| reply to PingPong
Ping Pong: Bad Results, Alas! Ping Pong:
Well, with a little time now, I tried adding the six extra lines to ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 you suggested. The result? A much slower system, resulting in Windows 98 accessing the physical swapdrive not long after 85Mbs of RAM!
I then went to a site, using google---»www.63rd.co.uk/System%20Memory%2···k.htm---
which had a much clearer explanation of asynchronous operations than Microsoft's contorted gobbledegook (do the people who write these sites for MS ever have a non-technical person read them as a check?).
What I found was that it's far better to use synchronous logic---the normal function, as you no doubt know, for controlling digital code on PCs (tick,tock; tick,tock)---as opposed to asynchronous. According to the UK site, synchronous logic is the normal windows default (98):
"Right click on My Computer, select Properties. Select the Performance tab. Now hit the File system button. Go to the Troubleshooting tab. Some of these definitions were obtained via the MS Knowledge Base, although only the important ones are covered here.
Disable new file sharing & locking semantics. This setting controls file-locking mechanisms in Windows. Tick (Disabled) this setting if you are currently experiencing problems with some programs, although this should be seen as a last resort, your system will perform optimally with this setting Unticked (Enabled).
Disable synchronous buffer commits. This setting manages the function calls to the File-Commit API to return immediately without checking to see if the data was correctly written to the drive. By default, Windows uses synchronous buffer commits. You can change this setting to enable asynchronous buffer commits for programs that may need this functionality."
So . . . well as a non-technical person, certainly as someone not as savvy as you are, with your MS diploma and far greater knowledge, all I can say is this: I'm not sure how losing asynchronous operations would be bad, assuming the conservativeswapfileusage=1 does this (as the MS base indicates it will, along with you yourself), since even Windows prefers a synchronous logic. And simultaneously adding all the other lines you mention---save PageBuffers=32 (already in my system.ini)---does anything but slow down the use of RAM.
Any clarification would help. As I mentioned, I could be wrong about all this save one thing: the use of RAM is far faster than the physical swapfile on the hard drive. And the use of a fixed swapfile seems to interfere with Windows 98 own management of the swapfile, which seems to anticipate---through its concerns for backward and lateral compatibility of data---what size it prefers the swapfile to be.
Michael
PS: Another site says that asynchronous operations are mainly for transferring data over SCSI cables, and even then is a poor fall-back as opposed to using the synchronous logic:
"Disable Synchronous Transfers: There are 2 methods of transferring data over SCSI cables, Synchronous & Asynchronous mode. Asynchronous mode transfers use an interlocked handshake method where a device (adapter or drive) cannot do the next data transfer operation until it receives positive acknowledgment that the other device received the last data transfer properly. Synchronous transfer mode permits the sending device to send multiple data packets without receiving acknowledgment that the receiver actually received every data packet sent. As a result, more data can be sent/received before acknowledgement is required. You should only tick this if you are experiencing problems with a hard drive(s), e.g. overlapped requests, as performance is slower when Synchronous Transfers is Disabled. Leave it unticked. "
»www.3dspotlight.com/tweaks/memor···nt.shtml |
