Jack Stein wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:
 JS> What are your cache settings for HPFS/FAT? 
I'll have to go look...
(Took *forever* for things to come up...!)
All I can find in there with "cache" in it is this:
IFS=C:\OS2\HPFS.IFS /CACHE:512 /CRECL:4 /AUTOCHECK:CD
and this:
DISKCACHE=D,LW
which,  if I'm remembering right,  is saying that I'm only using 512k for 
cache. That's not all that much,  is it? 
 JS> I find most people in small (and large for that matter) memory 
 JS> machines have WAY too big a cache for OS/2. The quickest and 
 JS> easiest way to screw up an 8 meg system is wasting ram on a 
 JS> large cache.
I haven't messed with any of this stuff,  at least not yet.  All of what's in 
the config.sys is whatever the install _put_ in there.  Speaking of which, 
there sure seems to be a lot of "stuff",  lots of drivers for hardware I 
don't have,  etc.  I wonder if these are at least part of why it's taking so 
long for this machine to come up?
 JS> I recommend you run CFGINFO4.ZIP and apply most of the settings 
 JS> he recommends for your system.
Hmm,  funny you should mention that,  as I just got it:
cfginfo4.zip  627944  19-Apr-98 23:31
(That time/date stamp is when it got here...)
In fact,  I was going to post about such utilities,  since there seem to be a 
few of them out there,  as well as text files that talk about sorting your 
config.sys and such,  and then you go ahead and tell me to get this one!  :-)
Makes me feel like maybe I'm on the right track,  or sumthin'...
(Added later)  I did try it,  followed their suggestions,  and it _is_ 
perceptibly faster,  though not by a whole lot.
 JS> BTW, in my system, I noticed a bigger performace improvement 
 JS> when I added a new faster HD than I did when I added 12 megs of 
 JS> ram.  Renumbering my message bases for example, went immediatly 
 JS> from 9-10 minutes to 3-4 minutes for 1500 *.msg's.  
Hmm.  Well,  the drive I'm using in that machine is the 540M WD that used to 
be in _this_ machine,  and held my message bases (one hell of a lot more than 
1500 of them) before I stuck that SCSI drive in here.  It's not as fast / new 
as either of the two drives I have in here now,  but it's not too bad,  I 
guess.
I'll try that config program and see what happens.
 JS> Remember, I ran my exact same 8 meg system under DV for 2 years 
 JS> before upgrading to OS/2, and most every area, performance 
 JS> either stayed the same or improved.
I would be interested in hearing more about how you made that particular 
transition,  since that's exactly what I'm looking at here.  So far I've got 
OS/2 versions of *some* of the software I run,  but not all of it,  not by a 
long shot...
At least the bbs and tosser and front end (binkley) all come in OS/2 versions 
and I have them all here!
 WH> Seriously, an 8 meg machine with anything more than maybe 
 WH> (preferably not) the WPS running is about as much fun as 
 WH> practice bleeding.  Same with the main machine:  I was amazed 
 WH> at what 32 meg vs 16 did.
 JS> I've heard this said many times by many people, but my 
 JS> experience is not CLOSE to this.  If you are set up correctly, 
 JS> and running mostly DOS and OS/2 TEXT applications, 8 megs is 
 JS> very good, if not great. 
Hmm.  I haven't run any "TEXT" apps on there yet,  just a few odds and ends 
of what's already there either built in on the OS cdrom or from the Bonus 
Pack, and mostly that's PM stuff.  Except I stuck a copy of the OS/2 version 
of InspectA on there.
 JS> Disk thrashing shoul NOT occur, and if it does, something is 
 JS> wrong.
It sure seems to spend a lot of time hitting that drive anytime I do just 
about *anything*.  Takes a heck of a long time to boot,  too,  which is why I 
snagged those config utilities in the first place.
 JS> If you are hearing your HD "ticking" every few seconds, and 
 JS> things are dead slow, something is wrong. 
Not "ticking",  more of a "chatter" that goes on for several seconds.  Boot 
seems to take several _minutes_.
(Added later)  The best way I can describe the noise is that it's the same 
noise (same drive,  too) that I used to get when I used that m'board to 
access the 'net with typical windoze stuff about two or three years ago -- 
the fault was in the Netscape "cache" settings,  I think,  but no settings 
seemed to do a whole lot of good,  didn't improve it any,  and the only way I 
could stop the chatter was to disable the disk cache altogether.
 JS> I've had that happen on rare occasions and never did figure out 
 JS> what caused it, but it was very unusual.  I don't recall that 
 JS> happening since going to WARP a few years ago, but it may have 
 JS> stopped when I went to 20 megs... it's been awhile.
 RJT> I forget now what it was that I did change,  but it was some
 RJT> of the other stuff you suggested...
 JS> I made lots of tweaks to my system over the years, and when I 
 JS> got around to looking at CFGINFo4.ZIP, He had most everything 
 JS> that I had done as recommendations.  I think we both got our 
 JS> info from the same sources, right here on FIDO.
The other thing I've been snagging is text files,  both official-looking 
stuff and FAQ/FGA files.  There's still more to go yet,  though.
 JS> I might add that none of the "tweaks" I put in from the
 JS> default set up changed any thing dramatically.
Well,  I'll try sticking that config utility on there and see what happens.
email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com 
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