. But, these aren't major complaints and at least Borland isn't fooling around with 900 number tech support. So, the moral of this story is that even if you do have a RAMDISK you can't get VROOM to use it unless you start your VROOM based program from the RAMDISK. ---- Anything you read here is my opinion and in no way represents Sybase, Inc. Jon Forrest WB6EDM forrest@sybase.com {pacbell,sun,{uunet,ucbvax}!mtxinu}!sybase!forrest 415-596-3422