Phil Crown wrote in a message to Paul Neth:

 PN> I am operating several computers running os2 for years.  We are
 PN> running custom software which comes with some dlls and 5 executables. 
 PN> The problem comes when we try to execute lots (> 15) instances of a
 PN> single executable.  The os/2 systems runs out of timers?

 PC> There are only 40 system timer handles available according
 PC> to Petzold. 

I think the exact number has changed, but there is a small limit.  I
thought it was 32, but I may be wrong.

 PN> The software developers added a status line which reports the number
 PN> of free timers which helps.  But unitl they reengineer the software,
 PN> can anything be done to improve this situation
 PN> Can the number of system timers be increased?

 PC> I don't think so, he recommends using timers sparingly, and
 PC> each program should only use one timer if it has to use one
 PC> at all.

If the issue is running multiple instances of the same application, then
all you need to do is wrap the timer inside a DLL.  Then the DLL owns a
single system timer and can reflect that to all instances of the program. 
This is really simple stuff to do, most of the work being handled by the
linker.

 PN> It also seems when timers are running low, it causes os/2 or other
 PN> programs to eventually crash the os.  Is this possible?

 PC> I have no idea.

I know that you can crash OS/2 from a device driver by chaining too much
onto the timer, but that is a very different issue.

 PN> And are there other side effects to operating with low number of
 PN> timers available?  What happens when os/2 requests a timer and there is
 PN> none available?

 PC> I think WinStartTimer just returns an errorcode.

I can certainly see situations where a timer not being available could
cause a system hang, especially for a machine connected to a network.
 
-- Mike


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