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1996-04-16
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How to Supercharge OS/2 Warp
by Richard Oliver Kut
CompuServe ID # : 71574,3616
June 24, 1995 Revised April 13, 1996
Standard Disclaimer: (Please read this anyway)
**** Please do not try any of these tips without following proper backup
precautions. **** Certain names of products and organizations mentioned in
this article are trademarks, or are patented or copyrighted. This article has
been written by me purely for the purposes of speeding up OS/2 Warp. It has
not been commissioned or sanctioned by anyone at IBM, or any other company or
organization. It has not been written to generate profit of any kind, and may
be freely distributed to anyone, anywhere, so long as this disclaimer
accompanies it. In no way am I liable for any consequences arising from the
use of the information contained in this file.
================================================================
Scope:
Since the initial release of this file I have received a lot of mail from
different people with concerns and questions about OS/2 in general. Since I am
of the opinion that every OS/2 user deserves to know as much as he/she wants to
learn about their operating system, and since there are many first-time OS/2
users who will read this file, I am going to broaden the scope of this paper
beyond just performance tuning. The emphasis will still be on performance, and
as my own knowledge grows, so will this paper, so watch for updates.
Additional sections, however, will be devoted to subjects that I consider of
importance to all users. As of today, there will be a new section on how to
set up the OS/2 Internet Access Kit to use CompuServe as an Internet service
provider. I am also including several separate text files from the UniMaint
4.0 software with the gracious permission of their author, Larry Martin. These
texts deal with the Desktop and it's weaknesses, and how to protect yourself
from a Desktop crash. If you have ever had to re-construct your Desktop after
spending hours customizing it, then this information will surely be of
interest. These files will not be absorbed into this document, but will
instead be included in the TuneWarp.zip file as individual text files so that
they may be viewed separately at any time, and also to preserve the integrity
and context of their original text. As well, there will now be a section on
some of the best freeware and shareware for OS/2 that I have tested myself.
Obviously a very subjective review, but it may at least point you in the right
direction. For those with a bigger budget, or a corporate expense account, I
will also list some exceptionally good commercial software.
Introduction :
I have been using OS/2 Warp daily since November, 1994 and I am hooked. I have
worked with MacIntosh, DOS, and Windows, and I have never seen power like this.
It has truly unlocked the hidden abilities within my computer, and just when I
thought that it was getting too slow to be useful. There is, however, one
problem. OS/2 out of the box is slower than Windows is. Don't jump down my
throat! There are perfectly good and valid reasons for this.First and foremost
is the fact that OS/2 offers flexibility, functionality, and power that Windows
users can only dream of. Also, IBM has chosen to setup Warp in a default state
so that it can be all things to all users. A sound marketing idea, but you
don't work with your computer quite the same way as the guy (or gal) sitting
next to you. What if you want to customize your OS/2 computer to reflect the
way you work? Well, the online books that come with Warp give some hints of
where to start, but don't really get to the heart of it all. I have been
avidly scouring the bulletin boards for any and all tips that I could get to
wring the last ounce of speed from my computer, and you will be glad to know
that I succeeded. My OS/2 computers, at home and at work, run circles around
any Windows machine I can find. So now I am happy. That is when I realized
that maybe my situation was not unique, and that others might also benefit from
the knowledge that I had found. This is the result. I have tried wherever
possible to write all this stuff in a logical, stepwise, and non-technical way,
so that it might be of use to everyone. All the tricks that I describe herein
have been used on my computer with great success. If one of these tricks does
not work on your computer, please realize that with the infinite combinations
of hardware and software sometimes things don't work the same from machine to
machine. Essentially, your mileage may vary. Please don't try changing
anything about your OS/2 setup without a proper backup. Keeping the above in
mind, I hope that you will find the following pages informative, and I hope
that they will prompt you to probe the mysteries of OS/2 for yourself. Warp is
an amazing piece of software engineering, with great depth and functionality.
I always delight in finding out new tricks and short cuts that I can use, and I
hope you will too. On with the show!
Video :
The most important thing about speeding up your existing video card is
resolution. Essentially, the higher the number of pixels the video card is
asked to display, the more time and computer power will be required.
Therefore, if you can live with 640 x 480 resolution, then that would be a much
better performance choice than opting for 800 x 600, or higher. Also, the
less colors in your display palette, the faster your video response time will
be. If you don't need 16.7 million colors, don't use them. Also related to
video in OS/2 are bitmapped backgrounds. They may look very pretty on your
Desktop, but they are stealing processing power from your computer. Save the
nice bitmaps for use as a lock-up screen. Using color schemes that use colors
from the mixed color palette will take more time to display than colors in the
solid palette. Keep the number of open windows to a minimum. Minimize or
close windows that are not necessary, and your screen will refresh faster.
Folders that use a "flowed format" will display their icons faster than the
standard "non-grid format". This can be changed on the view page of the
settings notebook. Also, stick to an 8-point normal text font for maximum
display speed. Turning off the Desktop animation will also improve your video
speed. Do a right-click on the Desktop to bring up the Desktop menu, and
select System Setup. Find the System icon and double-click on it. Now click
on the Window tab, and disable the animation feature. The one catch-word that
everyone seems to connect with computer video is "screen-saver". OS/2 has a
built-in one that you can activate on the "Lock-up" page of the Desktop
settings notebook. It has several options, among them the options for a timed
lock-up, and to lock-up your Desktop at startup. Both of these are a bad idea
from a memory consumption point of view. Activating these options won't slow
down your video processes as much as they will affect OS/2 memory use. The
timed lock-up feature steals working memory away from OS/2, which will slow
down all your processes. Turning the "lock-up at startup" feature on will give
the computer more program code to crunch through at boot time. Not the end of
the world, but still a slowdown. Basically, if you want to lock-up your
computer, you are better off doing it manually from the launchpad, or the
pop-up menu. One last thing that affects video speed is copying video routines
from slow ROM to fast RAM. This is also referred to as shadow RAM. If you are
using a machine that has an American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) BIOS, like the
computer I use, then you can probably access this feature through your BIOS
setup. On most machines, if you hit the DEL key at boot-up time, then you will
have access to the BIOS setup screens. Somewhere in there will be references
to shadowing video and system ROM. When you find these items, make sure to
turn them off. Yes, that's right, I said OFF. The simple reason is that OS/2
has built-in mechanisms to do the same thing as the shadow RAM does. If you
don't turn the BIOS shadow RAM off, then you are effectively slowing down the
computer by asking it to do things twice. To make matters worse, shadow RAM
will take away from the RAM available to OS/2. Memory :
Getting OS/2 to really fly is mostly about memory, and how you use it. The
more memory OS/2 has, the happier it is. That is the Cardinal Rule. First
off, you must realize that just because you are not running a program, that
does not mean that it is not consuming memory. Many programs, upon
installation, will register program classes and templates with the Workplace
Shell. This will increase OS/2 memory consumption across the board. Some
examples are the Internet Access Kit, and the IBM Works programs. Therefore,
only install programs that you are going to use. Also, most programs will add
some statements to your config.sys file, when they are installed. These
statements might be in the form of set xxx=yyy, or might load some type of
program driver. This driver will sit in memory, occupying valuable resources
that OS/2 could put to better use. Again, if you don't need it, don't install
it. If you must install a software that you only use occasionally, you could
setup several different config.sys files. Here is how to go about it in just a
few steps:
1. Create 2, or more, different config.sys files from your existing one.
2. Name them config.a, config.b, and so on.
3. Copy these new config files to your \os2\boot directory.
4. Edit the altf1bot.scr file in the \os2\boot directory. It will probably be
read-only, so you will need to set the read-only flag off. To do this, do a
right click on the file to bring up it's settings notebook. Click on the File
tab. On page 2, make sure that Read-only is de-selected, then close the
notebook. Just double-click on the file to load it in the system editor.
5. Add the following lines to this file, which will probably be empty anyway:
A) Start using config.a (or any other description that you might want to give)
B) Start using config.b etc.
6. Save and exit this file (don't forget to reset the read-only flag).
7. Do a right-click on your desktop to bring up the settings notebook.
8. Click on the Archive tab, and activate the feature that says "Display
recovery choices at each restart".
9. Now shut down and re-boot, and you should see a list of choices when you
boot up.
I have used this feature for quite a while now to start Warp in various modes.
Sometimes I just want OS/2 without any DOS/Win support slowing me down. Other
times I want to boot up without the overhead of the Internet Access Kit. You
get the idea. Probably the most pertinent use of this feature at this point
would be to benchmark the results of all the changes that you will make to your
config.sys file, compared to your original one. An OS/2 feature that consumes
several hundred K of memory are the system sounds. If you can live without all
the noise, then find the Sound icon in the Multimedia folder on your Desktop.
De-select the sound options. To save even more memory, do the following: open
an OS/2 window, change to the \MMOS2\INSTALL directory, type DINSTSND. Now
shut down and reboot. This will de-register system sounds from the Workplace
Shell and return a few precious K to the operating systems memory pool. Not to
fear; all of the above is not permanent. If you want the noise back, do the
following: open an OS/2 window, change to the \MMOS2\INSTALL directory, type
INSTSND. Shut down and reboot. Open the Sound icon in your Multimedia folder
and select the sound options. That's all there is to it. There are many easy
things that you can do to speed up your computer and regain some memory. For
example, click on the System Setup icon in the OS/2 System folder. Now
double-click on the System icon. Go to the tab that says Input, and disable
type-ahead. Now go to the Printscreen tab and disable that too. Go to the
Logo tab and click on none. There; you have just saved yourself dozens of
precious K of memory and sped up your computer in the bargain. If you are a
bit more adventurous about saving memory, you might want to reduce the threads
parameter in your config.sys file. This parameter controls the maximum number
of threads that the operating system will create to run programs. Remember
that many OS/2 programs will ask for more than one thread to run, so even
though you are only running three programs, they might be consuming fifteen or
twenty threads. You don't want to set this number too low or you will run into
problems once your programs request more threads than you have made available.
Usually you would want to allocate roughly 50% more threads than your maximum
(just in case). How do you find out how many threads you are actually using at
the moment? The easiest way is to go to an OS/2 command prompt and type PSTAT
/C >FILE1. This will create a file called FILE1, which you can then view by
typing E FILE1. This file will list all running processes and threads at the
moment that you started the pstat command. Therefore, it would be a good idea
to be running all the software you regularly run, and then run pstat in order
to get a more precise number. In the text file that pstat created you will
find a column called Thread ID. This is a column that lists all the thread
numbers for each process. Go through the text file and add up all these
numbers, and that will tell you how many threads you are using. Now you can
add 50% to that, and change the THREADS= line in your config.sys accordingly,
and then reboot. Each thread consumes about 512 bytes, or half a K, of memory.
Depending how much you are able to lower this number will determine how much
memory you save. Commenting out some unused drivers in your config.sys file
will also speed up your boot times and reduce memory overhead.By commenting out
a line, I mean putting an REM<trailing space> at the start of a line. This is
usually safer than deleting the line, because at some time in the future you
might need it back. Some easy ones to start with are IBM2FLPY.ADD if you
aren't using a PS/2, VW32S.SYS if you don't use 32-bit Windows programs,
VEMM.SYS if you don't need expanded memory in DOS, VCOM.SYS if you don't use
DOS-based communications software, XDFLOPPY.FLT if you don't create extended
density floppies, and DISKCACHE if you don't use the FAT file system. If you
don't use HPFS, then comment out the line that says IFS=C:\....\HPFS.IFS. You
could also experiment with reducing the BUFFERS=xx line in your config.sys
file. This line is necessary even in an HPFS machine because it speeds access
to FAT systems, and therefore floppies also, since all floppy disks are FAT
formatted. I have mine set to BUFFERS=30, and it works great. For all you
Warp Connect users, in your config.sys file is a driver called DETNE2.SYS.
What it does is look for clones of the NE2000 network adapter card that are
non-standard, and attempt to compensate for some non-standard functions. If
your network card is other than a clone NE2000, then you can REM the line
BASEDEV=DETNE2.SYS and save roughly 16 K. If you don't use a lot of Windows
programs, then turning off the Fast Load feature will save memory and boot-up
time. Do a right-click on the Desktop, and select System Setup. From that
folder, select WIN-OS/2 Setup. Double-click on that icon, and select the 3.1
Session tab of the notebook. Make sure that the WIN-OS/2 Window section has
the Fast Load option un-checked. If you feel comfortable navigating around the
files on your hard drive, and don't think you will need the undelete utility,
then go ahead and turn it off. Doing so will save some precious memory and a
lot of program overhead. Moving, copying, and deleting files will appear much
faster with undelete turned off. To turn it off, edit your config.sys file.
Find the line that says SET DELDIR=C:\DELETE,512; and edit it to read REM SET
DELDIR=C:\DELETE,512;. Now shut down and reboot. If you are only running OS/2
software and don't need the DOS/Windows compatibility, then you can turn them
off and recover the 640 K that DOS normally lives in. Edit your config.sys
file and find the line that says PROTECTONLY=NO. Change it to read
PROTECTONLY=YES. Afterwards, you could also comment out the line that loads
DOS.SYS. As always, reboot after any config.sys change. Even if you need
DOS/Windows capability, you can still save memory by tuning. The config.sys
parameter RMSIZE determines how many K of memory are reserved for the DOS
environment. The default is RMSIZE=640, but we all know that most programs can
live happily in a 500 K environment. To change it, edit the line in your
config.sys to read RMSIZE=512, and then reboot. Voila! Another 128 K for OS/2
and your programs to use. Please note that not all DOS programs will require
512 K of RAM to run. In fact, some programs can live quite happily with only
128 K of working memory. In other words, don't be afraid to experiment a
little. The RAM savings might be worth it.
Hard Drive :
Your hard drive is an important part of the overall performance of your OS/2
system. Setting it up properly at the start will yield amazing results. The
best thing you can do to improve the performance of your existing hard drive is
to format it with the High Performance File System, or HPFS for short. This
file system replaces the standard File Allocation Table, or FAT, system found
on all DOS computers today. It has many advantages and improvements over FAT,
and is ideally suited for OS/2. The only drawback is that HPFS requires
between 200 and 400 K of working memory. Therefore, using HPFS on anything
less than a 6 meg machine is counter-productive. Please note that if your hard
drive size is 80 meg or less, that you will not see any measurable performance
gain in speed, but you will still have the benefit of resistance to file
fragmentation, better undelete capability, and a smaller cluster size compared
to FAT, which will waste less space on your drive. The following is the best
way that I have found to setup your hard drive for machines with 4 to 8 meg of
RAM. First, make sure that you have completely backed up your hard drive.
Then, when installing Warp, choose the advanced installation. Select to do an
FDISK on your hard drive. You will create 2 partitions on your drive: one for
the swap file, and one for your files. Create a 20 meg partition, at the start
of your disk, 34.5 meg if you plan on using the Internet Access Kit and other
such large programs. Then create another partition for the remaining space.
Set this last one as the installable partition. Now, continue with the
installation, re-formatting the drive as appropriate. When the install is
complete, format your new d: partition. To format your new partition for HPFS
you would type FORMAT D: /FS:HPFS. Then edit the SWAPPATH= line in your
config.sys file to read SWAPPATH=D:\ 512 16384. Once you have edited your
config.sys file, shut down and reboot. You should see a marked speed
improvement in swap times. Don't forget to delete the old SWAPPER.DAT file in
your C:\OS2\SYSTEM directory after you reboot, to reclaim some disk space. On
my 8 meg HPFS system at home, I set aside 34.5 MB of disk space for a 32 meg
swapfile. The reason for the 2.5 meg difference is the 512 minimum-space
parameter in the swappath= line, and some room for additional structures unique
to the HPFS file system. This is also why I had you create a 20 meg partition
for a 16 meg HPFS swapfile. One word of caution if you are re-modelling your
hard drive with data already on it. BACKUP YOUR DATA FIRST! The FDISK program
will demolish all data when you resize a partition. If you have the bucks and
want to save yourself a lot of headache, take a look at a product from Power
Quest called Partition Magic. It will let you do stuff in minutes that would
normally take hours, or days. It will also convert a FAT drive to HPFS without
re-formatting. My swapfile has recently been moved from my boot drive to a
second hard drive in my system. The performance increase has been phenomenal.
Watching Warp boot, it seems as if both hard drives are being accessed at the
same time. If you want to try this (I can heartily recommend it!), then don't
forget to adjust the appropriate line in your config.sys file for swapfile
location. Also, your device driver line for the hard drive controller will
look something like this: BASEDEV=IBM1S506.ADD /a:0 /u:0 /!sms /lba /u:1 /!sms
/lba. If you are running an HPFS formatted drive, try changing the IFS= line
of your config.sys file to read IFS=C:\OS2\HPFS.IFS /CACHE:1024 /CRECL:64
/AUTOCHECK:C. The /CACHE:1024 parameter will reserve 1024 K for use by the
cache only, so be careful how big you make this number. More than 2048 is
useless, and less than 512 is equally useless. If you have an 8 MB RAM
machine, start off with 512 and work your way up from there. On an 8 meg
machine it will be a balancing act between speeding up your drive and slowing
down OS/2, so keep an eye on how much crunching your hard disk does, and how
long it takes to access frequently used items. Somewhere in the above
mentioned range will be a happy compromise. The /CRECL:64 parameter sets the
maximum record size for caching. If most of your files are about 64 K in size,
then setting it to 64 would be ideal. You can experiment with this number by
adjusting it in 2 K increments, from a minimum of 4 (default) up to a maximum
of 64. A good starting point is 32. Another trick to speed up HPFS systems is
to specify some additional parameters for the CACHE.EXE program, which
regulates all the activity taking place in the cache. Try adding the following
line to the end of your config.sys file; RUN=C:\OS2\CACHE.EXE /MAXAGE:40000
/DISKIDLE:30000 /BUFFERIDLE:20000. Okay, now reboot and see if it makes any
difference on your machine. On my home machine, with it's humble IDE hard
drive controller, my config.sys file is set to run the driver for this type of
board. The line starts with BASEDEV=IBM1S506.ADD. This type of hard drive
controller is very common, and if you have an older computer this is probably
the board you have too. One easy way to speed up your controller, and
therefore your hard drive, is to change the line to read BASEDEV=IBM1S506.ADD
/A:0 /U:0 /LBA, and then reboot. This will enable something called Logical
Block Access. LBA is sometimes referred to as burst mode. This mode is
usually only available on larger drives, upwards of 270 MB in size. Specifying
it on drives that don't use it will not do any harm. However, I got some mail
from one reader who, because of a specific combination of motherboard BIOS,
controller card, and hard drive, managed to wipe his entire drive by specifying
this parameter. This is not meant to scare anyone off the idea, just to let
you know that you shouldn't be messing with hard drive settings without a
backup. Foolish me tried it and was lucky. Your mileage may vary.
Printing :
Just a few words about printing in OS/2. If you want to speed up printing,
then edit your config.sys file. Find the line that says BASEDEV=PRINT01.SYS.
Now edit it so that it reads BASEDEV=PRINT01.SYS /IRQ. This dedicates an IRQ
number to the printer, instead of polling for free IRQ numbers, which is much
faster. Also, if you are using your printer to print only one thing at a time,
or don't have a printer, then you can save some memory by disabling the print
spooler. Go into your OS/2 system folder and go to System Setup. In there you
will find the spooler icon. Right click on this icon to bring up it's menu,
from which you can disable the spooler function. To speed up printing a bit,
edit your config.sys file and find the line that says
PRINTMONBUFSIZE=134,134,134. The 134 represents a print buffer in bytes, one
each for LPT1 through LPT3. First of all, if you are only using one parallel
port, usually LPT1, then set the last two 134 numbers to zero. Don't delete
them because they will default back to 134 bytes. Not much memory, but I
figure every last little bit counts. Secondly, to speed up printing, change
the first 134 to read 2048.
CD-ROM drives:
If you want to speed up the response time of your CD-ROM drive, one way is to
make the RAM cache for it a bit bigger. In your config.sys file, find the line
that looks like IFS=C:\OS2\BOOT\CDFS.IFS and rewrite it at the end to say
IFS=C:\OS2\BOOT\CDFS.IFS /C:4, and then reboot. What this does is change the
default setting (/C:2) of 128 K RAM cache to 256 K. Having the bigger cache
will hopefully speed up the response of your CD drive. Note, however, that you
are stealing 128 K of RAM from OS/2, so this might not be the best thing to do
on machines with 8 meg of RAM or less.
Miscellania:
The MAXWAIT= parameter in the config.sys file determines how many seconds a
process will be put on hold before OS/2 will raise it's priority on it's list
of things to do. To speed things up a bit, you might try changing this number
to 3 or 2, and then reboot. Do not set it lower than 2. This change may speed
things up at the expense of more program overhead. In some cases, increasing
the number to 4 or 5 might actually help. Try it out for yourself, since every
case is different. The IOPL= parameter of the config.sys file apparently gives
certain older devices privileged access to the input/output of OS/2 if they
need it. This might lead to situations where OS/2 becomes unstable and
crashes. Unless you have an older Laserjet printer, you can probably change
this line from it's default of IOPL=YES to IOPL=NO. This will make your OS/2
system more stable and crash-proof. In some cases you might want to set it to
IOPL=FXPRINT, to use the FaxWorks program as an example, if you have just
certain software that requires privileged IO. Many people have said that for
FaxWorks to run properly it needs the IOPL parameter set to FXPRINT. I
personally have set IOPL=NO and it works just fine. The PRIORITY_DISK_IO=YES
parameter in your config.sys file will give hard drive access priority to any
program running in the foreground. What this means is that while I am doing a
download in the background from CompuServe, for example, and typing this file
in the IBM Works word processor in the foreground, the word processor gets
priority to access the hard drive. In reality, the download should be getting
priority access to the hard drive. My experience has been that setting this
parameter to NO makes my system multitask more smoothly than with the default
of YES. Try it out and see. Many people have told me that their systems ran
more smoothly, and that they had more available RAM, after they de-registered
the IBM Works package from the Work Place Shell.You can try this yourself by
using a CMD file provided with the Works program. At an OS/2 command prompt,
change to the IBMWORKS directory. In this directory are two related CMD files.
One is named IBMWDESK.CMD, and will register the IBM Works programs with the
WPS. The other file is called IWDEREG.CMD, and will de-register all the IBM
Works component programs with the WPS. After de-registering you will still be
able to use the Works programs, but you will find that their inter-operability
will be hampered. If you use these programs as stand-alone software, and don't
need to use drag-and-drop between them, then this might be an easy way to speed
up your system. If you decide later on that this was not a good idea, then you
can always reverse the process by running the IBMWDESK.CMD file, which will
restore all the proper links between programs. Please note that after running
either file, that it will be necessary to shut-down and reboot in order to
finalize all the changes that were made. If you use Warp Connect, like I do,
here is something that I found which sped up my networking. When you purchased
your network adapter card it probably came with some kind of configuration
utility, since most cards don't use jumpers anymore. If you have this
software, run it to get the 12 digit alpha-numeric network adapter address.
Write this down and keep it in a safe place. Now, when you are installing Peer
for OS/2, on one of the notebook pages in the install there will be a field
where you can enter this number. Doing so with our network resolved some
mysterious crashes we were having, and generally sped things up a lot. If an
OS/2 program runs into a problem and will not respond, you should always try
the Ctrl-Esc key combination to try and bring up the window list. Doing this,
in many cases, will detect a failed application and give you the option to
terminate it. Sometimes it might take as long as 1 minute for the system to
respond. If this fails, try cycling between Ctrl-Esc and Alt-Esc, as this
combination will get a higher priority from the operating system than Ctrl-Esc
will. If all else fails,try a "warm boot", which is the Ctrl-Alt-Del key
combination (computer version of the Vulcan Neck Pinch <grin>). OS/2 will
intercept this key combination and try to close as many open files as it can
before actually rebooting. If you reach over and just flick the reset button
on your PC instead, then you stand a good chance of corrupting data files, or
even worse, corrupting your precious OS2.INI and OS2SYS.INI files. You will
also have to endure a CHKDSK upon rebooting. (You should always have a backup
of these INI files, and your Desktop, in case of disaster. The best way to do
this is to right-click anywhere on your Desktop background to bring up the
Desktop menu. Select settings and go to the archive tab. Here you will
activate the "create archive at each system restart" option. After you have a
few copies archived, you may want to turn this feature off again because it
will slow down your boot-ups and take some space on your hard drive.) The
reason that programs that were running when you shut down restart when you
reboot is because IBM setup the default OS/2 configuration to do just that, on
the assumption that people always use the same applications on every restart.
You can bypass this by pressing Left Ctrl/Left Shift/F1 as soon as you see the
alarm clock when your Desktop starts to load. Keep holding the keys until all
the icons have appeared on the Desktop, and then you can let go. If you find
that you don't like having your programs restart at every reboot, then you will
have to add the line SET RESTARTOBJECTS=STARTUPFOLDERSONLY,REBOOTONLY to your
config.sys file. Then reboot for this change to take effect. This will only
restart programs that are in your startup folder, and only upon rebooting, not
when the Desktop resets itself. If you ever need to pause the screen when
booting up Warp to see something, you can insert bogus device drivers at
strategic points along the way. A simple DEVICE=STOP should do it. The cache
memory installed on your motherboard (you know that number you see when you
start your machine that says something like "256 K Cache Memory") is a major
bottleneck in your computer, believe it or not! This external cache memory is
designed to pass along information between the CPU and the rest of the
computer. External caches were a cheap way to speed up a computer back when
most computers were running small DOS programs. Nowadays, much larger programs
running on 32-bit, multitasking platforms have left these external memory
caches inadequate for the task, and unable to cope. Under the intensive
computing requirements that are typical in a multitasking OS/2 environment,
these caches actually hamper performance because they just cannot process the
data they receive quickly enough. Combine this with the disk-thrashing that is
common on low memory systems, and the resulting performance is dismal. What
you want to do is turn this cache off. You can do this in the BIOS setup
program of your computer. Different BIOS manufacturers will have different
methods of doing this. I will use an American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) BIOS as
an example, since that is what my computer came with. When you boot your
machine, you should at some point in time see a message something like "Hit
<DEL> for setup.". This will launch you into the BIOS setup. Somewhere in
there you should find the option to turn off the external cache memory. In the
AMI BIOS I have it is located in the advanced option section. Go ahead and
turn off the cache and see how you like it. You should see a measurable
improvement in response time. Try opening the drives object in your Launchpad
to access your boot drive. That's an easy way to check. If you see the tree
view of the drive rebuild itself faster than what you are used to, then it
worked. One last tip regards the pop-up menu you see when you do a right-click
with your mouse. If you know how to move, copy, create a shadow, find,
etcetera, then seeing these options quickly becomes an annoyance. To get rid
of these redundant items, add the line SET MENUSTYLE=SHORT to your config.sys
file and reboot.
How to Use CompuServe to Get on the Internet:
This is a subject that has received almost no coverage in the press, as far as
I know, and yet is so easy to set up. Warp itself will bring you almost all
the way there. The Internet Access Kit, or IAK for short, includes a very
powerful Mosaic-type browser called Web Explorer. The only other thing you
will need are the Point-to-Point Protocol files. Warp Connect includes a PPP
program, but you can also get PPP from CompuServe for free. Just logon to the
OS/2 User forum and download PPP.ZIP. You will also need to go into the
NetLauncher support forum on CompuServe (GO NLSUPPORT) and download a text file
in the "CIS and PPP for OS/2" section of the forum. This file describes how to
input the proper logon script to get connected to the web. Once you have it
all setup and can make all the connections, the first thing you should do is
click on the Retrieve Software Updates icon to download the latest version of
Web Explorer. The latest version is a lot faster than the one that came in
your Warp package, and IBM is publicly committed to upgrading this product
continually. Therefore, it's a good idea to click on the Updates icon once in
a while. Once you have your machine all setup, try this little trick. Do a
right-click on the Web Explorer icon to bring up the menu, and select Settings.
At the end of the parameters line add in the parameter -Q, for quick and quiet
exit, and -T 8, to dedicate 8 OS/2 threads to caching all the images that we
love the web so much for. Multi-tasking on the Internet with Warp is something
to be seen! In the recent past I've pulled stunts like browsing the Web and
ftp-ing a file at the same time through the same connection, or running
multiple copies of Web Explorer to access different parts of the Web all at
once. Web explorer also supports drag-and-drop, so that you can right-click on
an image in Web Explorer and drag it onto a folder or your Desktop and drop.
You can do the same with an entire HTML page, but you have to hold down the
Ctrl key while dragging. You can also use Web Explorer as a presentation tool
and graphics file viewer. Take a graphics file (ie. *.GIF, *.JPG) and drop it
onto the Web Explorer window to view it.
Some Software I Use Almost Daily:
Here is a list of programs that I have stumbled upon, and consider to be
indispensable for my daily work. I realize that this is a very subjective
thing to include in what I have tried to make an objective project. However,
many first-time OS/2 users may not know what is available, and I include this
section in the hope that it may at least point them in the right direction.
Please do not view this as an endorsement of any one program over another. I
cannot possibly know about every program that exists for OS/2. There are quite
literally thousands, not that the Computer Industry Press will ever change
their argument that "Warp is wonderful, but there is no software." But I
digress.
Freeware:
One of the best kept secrets in the OS/2 world, as far as software goes, is
what is commonly referred to as IBM EWS. This stands for IBM Employee Written
Software. Apparently, the highly creative folks at IBM are not allowed to
profit from their extra-curricular programming, and all the fruits of their
labor are donated to the public domain. Translation: FREEWARE, and lots of
it!
- The best software that I have seen in a long while (free, or otherwise) is
called NPS WPS Enhancer, [NPSWP181.ZIP]. It is a notebook-style application
that takes very little memory and gives you many tools to make life on the
Desktop more productive. Some of it's features are: One-button window close,
arranging desktop icons in a matrix, changing the desktop focus depending where
you point the mouse pointer, an auto-select feature that simplifies viewing
context menus that are several levels deep (ala the MacIntosh paradigm), custom
window animations, the ability to move the mouse pointer to a new focus (ie.
when you start a program), and much, much more. This little beauty replaces
many shareware and freeware products (XIT, Xfeel, Extended Desktop, etc.) all
in one small package. Once you start using even the most seemingly trivial
features of this software, you will be hopelessly hooked forevermore. A
must-have utility for anyone who spends any time on the desktop. Okay, I'll
stop gushing now <grin>.
- My next-most-favorite freeware is LxLite[LXLT101.ZIP]. This terrific
software will compress all your OS/2 *.exe, *.dll, etc. files so that they
take up less space on your hard drive, and will load faster. This process will
not damage the files in any way, it just re-assembles them into a more
economical format. I have compressed all of the files in my OS/2 directories
(ie. \os2\system, \os2\dl, etc.), and the performance boost when reading files
from my slow hard drive has been phenomenal.
- JumpKey/2 [JUMPKEY.ZIP] is a great utility for assigning programs to key
combinations on your keyboard. For example, minimize or maximize all your
programs with a keystroke. Not for everybody, but definitely worth checking
out. A must-have for all you keyboard junkies.
- If you want to impress your friends who use Windows, go ahead and download
the IBM EWS WPShell program [WPSFWIN.ZIP]. This little gem will make Windows
3.1, or Windows for Workgroups, look just like Warp's Desktop. All you will be
missing is that cloud background on your Desktop to be able to fool your
friends into thinking it is Windows 95. Actually, if IBM had written this
wonderful software a bit sooner, Microsoft could have saved themselves a lot of
trouble <grin>. It's hard to believe that it's free.
- I use the word processor that came in the Warp Bonus Pack. It's compatible
with Word, WordPerfect, and AmiPro, as well as regular ASCII text. I find that
it works as well as any of the above mentioned software, and it's fully 32-bit
and multi-threaded so that it's optimized for OS/2 (and it's free with Warp).
- For spreadsheets, I use the spreadsheet and charting programs in the Warp
Bonus Pack. It can work with Lotus and Excel file formats, and like all the
programs in the Bonus Pack, it supports drag-and-drop as well as object
linking.
- The drag and drop support for the Phonebook program (also in the Bonus Pack)
really helps for doing mail merges or form letters.
- I use the FM2 Utilities from Mark Kimes [FM2UTL.ZIP] to quick-format my
floppies or delete a directory tree, search and replace text throughout many
files at a time, and much more.
- To compare two text files I use an IBM EWS called Graphical File Comparison
[OS2GFC.ZIP], or GFC for short. I can't explain it, you'll just have to
download it and try it for yourself. It has been immensely useful in comparing
different versions of the same file.
- Since Warp doesn't have a calculator anymore, like version 2.1 used to, I use
a freeware calculator for the WPS called HPcalc [HPCLC094.ZIP], which imitates
the trusty old Hewlett Packard HP-41C on your Desktop.
- For my graphic needs I use Lens, a Desktop magnifier that zooms in on
anything that's under your mouse pointer. It's interesting and fun.
- PM Camera [PMCAM2.ZIP] is an IBM EWS that will take snapshots of your
Desktop, partial Desktop, or the active window, and then saves it to a BMP file
format.
- Megadesk [MEGADS.ZIP] is a virtual Desktop expander, so that you can
maintain several virtual screens full of programs. This is great for people
(like me) who use 14 inch monitors and like to run their programs maximized on
the desktop.
- A must-have freeware is Config Info [CFGINFO4.ZIP]. This little gem is a
full-featured config.sys information center, editor, and analyzer. It has all
sorts of interesting information on the different parts of the config.sys file,
and can analyze it in an attempt to optimize performance. I cannot say that I
personally agree with all of the recommendations it made for my config.sys
file, but it is nonetheless a terrific tool to add to your collection.
- I also use KBSet for DOS and OS/2 [KBSET100.ZIP] from Jiben Software. This
freeware will let you set the state of the Num lock, Caps lock, and Scroll lock
keys in OS/2 and also DOS sessions.
- PM Kill, by James R. Skinner, is a Desktop process killer that some people
might find useful.
- For you HPFS folks, FENX2 is an IBM EWS that will undelete files on an HPFS
drive.
- Floppy copying is made easy with PM DCopy [PMDCOPY.ZIP], by Jason R.
Shannon.
- For you engineering types, there is the Unit Conversion Notebook
[UNITNB.ZIP], by Donna Campanella.
- Paddy's Change Directory, or PCD [PCD231.ZIP], is another time-saver that
lets you type in a portion of a directory name, and then it will jump there.
If it's a choice of several directories, then it will present you with a
scrollable list, and you can pick where you want to go. This is a real
time-saver if you have many nested directories, or are just tired of typing.
- The OS/2 versions of Zip and UnZip, from InfoZip, are indispensable as most
files are distributed in ZIP format these days.
- Eugene's Icons and Pointers [EUGEICO2.ZIP] are a lot of fun, and I have
gotten so used to my new pointer that I could never go back to the one that
comes with Warp.
- Newpad [NEWPAD.ZIP] is a terrific little program that will let you create
multiple launchpads.
Shareware:
All the files mentioned in this section are shareware. Please register them if
you will use them on a regular basis. Without your support these programs will
not continue to exist.
- The best investment I ever made was for the SIO drivers, from Ray Gwinn.
These drivers replace the COM.SYS and VCOM.SYS serial port drivers that come
with Warp. SIO cured a nagging problem I had in DOS sessions with AutoCAD 12c2
for DOS (my bread and butter) randomly crashing the DOS session. Since I
installed them I haven't had one crash.
- For modem communications I use Zap-O-Com, or ZOC for short, which is a
terrific software with lots of intelligence built-in to automate logons and
such.
- When I do a download, it's usually in ZIPped format. For zipping and
unzipping I use the InfoZip freeware products (available on every BBS I have
ever seen) and the WPS frontend, RPF Zip Control, another excellent product.
- PMJPEG is a terrific graphics file viewer/converter/processor for any file
formats you can think of.
- PMDMatch will let you compare two drives or directories to see if all the
files match. It also has built-in functions for moving, copying, and otherwise
managing the files in it's display. Great for synchronizing directories on a
LAN, or on your desktop computer and your laptop, for example.
- A terrific utility to start several programs all at the same time is called
GroupStart, by Martin Farrent. This program is similar in approach to the idea
of folder work areas, but uses a pick list approach that contains filenames.
It can also create icons on your desktop that will start a list of related
programs all at the same time with just one double-click of your mouse.
- My personal favorite is SpellGuard. It is a must-have for anyone using
OS/2. It is a run-time spell checker for OS/2, DOS, and Windows that is just
awesome. It just sits in the background checking words as you type them,
waiting for you to make a mistake. Really shows off the power of
multi-threaded OS/2 programs. Great to demo to your DOS/Windows friends.
Commercially Marketed Software:
These programs are all available through mail-order companies. I purchased
them from either House of Technology, or OS/2 Professional magazine. Both
companies have knowledgeable people manning the phones, and offer all kinds of
software that you probably would never find in any computer store.
- The GammaTech Utilities, from SofTouch Systems, are terrific for basic
housekeeping of your hard drive. They include a great set of FAT and HPFS
tools, as well as disaster recovery tools, and I use them almost daily. - To
monitor my resources, drives, the number of threads and files used and my
network connections (I use OS/2 Warp Connect), I use a utility which has become
indispensable called PM Patrol. It also includes a program scheduler so you
can start backups after regular hours, for example.
- To keep my INI files clean as a whistle I use UniMaint, also from SofTouch
Systems. This software also comes with a program un-installer that will remove
anything from your drive that relates to a given program, as well as any
entries in your INI files, config.sys lines, and WPS classes. This is also
where the text files came from that I have included separately in this revision
of TuneWarp.
- To manage my disk partitions I use a great new product (someone should have
invented this years ago) called Partition Magic, from PowerQuest. It works in
DOS and OS/2 and does in minutes what used to take hours. Another amazing
feature of the program is that it can convert an existing FAT partition to HPFS
on the fly without losing data or having to re-format.If you have ever had to
monkey around with partition sizes, or want an easy way to try out my
suggestion in the Hard Disk section of this file, then this product is for you.
Conclusion :
I hope that all of the above tips worked for you. This has been my first
attempt at doing something for the OS/2 community, and I plan to update this
file from time to time as I learn more tips and tricks. From the figures that
I have seen, there are now more people using OS/2 than there are using
MacIntosh computers. That's really something great. The OS/2 community is
finally a force to be reckoned with, and you can see for yourself by the number
of version 1.0 programs coming out specifically for OS/2 that 1996 promises to
be a banner year with all kinds of new developments. I have been able to
garner the above tips from many diverse sources. If you want to inform
yourself further about OS/2 and all of it's wonders, there are many channels
open to you. You can read about OS/2 in OS/2 Professional and OS/2 Magazine.
CompuServe has several forums specific to OS/2, and OS/2 software vendors, that
you can access for support 24 hours a day. I have asked for help there several
times, and gotten knowledgeable answers usually in less than 24 hours. There
are many OS/2 specific bulletin boards that you can call for shareware and
other stuff. Lastly, there is the Internet with it's wealth of information.
My tip to you would be to check out CompuServe first for whatever you need.
They have powerful search tools which make almost anything easy to find, and
all the files are virus-free. With all of those resources you should be able
to satisfy almost all of your OS/2 needs. Happy Warping!
Richard Oliver Kut CompuServe ID #: 71574,3616 June 24, 1995