

Ŀ
 Date: 02-02-95, 15:57                  Number: 31038                      
 From: CHRIS JOHNSON                     Refer: 0                          
   To: ALL                               Recvd: No                         
 Subj: PERFORMANCE CONSIDERATION          Conf: OS2NationalE               

OS/2 INTERNATIONAL                                         FEB 2 1995 
Attention Power Users!  
  
     I appreciate the correspondence I have received to date regarding  
this thread.  What follows is my seventh update in fine tuning a system  
at least similar to mine.  
  
     I currently run a 486 66 with 16 meg of ram (I just dropped down  
from 20) with an enhanced IDE controller.  The tips revolve around a  
a system of similar ram and capabilities with notes for other  
configurations.   The defaults are usually sufficient for most users;
but, nevertheless, people eventually make great demands upon their system.
If you have a low memory situation, this message may help out tremendously.
 
     I run WARP.  
  
UPDATE: 7
  
     What follows is a collaboration of several people.  I would like  
to thank Bob Hess, Glenn Reimche, Ronold Ross, and Harold Ulery for their
additional tips and for putting their systems to the test.  I thought I knew
a lot about system operations, but I am even wiser than when I started this
thread.  Since I started this, the amount of netmail (and even personal
calls)
has totaled in the hundreds.  I got swamped over the holidays but that's OK.
I had a LOT of fun.  Hopefully, this message will reduce some FAQ in some
of the conferences.  Jim Gilliland warned that WARP would cause heavy message
traffic--and it has!  

     Welp, here are some tips.  Take only those that you find necessary.
For some, they have helped tremendously.  For others, it was a mild 
improvement.  If memory conservation or improved speed is important to you,
please read on.  Your mileage could vary depending on your system hardware.
These settings represent one "School of Thought" <VBG>!
  
1)  IFS=C:\OS2\HPFS.IFS /CACHE:2048 /CRECL:64 /AUTOCHECK:CD  
    Only include this line if you actually have a partition formatted  
    HPFS rather than FAT.  If you are strictly FAT, rem this line out.  
    HPFS eats a chunk of memory--particularly on low memory  
    systems--[BH]  
  
    If one runs both FAT and HPFS, don't go excessive with the cache  
    settings.  Give more to the most commonly used file system.  Don't
    forget that I have 16 meg of ram.  Anything less than that and I
    don't recommend anything more than /CACHE:1536 /CRECL:32  On an
    8 meg system, I have found that /CACHE:768 up to /CACHE:1280 are
    ok--[CJ].  
 
2)  Removed IBM2FLPY.ADD 
    Saved me some memory--[CJ] . 
    Only needed on Microchannel PC's.--[manual]  
  
3)  Removed XDFLOPPY.FLT  
    It appears that many people would have no use for this--[GR]. 
  
    If one wants to use selective install from diskettes, this needs  
    to be reenabled.  You can save a little mem without it--[CJ]. 
  
4)  SET RESTARTOBJECTS=STARTUPFOLDERSONLY  
    If you have an annoying program that won't shutdown, when you reboot 
    it is likely to still be running.  This will allow, at bootup,  
    the same standard desktop without any running processes except
    those in the startup folder--[CJ].  
  
5)  SET KEYS=OFF  
    This saved me a little memory--[CJ].  Preference here, if you like  
    recalling past commands, you may want to consider leaving it ON.  
  
6)  PRIORITY_DISK_IO=NO  
    When my BBS is up or I'm doing intensive communications, NO is a 
    must--[CJ].  

7)  FILES=30  
    For DOS sessions.  The default is fine.  I just have the memory  
    to waste and some DOS programs get a little finicky for some  
    reason.  For a BBS, this setting could be better than default and 
    could help out WIN/OS2 sessions--[CJ]. 
  
8)  BUFFERS=90  
    Good for bringing up those icons when using the drives objects.  
    Helps out the floppy access.  Of course, on good memory systems this 
    is acceptable.  If one has lower memory, consider 60 at 8 meg and  
    no more than 30 for smaller configurations--[CJ]. 
  
9)  MAXWAIT=1   (consider (2) for normal operations)  
    Things are a little more responsive.  When my BBS is up I use 1.  
    I also found that I removed all forms of ZERRORS when I was multi-  
    tasking with Livewire 2.2 when I used MAXWAIT=1--[CJ].  
  
10)  RUN=C:\OS2\CACHE.EXE /MAXAGE:7500 /DISKIDLE:60000 /BUFFERIDLE:60000 
     Check it out.  It's going to be a seat of the pants feel--[CJ].  
  
11)  MEMMAN=SWAP,PROTECT
     The default is ok.  Consider COMMIT on low disk space situations instead
     of PROTECT--[CJ].
 
12)  IOPL=YES 
     Don't advise ANYONE to put this to NO.  I would stick with yes.
     This lets programs use I/O commands when processing (especially
     important COMM programs).  It is extremely bad to have at NO (I
     tried, just in case, and got a CPS of 1100 to my usual 1670 during
     a download, and 10 errors of a 300k file).  The performance impact
     of NO is nominal at best but not dangerous--[RR].
 
13)  SWAPPATH=C:\OS2\SYSTEM 2048 16000  
     This is a good general setting no matter how much RAM you have.
     If you have decent disk space available, go ahead and put a big 
     swap file on it.  If you are not this fortunate, put the swap size
     at the default and then run several tasks you might think of doing
     concurrently.  Look at the swap file and then set it 1 meg larger--[CJ].

     In the book OS/2 unleashed it states, "This is not the optimal  
     location for the <swapper.dat> file.  The swap file should be moved 
     to the root directory of the most frequently used partition of the  
     least used hard drive"--[BH].  
  
     I personally think this advice is only good if one has 2 or more  
     physically different drives.  Don't confuse this with partitions.  
     I saw no improvement on just one drive partitioned out to multiple
     drives.  The theory is that the heads on the other drive will 
     already be placed on the swap file.  That is why it makes no use on
     one drive--[CJ].  
  
     There has been discussion if it is faster to put it in the root
     directory.  I have been told that once OS/2 boots up the SWAPPER.DAT
     that it is constantly open.  Therefore, the location is pretty much
     pointless unless there are 2 or more physically different drives--[CJ].

14)  THREADS=128
     The default values are sufficient.  Most users will find that 256 
     is more than sufficient for them down to 8 megs.  Below 8 one should 
     consider the default values or around 128--[CJ].  
      
     128 is more than enough for my 2 line BBS--[HU].  
  
15)  PRINTMONBUFSIZE=2048,134,134  
     Awesome!  Experiment with this one and see how it impacts printer
     performance versus system performance.  I use an EPSON Laserjet.  The 
     buffersize is not measured in K but in bytes.  Also, the minimum
     default value is 134.  Too bad it can't be set to zero--[CJ].  

16)  FCBS=4,2  
     FCBS is an old cow.  I save a little memory by reducing the  
     value--[CJ].  
  
17)  I REM'd out all references to TCPIP as I don't have a local  
     provider and saved a sizeable amount of memory--[CJ].  
  
18)  REM'd out DISKCACHE=D,LW,AC:CD 
     Saved 2 meg when I was at 20meg on the system due to the "D" switch 
     being enabled when I REM'd this line out and had no FAT partition. 
     You will only need this option if you have a FAT partition.  Remove 
     the diskcache line if you only have HPFS--[CJ]!!!  
    
     DISKCACHE=512,32,LW,AC:CD if you have a BBS and only 8 megs for a FAT
     DISKCACHE=256,32,LW,AC:CD if you are even more hard up on memory
     DISKCACHE=128,32,LW,AC:CD for a 4 meg system on FAT
     DISKCACHE=1024,128,LW,AC:CD for an 8 meg system doing normal activities
     (up to 1736 for those SPEED demons with only 2 apps running)--[RR].

19)  AUTOFAIL=YES
     This is adviced for BBS use.  

     Only input this after you have a good idea how the system is running
     --[CJ].

20)  PAUSEONERROR=NO
     This is adviced for BBS use.  These options keep the system in motion
     despite any errors encountered.  Hopefully you won't encounter any,
     but when your not around the bbs, and it comes up with an error, you
would
     want it to at least automatically fail without pause and continue on
with
     those processes that do.  Your users would appreciate that.

     Only input this after you have a good idea how the system is running
     --[CJ]. 

21)  SHELL=E:\OS2\MDOS\COMMAND.COM E:\OS2\MDOS /E:2000 /P
     If you run a BBS, increasing the environment will help FRONTDOOR--[CJ].

     As you can see, I scrunched memory where I could and placed it in 
areas that are starving for it, ie CACHE, BUFFERS, PRINTMONBUFSIZE, 
etc...  
  
     System Information says I have 4.1 meg allocated to OS/2 and the 
rest is available to me.  Before I did the fine tuning, I had 7.5 meg 
allocated to OS/2.  Smaller memory allocations can be made by smaller 
cache settings. 
 
     I had one user report that OS/2 allocated only 3.1 meg to itself 
out of a 16 meg system!  (It can go even lower on 4 meg machines)  The
cache settings impact this value the most. 
  
     This advice should be good for 16 meg machines on down to 4.
4 meg machines should be very conservative of any cache settings.
Just going 256k too much could cause exessive swapping.  Don't even dare
run HPFS on a 4 meg machine!  For even better performance, consider an 
alternative shell to run your applications until you can buy 4 more meg
of ram.  The GUI is going to take a performance hit on low ram situations.
I have found appreciable gains in performance all the way up to 16 meg.

     Maintenance is very low.  Once you have made your settings, you can
usually leave your CONFIG.SYS alone.  The only thing you usually have
to change when you update memory are the cache settings and swapfile and
the opposite is true if removing memory.  
  
     As you can see, once you do some fine tuning, there is very little 
left for you to do.  That is the beauty of OS/2.  Do some changes and
leave it alone!  Don't get caught up running benchmarks everyday like you
used to do in the DOS days.  There is very little you can do to make it
your  
dream screamer without purchasing that Pentium 100 you always wanted! 
<G>   
 
     Have fun and be productive.  If this helps anyone out, let me know! 
   
     Also, if anyone wants to add some advice, feel free to email me the 
info.  This advice isn't gospel, but it is the collaboration of several 
people on this net.  I will compile the advice and give updates as we  
haggle, discuss, and come to terms on certain performance issues.  
  
     Discussion does not need to be limited to Config.sys.  Desktop 
folder settings could be added too.  
  
Respectfully,  
  
Chris Johnson  1:208/610  
---
  MR/2 2.12 NR  Can you imagine OS/2 for Windows 95? <CJ>

___
  MR/2 2.12 NR  Can you imagine OS/2 for Windows 95? <CJ>
--- Silver Xpress Mail System 5.03H1
 * Origin: ASGARD BBS - ATWATER, CA (1:208/610)
                                                                                                       

