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Cream of the Crop 20
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CPUMETER.HLP
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OS/2 Help File
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1996-06-21
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27KB
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376 lines
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 1. About Cpumeter ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
Welcome to CPUMeter, Version 1.0a
I am proud to present the first public version of CPUMeter. This program is
SHAREWARE, you are allowed to distribute the zipfile cpum*.zip. Do NOT
redistribute any part of this zipfile. After a trial period of 4 weeks, you
have to register if you want to use the program any further. Otherwise, you
must remove it from your computer.
CPUMeter is an enhanced CPU-usage meter, similar to "PULSE.EXE". Unlike other
CPU-meters, it does not use a counting loop to determine the CPU-load. It uses
the DosQProcStat API-call. This reduces CPU-load and CPU power-consumption and
gives the possibility to show infos about CPU-hogging processes.
This program is SHAREWARE. That means you are allowed to copy and distribute
the original-archive (cpum*.zip) and you are allowed to test the program for
two weeks. After that time, you MUST register it or remove the program from
your PC(s).
To register, send me
Money $$$$ ;-)
- either DM 20,- cash or as negotiable "EUROCHECK"
- or US$20,- cash or as negotiable "EUROCHECK"
Your postal-adress, so i will know where to send your registration-key.
My adress is:
Christof Pastors
Luitpoldstr. 12
91054 Erlangen
Germany
I am also open to comments and discussion about my program, any constructive
comment will be appreciated. If you want to contact me via email:
pastors@eev.e-technik.uni-erlangen.de
The newest version of CPUMeter can be found on the regular ShareWare-servers
(like Hobbes) or (the very newest) at:
http://eev11.e-technik.uni-erlangen.de/cpumeter.html
And here the legal stuff:
CPUMeter is Copyright (c) 1996, Christof Pastors
This program is provided "as is" and gives you a chance to try the product for
two weeks. After that time, you MUST register it or remove the program from
your PC(s). I will give NO kind of SUPPORT to unregistered users (though i am
open for comments and constructive crticism). I tried to find as many bugs as
possible, but i am IN NO WAY RELIABLE FOR INDIRECT OR SIMILAR DAMAGES,
INCLUDING ANY LOST PROFITS OR LOST DATA ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR
INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE OR ANY DATA SUPPLIED .
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 2. Installation ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
Simply unzip the zipped files in a single directory. Then create a new
program-object by starting cpu_inst.cmd or by dragging and customizing an
object from the program-template in your templates-folder. READY.
CPUMeter does not register a DLL nor does it create an entry in the ini-files
of OS/2, i don't like programs modifying system-files!
NEW! Accurate results with High-Resolution-Timer!
To exploit all capabilities of CPUMeter, you can use the
"High-Resolution-Timer". For this, you need two new drivers from IBM:
CLOCK01.SYS and TIMER0.SYS. If you have one of those rare microchannel-PCs, you
need the CLOCK02.SYS driver instead of clock01. With those drivers, the problem
is fixed that CPUMeter shows to much CPU-load when an application is waked very
often (for example to handle mouse-movement messages). BUT BE WARNED:
Enabling this option can cause problems
DOS-programs that use the same hardware-timer will hang. This is propably
the case with many DOS-Games.
WINDOWS-sessions may hang when starting or they can show bad response to
mouse-input.
Seamless WINOS2-sessions may even block the OS/2 desktop when they hang
on startup.
If you have problems with a DOS-program that needs the same PC-hardware-timer,
go to the settings-Notebook of CPUMeter and disable the use of HRTimer. In
rare cases, you should also exit CPUMeter after this step to free the
Hardware-timer.
How YOU can get these drivers:
They will be part of MERLIN, the next version of OS2,
I added the MMPM_MPU.ZIP archive that comes from IBM to the CPUMeter
archive. You can find the needed drivers in there.
They are part of the DEVCON 9/10 "Developer's Toolkit for OS/2 Warp" (
see BETA-section there)
They are part of the new Real-Time-Midi package developed by IBM.
And they can be found per ftp at the HOBBES-Shareware archive (
MMPM_MPU.ZIP).
How to install the new drivers:
If you don't use ( or need ) the according Multimedia-Setup "MINSTALL.EXE",
which brings you full MPU-401 multimedia support, install them "by hand":
Make a backup copy of the old clock01.sys in the \os2\boot\ directory.
Copy the new clock01.sys and timer0.sys in this directory.
Add the statement "BASEDEV=TIMER0.SYS" to your config.sys.
Reboot.
If CPUMeter can't open the new timer on program-startup, it will use the
(inaccurate) standard-timer.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 3. Technical Details ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
How does it work? What's so special with this "pulse"-like app?
I never liked the way most PULSE-like cpumeters work: They create an
idle-priority thread that executes a infinite counting loop which hogs the CPU
as soon as it is idle. This way the CPU will never get really idle....
Instead i wrote a REAL CPUMeter, that queries the OS/2 kernel every second, how
much cputime all processes have consumed and then displays the result. After
10msec, the CPU is idle again. There is a "documented" undocumented API-call
(DosQueryProcStat) that gives all informations one would need: Which thread of
which process has consumed how much cputime and much more infos. If you are
curious, take a look at pstat.exe in your \os2\ directory. Simply spoken, this
program does a formatted output of the mentioned API-call. This program and the
wonderful tool called "watchcat" exploit this API-call and gave me the idea ...
Basically, CPUMeter queries the process-statistics every second and sums up the
cputime consumed by all threads. This and the name of the most cpu-consuming
process is displayed. There are some advantages and some disadvantages of this
proceeding:
Advantages:
It is easy to determine the process who actually hogs the CPU.
There is no Idle-Tread counting and counting. This means:
- The CPU is really idle when nothing else is to do. The power
consumption of the CPU is reduced dramatically. As my favorite
german computer-magazine "Ct" showed, OS/2 and LINUX "HALT" the CPU
when the kernel is idle between the (timer-) interrupts and nothing
else is to do. On my P60, the power consumed by the CPU goes down
from 12W to 4W. This could be interesting for people who like
overclocking their CPUs ;-) . Or for the people who own a NOTEBOOK
and wonder, why the battery goes low when PULSE is running...
- Other Idle-Priority threads like the thumbnail-creator in PMVIEW.EXE
or the idle-priority worker-thread in FM/2 can do their work without
having to share the CPU with PULSE and its "useful" counting-loop.
Disadvantages:
When threads are created and finished in a very short time (< 1sec),
CPUMeter will not always see them and therefore report a lower cpu-load.
Note:
The next problem is fixed if you have the new High-Resolution-Timer from
IBM installed! See installation for details.
When a process is waked very often (hundred times a second and faster),
the kernel counts to much cputime for this thread. This can be the case
for a DOS-BOX that polls the keyboard or for a window, that gets a lot
of messages when you move the mouse over its window-area. Sorry, this is
a restriction of the kernel, not my fault.
ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ 4. CPUMeter - Application Help ΓòÉΓòÉΓòÉ
CPUMeter's User-Interface consists of:
Main Window, this is shown on startup.
PopUpMenu, this is shown after a Right-Mousebutton-Click on the
Main-Window.
Process-List,