<CT> Re: calmira_tips Digest V3 #171
- From: JGrossklass@xxxxxxxxxxx (Stephan Grossklass)
- To: calmira_tips@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 00:05:31 +0100
Well, I must admit I haven't used Calmira much for the last few months,=20
since I've been quite busy and had enough boxes to play with that do not =
need Calmira. Recently I dug out my 486 though, finally installed the=20
Promise EIDE2300+ VL IDE controller (this allows me to max out the hard=20
drives), messed up Win95 when installing the driver not according to the =
readme, couldn't get it reinstalled without crashes, put NT 3.51 on E:=20
(the second partition of the 1 gig drive) - that worked just fine -,=20
finally got Win95 reinstalled and working halfway properly (truetype=20
fonts do not work properly for some obscure reason, and Scandisk says my =
partitions may not have been formatted properly), then discovered=20
extensive file system corruption on E: (darn, shouldn't have put the=20
temporary install file for 95 there *grmbl*), lost NT because of this=20
and frustratedly put the old box back into its corner. A few days ago I=20
decided to give the old beast another chance - the last one -, ripped=20
out the Pentium Overdrive and put the DX/2-66 back in, reinstalled NT=20
and set up the programs needed, defragged all the partitions in 95 and=20
have been quite happy since, except for the original driver for the=20
graphics card refusing to install and the performance when running=20
Mozilla (well, and I can only play back MP3s at 22 kHz mono in NT, while =
IIRC in WfW 22 kHz stereo worked, too). Normally its rendering should be =
faster than Netscape 4's (it least that's the case on my more modern=20
boxes), but in this case this doesn't apply - I guess that's because of=20
the abysmal memory performance of the OPTi 495SX chipset: DXOVER's=20
System Speed Test 4.75 measures 9 MB/s for reads from memory (and that's =
with all kind of tweaks), while a board based on the 895 manages 35 MB/s =
at 40 instead of 33 MHz, and is 50-100% faster elsewhere. I guess the=20
fact that Netscape 4 performs better than Mozilla in terms of rendering=20
is due to it using smaller data structures that fit into the cache=20
easily, while Gecko uses more memory and possibly accesses it more=20
frequently. (ISA performance isn't too great either: When clocking the=20
bus at 5.55 MHz, the machine doesn't manage to properly play back a=20
simple 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo WAV file residing on a network share, that =
should be a data rate of 2x 172 KB/s + x.) I guess I'll be getting a=20
board based on the newer OPTi chipset (with PS/2 memory slots, but I=20
could get hold of adapters to PS/2 rather inexpensively), which would=20
not only give better performance, but also offer a 3rd VLB slot (out of=20
spec at 33 MHz, but maybe it works anyway - it'd be interesting to=20
research the CPU usage of busmastering VL SCSI host adapters) and maybe=20
solve the graphics driver problem.
BTW working with old Program Mangler and Task Manager is pretty clumsy - =
Calmira would make a nice shell for NT 3.51 *if* it'd be possible to get =
hold of NT's long file names somehow. I imagine one would have to write=20
some 16-to-32-bit interface DLL for that (and possibly do a Windows=20
version check on startup), not the easiest task but hopefully not=20
impossible. (At least that's more realistic than Calmira being ported to =
Win32 - Delphi never was an NT 3.5x thing.) As of now, Calmira works in=20
NT 3.51, even if a tad slow.
Stephan
--=20
Stephan Gro=DFkla=DF (7bit: Grossklass) an der Hauptkiste:
P3B-F,P3-500@620,512MB,20+18+8GB HDD; Win2k, WfW 3.11 + Calmira II 3.2
eMail: mailto:jgrossklass@xxxxxxxxxxx | Webmaster: http://www.i24.com/
Home: http://jgrossklass.bei.t-online.de/
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