Hi, Eric,
> I kind of missed the start of the thread - about which
> software are we talking? Why does it take several seconds
> to refresh the screen? While the mouse is moving? While
> it is not moving? Both?
Included at the end of this message is my original post which
answers these questions.
> And why do keyboard keys influence that?
That was after a suggestion by Larry <doc...@yahoo.com>. He said:
"I use Freedos in a dosemu emulator in Linux. In that
environment, arachne won't update a screen unless I hold down
a moust button, or a shift key (or some key). Have you tried
holding down a shift key to see if your CAD then updates the
screen faster?"
I tested the keys, and some speed up screen refreshing indeed.
>> My mouse is not USB. It is a real old one, with a flat
>> plug with two rows of holes.
> You mean serial port, RS232? Which protocol? How many
> buttons?
It is in COM1 (I guess that's serial port), three buttons, and
the driver is CTMOUSE.EXE 2.1beta4. I don't know which protocol.
> Well APMBIOS would not save energy :-p But ADV:REG does,
> while it should have less side effects than APMDOS in
> some cases...
I've just tested it, and you're right: option ADV:REG also
reduces the screen refreshing time to a half, as compared to
APMDOS or ADV:MAX.
> Did you also try STACKS=0,0 versus STACKS=9,256 versus
> STACKS=16,512 as (fd)config sys options in that context?
I've tested it, and it makes no difference.
> Does it make a difference to have / no HIMEM and / or
> EMM386? The use of HMA and stacks might influence speed.
Desi-III requires EMS memory. It makes no difference whether we
use FreeDOS memory managers or Japheth's.
>> - Under FreeDOS, refresh speed is increased by avoiding
>> FDAPM with option APMDOS. It can be further increased
>> in two ways: by holding down keys or, much better, by
>> moving the mouse. - Under MS-DOS, refresh speed is much
>> faster than any of the above.
> I assume you mean "with FreeDOS kernel and all drivers
> from FreeDOS" versus "with MS DOS kernel and all drivers
> from MS DOS" - which is what makes the comparison a bit
> difficult :-).
That's right: I compared an all-FreeDOS configuration to an
all-MS-DOS one. But I did a new series of tests as you
suggested; see below.
> As the refresh is so fast in MS DOS anyway, I assume you
> cannot find out whether it would get any faster by
> pressing those keys?
Yes, it's very fast anyway: 0.5 sec or less.
> On the other hand, you could try whether you can make
> things deliberately slow with FDAPM APMDOS in MS DOS ;-).
Under the MS kernel, FDAPM freezes the computer on boot, so I
could not do that test.
> Or maybe the difference is caused by any other MS or
> FreeDOS driver. The suggestion is to try having very
> similar setup with only very few drivers being different.
> Then you could find out that "using file X from MS DOS
> makes things fast", or "using driver Y from FreeDOS is
> slow", for example :-). If you compare many MS files to
> many FreeDOS files at the same time, it is harder to find
> out which files are "bad".
While running under the MS kernel (IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS), I
changed one by one all the lines of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT
to check how Desi-III reacted. Except for FDAPM as mentioned
above, everything from FreeDOS also works under the MS kernel,
and Desi-III is equally fast. CONFIG.SYS now contains:
DEVICE=C:\FDOS\HIMEM\HIMEMX.EXE
DEVICE=C:\FDOS\JEMM\JEMM386.EXE RAM X=DC00-DDFF
SHELL=C:\FDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM C:\FDOS\BIN\ /e:1024 /P=C:\autoexec.bat
and AUTOEXEC.BAT now contains:
lh C:\FDOS\BIN\LBACACHE.COM 2048
lh C:\FDOS\BIN\DISPLAY CON=(EGA,,1)
C:\FDOS\BIN\MODE CON CODEPAGE PREPARE=((850)
C:\RECURSOS\FONTTELA\sanse_36.cpi)
lh C:\FDOS\BIN\MODE CON CP SEL=850
lh C:\FDOS\BIN\KEYB.EXE br,850
lh C:\FDOS\BIN\CTMOUSE.EXE /R1 /3
Since nothing in CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT changes the screen
refreshing speed, it seems that the problem lies somewhere
between the FreeDOS kernel and Desi-III.
Regards,
Marcos
-----------------------------------------------------------------
My original post:
From: "Marcos Favero Florence de Barros" <fav...@mpcnet.com.br>
To: "FreeDOS List" <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net>
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:13:45 -0300 (BRT)
Subject: Odd behaviour involving mouse
Hi,
I'm an engineer and a user of DESI-III, a professional-quality
freeware CAD from Belgium, with which I draw mechanical parts for
a product I'm developing.
Since I started using FreeDOS in 2007 I noticed that it was
taking longer for DESI-III to refresh the screen -- an important
point for CAD software, because we must zoom in and out all the
time.
Then a few days ago I noticed that, if the mouse is moved, the
screen refreshes much faster. For instance, the drawing I'm
currently working on would take 11 seconds to refresh, whereas if
the mouse is slightly pushed in any direction while the image is
appearing on the screen, the process takes only 2 seconds, i.e.,
it gets *five* times faster.
Then last night I decided to run Desi-III under MS-DOS. I
reinstalled it in a spare hard drive, and it turned out that the
speed difference is huge. Under MS-DOS the screen redraws so fast
that couldn't measure the time. It must be something below 0.2
seconds for that same drawing, so we are talking about a factor
of *fifty* here.
I had already written to Desi-III's author Hugo Mariën about
this. He answered:
It is a surprisingly story you are telling, because IMHO
it has nothing to do with DESI-III but with your
configuration.
[..] DESI-III only calls the mouse on demand, it doesn't
need to call the mouse driver when the screen is
refreshed someway or an other, it only calls the mouse
when it needs displacements or a button detection else
the mouse is "left alone".
Back to FreeDOS, I did some simple testing, such as changing the
mouse driver from CTMouse to Logitech, and changing the mouse
itself, with no results.
If there is any additional test that I could do, please let me
know, and I'll report back ... after Christmas :-)
Desi-III can be downloaded from:
http://users.telenet.be/desi-iii
Regards,
Marcos
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