OS/2 SPEED

Revision 2

Written by James Berry.

Copyright (c) S/e/m/a/j Communications 2:440/16



WHAT IS OS/2 SPEED?


A lot of shareware programs know about DESQview and can give time
to other tasks when they don't need it (when a program is waiting
for a keypress, or BBS software is waiting for a call, for
example). This means that when running these "DESQview aware"
programs actually speed up other programs on your system because
they are only using as much processor time as they need.

Of course, OS/2 programs do this too - and programmers can make
DOS programs running under OS/2 give away time like this - but
many programs don't currently have this facility.

This is where OS/2 SPEED comes in. It tells programs that they
are running under DESQview - and when they use the DESQview
function to give away time, it intercepts this and calls the
equivelant OS/2 function. The net result is that all DESQview
aware programs become OS/2 aware!



HOW DO I USE OS/2 SPEED?


First, put a command to run OS/2 SPEED (OS2SPEED.COM) in your
AUTOEXEC file so that it is loaded for each dos-box you open.

If you put anything else on the command line then OS/2 SPEED will
indicate when the program is releasing time slices by placing an
asterisk in the top left hand corner of the dos window. This is
called monitor mode - try it and see!

Examples:

OS2SPEED Runs OS/2 SPEED
OS2SPEED * Runs OS/2 SPEED in monitor mode.


Next, change the settings for your DOS window so that the
IDLE_SECONDS is set to 0 (this means that OS/2 SPEED can give
away time).


DOES IT WORK?


You can see if OS/2 SPEED is really performing as desired by
running any good CPU usage monitor. OS/2 comes with a utility
called PULSE which is meant to monitor CPU usage, but in my
experience doesn't seem to do a very good job.

OS/2 SPEED has made a substantial difference to the speed of my
DOS-based BBS under OS/2.


DISCLAIMER


OS/2 speed works for me. If it doesn't for you, please mail me
telling me what happens and what you're trying to do - I'll see
what I can do. I may come up with a solution, but this package
comes with no guarentees. If it breaks - you keep both pieces.


CREDITS


I must say, I never would have thought of this idea on my own, but
I saw a program, 'DV2WIN.EXE' by Ian Harris which performs a
similar function, but for Microsoft Windows. This gave me the
idea for OS/2 SPEED.


UPDATES


1.00 Initial Release

1.00b OS/2 SPEED 1.00 always went into monitor mode regardless of what
parameters were passed to it. This is fixed in this release.

2.00 OS/2 SPEED can now correctly be loaded into high memory.