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1995-04-18
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PowerMon Version 1.54
Release date: 18.04.1995
(C)1993-95 by Heiko Boch
I. PowerMon - what it is
PowerMon reports the battery status of your computer. It draws
a little battery into the caption of the topmost window and into
its own icon. The fill level of these bitmaps corresponds to
the fill level of your computer's battery.
PowerMon takes advantage of APM (Advanced Power Management)
facilities of modern notebooks running a DOS/Windows configu-
ration. Since the BIOS of these computers keep track of the
battery status PowerMon can display the battery level.
Note that PowerMon does no own computations but relies on the
data the BIOS supplies.
II. What you need to run PowerMon
PowerMon is a Windows 3.1 application. Therefore you need DOS
with Windows 3.1; your notebook should have a BIOS that supplies
APM 1.0 functions. If your computer's BIOS does not have APM
functions, PowerMon will report an error or just unknown battery
status (a battery with a question mark).
PowerMon needs a 386 or better.
III. How to install PowerMon
You have to do three steps:
+ Copy POWERMON.EXE into any directory you want.
+ Add the program to the Program Manger's Autostart group.
+ Restart Windows.
Optional:
For easier setup copy PMSETUP.EXE and BWCC.DLL, too.
PMSETUP manages PowerMon's WIN.INI entries, you can switch them
in a dialog rather than editing the file.
Note: You don't need the DLL if you have a BWCC.DLL either in
your \windows directory or in your \windows\system directory.
PowerMon itself does not use it. It's only for the setup program,
so if you don't use PMSETUP you do not need the DLL at all.
If you want to log the power status over time, you have to copy
PMLOG.EXE into the same directory (in this case you have to
specify a log buffer size either by running the PMSETUP.EXE or
by editing the WIN.INI entries with an editor - see section VIII
for possible entries).
IV. Contacting the author
Feel free to send me any comments or ideas for further
development.
Write to: Heiko Boch
Alter Schulweg 5
35579 Wetzlar
Germany
Internet: boch@rbg.informatik.th-darmstadt.de
V. Disclaimer
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS". THERE IS NO WARRANTY, WETHER
EXPRESS NOR IMPLIED. THE AUTHOR DOES NOT ACCEPT ANY LIABILITIES
WITH RESPECT TO THIS PROGRAM.
VI. Copyright
You are allowed to use this version of PowerMon for free.
You may distribute the program to others as long as you don't
charge any fee and as long as there are no changes made with
the program and this document.
You may not include this program with a commercial product
without a written permission of the author.
VII. Trouble shooting
(1) Some manufacturer claim that their computers have an APM BIOS,
but in fact it's not true. So I have added a small check
program (APMCHECK.EXE) with this distribution. It shows the
results from a call to the APM init function. If you have
problems with PowerMon you should run this utility and check
its results.
(2) Please note that setup changes you do either with PMSETUP.EXE
or by editing the WIN.INI file don't affect a running PowerMon
task. So you will have to restart PowerMon in order to apply
setup changes to PowerMon.
(3) Some systems may have problems with Windows' WM_POWER message.
If you have trouble after suspend/resume you can try to set
ignoreWMPower=1 in WIN.INI; btw: did you specify your machine
type as system with APM in Windows' setup program?
VIII. PowerMon's WIN.INI entries
(the shown values are default values):
[PowerMon]
hide=0
onTop=0
moveIcon=0
drawIcon=1
drawCaption=1
captionOffset=0
drawPlug=1
drawBW=0
criticalPower=0
titleFormat=0
checkInterval=30
powerLogBufferLen=0
ignoreWMPower=0
If you set "hide" to any non zero value, PowerMon hides its icon.
With "onTop" set to a non zero value PowerMon's icon will stay in
front of all applications (if the icon is not hidden).
A nonzero "moveIcon" moves the icon to the place where it stayed
in last session (on the first start this will be the upper left
corner).
If "drawIcon" is set to zero, PowerMon will do no paintings in
its icon. The icon will be always a full battery.
"drawCaption" is the same flag for caption paintings: if it is
zero, PowerMon will not draw in the caption bar.
If you have other programs showing informations in the caption bar
you might want to specify an offset for PowerMon's caption bar
display in order to save other stuff. Set "captionOffset" to the
desired offset value (in pixels).
A non zero "drawPlug" value makes PowerMon painting a plug if
your notebook runs with an external power supply.
If your computer does not have a color display you may want
PowerMon to draw black and white only. In that case set "drawBW"
to one.
If your battery capacity is less or equal than "criticalPower"
percentage, PowerMon displays a critical battery message on the
screen. The language depends on the country you have selected
in Windows Setup: it is German for Germany, Austria and (German)
Switzerland, English for all other countries.
If you do not want such a message set "criticalPower" to a
negative value.
If you don't like the standard icon title you can choose another
with "titleFormat" set to a value of 1 or 2:
default: "PowerMon (100%)",
titleFormat = 1: "(100%)" or
titleFormat = 2: "(100%) PowerMon"
With "checkInterval" you can specify the interval when PowerMon
checks actual power status. Default is 30 seconds. If you specify
an interval of 0, PowerMon will do no periodic checks.
If You want to run PowerMonLog you have to install a log buffer by
setting "powerLogBufferLen" to de desired buffer size.
a nonzero value for "ignoreWMPower" makes PowerMon ignoring
Windows' WM_POWER messages.