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| Heath's Tips | - by Heath Phillipi |
This month's topic is tuning your OS/2 system to get the maximum performance. Actually, in order to cover this topic with the detail needed, it will be split into two parts. This month we will cover the basic concept of hardware and how it affects the tuning of your system, and we will look at a few freeware utilities that will help you in this project. Next month we will get a little more gritty and dig into the CONFIG.SYS and other less traveled places.
The first key to tuning any system is knowing what you are dealing with. There is no sense in beefing up your HPFS disk cache if you are using only FAT partitions. Also, if you are using a 1 meg ISA video card, no amount of tuning in the world will speed up redraws if you are using the highest resolution and color depth possible for the card. If you know your system's weaknesses and strengths, you can better adjust to make up for the differences in order to get the desired results.
OS/2 is a 32 bit multithreaded, multitasking operating system. It was designed to run many programs (each with one or more threads) concurrently. To achieve this IBM engineers learned early on that most operations had to take place in memory, and not rely heavily on the processor. This is one of the reasons why Warp on a 133mhz Pentium with 8 meg of RAM is slower than a 486 DX/2 66 with 32 meg of RAM.
No matter what you run or how you run it, an increase in memory is usually the single best way to boost performance of OS/2. Realistically speaking, OS/2 needs at least 8 meg to run. Twelve megs will make your system much more responsive. Sixteen is the first major sweet point for OS/2, the second being 32 meg. Even with 32 you will get some swapping to the hard disk, but by this point most systems are very snappy and powerful enough to handle all but the most demanding graphics and database tasks. Adding RAM is pretty straightforward. Check with your computer manufacturer or any reputable memory retailer to determine what type you need (30 pin, 72 pin, parity, non-parity, EDO, etc.) and the current prices. If you're not comfortable actually inserting the memory chips, have a professional do it.
Next, video becomes very important because no matter how fast your system is, you won't know it if your screen isn't being updated. The exceptions to this are if you're doing a lot of background tasks such as database maintenance or spreadsheet recalculations, or you don't need resolutions better than 640x480x16 colors. In this case you may be OK with a slower video card. Just make sure you're taking advantage of your hardware. If you've got a Vesa Local Bus system make sure you're using a VL-Bus video card. If you've got a fancy new Pentium motherboard with a PCI bus, that old ISA video card will shackle it when it wants to fly. And, of course, if you want to use high resolutions, you're going to want lots of video memory.
Depending on your requirements, hard disks may or may not be a big issue for you. If you primarily run one or two apps at a time, a fast IDE hard drive will be more than enough for your system. If you do a lot of disk intensive tasks, or you multithread (run multiple apps) heavily, SCSI with a busmastering controller is the only way to go. (E)IDE at its best can handle only two requests (although I hear four is in the works) at a time, while SCSI can handle somewhere around 254 (depending on your controller). This makes a huge difference when you have 4+ programs all trying to read/write to the same disk. With IDE your processor has to wait around for a response from the first couple of requests before it can even think about any others. With SCSI your processor can get the ball rolling and then move on to other important stuff.
If your system is at least a 486 DX33 or above, you have more than enough horsepower for OS/2. In fact, OS/2 isn't very processor intensive as a general rule. If you are a major number cruncher or a CAD user, processor speed becomes important, but if all you do is surf the 'net and type letters, a 486 DX is more than adequate. If your choice is between upgrading your 486 DX to a Pentium or getting more memory, opt for the memory. If your system takes 72 pin SIMMS just be sure to buy your memory in pairs (two 8 meg SIMMS instead of one 16 meg SIMM) so you can transfer them to a Pentium motherboard down the road.
Getting the right mix of hardware depends entirely on your expected uses of your system and the expected performance. For most home users a 486 DX/2 66 with a fast IDE hard drive and 12 meg of memory is a decent machine. A Pentium 75 with 16 meg is a screamer. Add a fast video card and SCSI and all your Win95 friends will want to buy OS/2.
For people with little money and little time, you are still in luck thanks to dedicated people like Rick Meigs and his freeware utility CNFGINFO (zip 628k). For users who want a quick way to do a basic tune on their CONFIG.SYS without getting their hands dirty, this is the utility to have. Not only does it step through the CONFIG.SYS and suggest improvements, but it also has one of the most in depth databases on OS/2 drivers I have seen anywhere. Novices and power users alike will marvel at the depth of this product.
CNFGINFO does a great job of getting you on the right path, but it still isn't the only answer. Monitoring you system while it is doing its normal work load is still the best way to see its weaknesses. Small utilities such as GO! (zip 30k) help you see exactly what is running under a typical load. DINFO (zip 46k) lets you monitor the size of your swap file in real time, giving you an accurate picture of just what apps are the real hogs on your system. PULSE (which comes with Warp) gives you a fairly accurate picture of processor utilization (I say fairly because things such as a Win-OS/2 session can confuse it and make it think you are running at 100% utilization).
Bye for now and happy Warping!
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