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KCOUNT V1.10 (C)Copyright Graeme W. McRae, November 1, 1986 Page 1 KCOUNT Keywords TSR KEYBOARD USAGE ACTIVITY CPU TIME MEASUREMENT MONITOR KCOUNT Introduction KCOUNT V1.10 is a small (4k) resident program that measures the percentage of "active" PC usage by monitoring the keyboard interrupt. It is offered free -- this is not shareware. It can write monitor reports to a file, and can be used in a CED SYN or .BAT file to automate statistics collection. Source avail. on request. 1k bytes stay resident. Self-removable. Online help. (C)Graeme W. McRae 1986 [73307,2453] The motivation for writing this program was the desire to determine whether or not a PC is being used, and at what level of activity. Various schemes were suggested to measure the "CPU activity" of the 8088. The trouble with these schemes is that many programs loop continously when they are idle. This would be reflected as 100% CPU activity, when in fact no work is being done. It is not possible to objectively identify such "idle looping", so these CPU activity schemes are not effective. Another way to determine whether the PC is being used would be to monitor an interrupt or interrupts that are used only when the PC is being used. The keyboard interrupt was an obvious choice, since a person must be actually hitting the keys to drive that interrupt. A mere count of keystrokes, however, is not a good measure of the level of usage of the PC, because of differences in typing speed and application design. Simply browsing a file, for example, is a fine use of the PC that generates very few keystrokes. To correct this shortcoming, KCOUNT measures the percentage of *minutes* in which there was one or more keystrokes. Using this scheme, the power-typist and the browser should come out even in measured usage. Care should be taken when using the results of KCOUNT's measurement. KCOUNT does not measure a person's performance nor the overall usefullness of the computer. It only measures "active" use of the computer. Passive uses, such as long-running compiles, printing, or communications are not measured by KCOUNT. KCOUNT Compatibility KCOUNT is compatible with most drivers and TSRs. If you use SideKick, you should initialize KCOUNT first, then SideKick. Although KCOUNT offers the /E switch to de-install itself, this is not possible unless KCOUNT was the last TSR loaded. Thus the /E switch can not be used if you are running SideKick due to the way SideKick re-installs itself. KCOUNT V1.10 (C)Copyright Graeme W. McRae, November 1, 1986 Page 2 KCOUNT Usage To begin measurement, KCOUNT must be initialized using the /I option. Thereafter, activity reports may be generated by using the KCOUNT command with no options. The reports may be written to a file using the redirection character (">") on the command line. See "Collecting Statistics", below for more information about using files. The /I option may be used to override the interrupt number used by KCOUNT. If the interrupt number is overridden at initialization, it must also be overridden each time a report is desired. The /R option will display the current report, then reset the statistics, in effect re-initializing KCOUNT. The /P option may be used to override the default length of each measurement period. The default is 60 seconds. Any value from 10 to 3600 seconds may be used. The /B option may be used for Brief output. /Bxxxxxxxx attaches a name (I call it the B-Name) to the output. See "Collecting Statistics", below, for more information on using the B-Name. Any of the above options may be combined in one command. The order of the options is not significant. See the examples, below. The /E option prints the final report, then shuts down KCOUNT, returning the storage formerly occupied by KCOUNT to DOS. It may be combined with /B. The /H option will give a brief summary of command line syntax. KCOUNT Usage Examples KCOUNT /I -- Initialize KCOUNT KCOUNT /I104 -- Initialize KCOUNT using interrupt 104 (decimal) KCOUNT /R -- Reset statistics back to zero KCOUNT /I104/R -- Reset statistics, using interrupt 104 (decimal) KCOUNT /R/BAutoSig -- Reset statistics, assign name to reports KCOUNT /P300 -- Initialize or reset the period length (seconds) KCOUNT -- Print the current activity report KCOUNT /B>>KSTATS.DAT -- Append the report to a file, brief mode KCOUNT /I104/B/E -- Print brief report using interrupt 103, then end collection for that interrupt. KCOUNT /H -- Get help KCOUNT V1.10 (C)Copyright Graeme W. McRae, November 1, 1986 Page 3 KCOUNT Collecting Statistics Monitor reports can be directed to a file using the UNIX/DOS redirection symbols ">" (write) and ">>" (append). Later, these reports can be printed or processed by a program of your devising. The "Brief" mode facilitates this processing by writing exactly one line in a set format each time statistics are requested. The "Title" parameter can be used to provide a title line as the first line of the file, if you wish. If you are merging output collected from different computers or while running different applications, this name can be used to give more meaning to the data. Normally, the B-Name supplied by /Bxxxxxxxx is used for the current report only. But if /Bxxxxxxxx is combined with /I or /R, the B-Name becomes permanent, and will be used for all subsequent reports. REMEMBER: If you use /R and /Bxxxxxxxx, the report will be issued using the *old* B-name, then the B-name (and other statistics) will be reset. If you wish to compare the active use of two different programs, prog1 and prog2, you may wish to attach a B-Name to the statistics that are gathered while these programs are running. Later, SORT can be used to organize the statistics by program name. Here is one scenario that will gather statistics using Brief mode: In AUTOEXEC.BAT ------------ KCOUNT /I/T>>b:\kstats.dat Write just the title line In the BAT file for PROG1 ------------------------- KCOUNT /R/Bprog1>b:\kstats.dat Flush residual statistics prog1 KCOUNT /R/B>>b:\kstats.dat Write PROG1's statistics (The BAT file for PROG2 would be similar.) Generalized KCOUNT reset CED SYN -------------------------------- syn k kcount/R/B%1>>b:\kstats.dat syn ed ^k Edlin^a:edlin %1^k Here, the "ed" syn invokes EDLIN, and keeps track of keystrokes during the EDLIN session. KCOUNT V1.10 (C)Copyright Graeme W. McRae, November 1, 1986 Page 4 KCOUNT Adjustable Interrupt Number The interrupt (102 decimal, by default) is used both as a pointer to the data area used by the resident portion and as the programming interface to KCOUNT (See "Programming Interface" below). If another program is using this interrupt, KCOUNT will not attempt to initialize itself. In this case, you can tell KCOUNT to use a different interrupt number with the /Innn option, where nnn is the (decimal) interrupt number. See "Changing the Default Interrupt Number", below for more information. Multiple copies of KCOUNT can be run simultaneously using different interrupt numbers. That way, monitoring can be done using two different recording periods at once. Here's an example: KCOUNT /I103 -- Initialize KCOUNT using the default period. KCOUNT /I104/P300 -- Initialize a new copy of KCOUNT with a period of five minutes (300 seconds). KCOUNT /I103 -- Display the report of 60-second periods. KCOUNT /I104 -- Display the report of five-minute periods. If you later use the /E switch to end KCOUNT, be sure to end in the reverse order that you initialized them. Also, be sure to read "KCOUNT Compatibility", above. To continue this example, you should issue end in this order: KCOUNT /I104/E KCOUNT /I103/E KCOUNT Report, normal mode Application or computer name: bname. KCOUNT (V1.10) status at: YY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS. KCOUNT has been running since YY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS. Keystrokes so far: nnnnn. Number of seconds per period: nnnnn. Periods in which PC was used: nnnnn. Total number of time periods: nnnnn. Usage quotient: nnn% If a B-Name was set at initialization or reset, this name is printed, for your information. The current date and time and the date and time of initialization are printed first, followed by the number of keystrokes since initialization. A "keystroke" is considered to be a press of any key (including shift keys and "dead" keys) or a typamatic repeat of any key. If the period was changed from the default of 60 seconds, the number of seconds per period is printed. Then, the number of periods in which there was one or more keystrokes is KCOUNT V1.10 (C)Copyright Graeme W. McRae, November 1, 1986 Page 5 printed, followed by the total number of periods. The ratio of these last two numbers is the "Usage Quotient". The following rules pertain to the period of time that elapses between keystrokes. If the user sets the clock back, or if the "BIOS tick count" is adjusted backwards (See the explanation under "Warning: BIOS tick count was adjusted", below) then the period of negative length is ignored, and doesn't figure into the "Usage Quotient". Any period that spans midnight is ignored, because it is not possible to distinguish this case from setting the clock back. (The date is not available to the resident portion. It is printed for information purposes only) KCOUNT Report, Brief mode B-Name Last keystroke Initialization Keystrokes Per. Used Total Percent bname date/time date/time nnnnnnnn nnn nnnnn nnnnn nnn Shown here is the title line, followed by the general form of the Brief-mode report. It is scrunched a bit here, to fit into the format of this text file, but in reality, the lines are almost 80 characters long. The same statistics are printed, in the same order, as the normal-mode report. But they are printed on one line. This mode is designed primarily to simplify collection and processing of statistics. KCOUNT Messages Error: interrupt nnn is already in use. Use /Innn option. The interrupt is used by some software other than KCOUNT, possibly a different version of KCOUNT or another TSR. Use the /Innn option, specifying an available interrupt. KCOUNT is now installed. This message should be received after initialization of KCOUNT, and at no other time. Warning: BIOS tick count was adjusted from HH:MM:SS.hh to HH:MM:SS.hh This is an informational message, which can be safely ignored. Some PCs have clocks that are independent of the BIOS tick count, which is stored at location 46C through 46F. Typically, the DOS that runs on these PCs ignore the BIOS tick count, leaving an incorrect value there. KCOUNT must rely on this value, however, because it isn't permitted to use the DOS "time" service. So during initialization, KCOUNT corrects this tick count if necessary, and issues this message. This correction is also done whenever a monitor report is requested. KCOUNT V1.10 (C)Copyright Graeme W. McRae, November 1, 1986 Page 6 /Pnnnn value must be 10 to 3600. The number of seconds per period must be in this range. /Innn value must be 1 to 255. The interrupt number must be in this range, although it is highly recommended that you either take the default or choose a number from 96 through 111. All numbers are decimal. Counter overflow: Reset using KCOUNT /R. The running count of recording periods can reach at most 65535. This happens after 7 days using the shortest recording period (10 seconds), or after 6 weeks using the default recording period (60 seconds). If this does happen, issue the command KCOUNT /R to reset the counters. Bad parm syntax. For help, use KCOUNT /H Probably you forgot the slash, or made some other typing error. KCOUNT 1.10 (C)Copyright Graeme W. McRae 1986 For help, use KCOUNT /H If KCOUNT was never installed, and you enter the KCOUNT command with no operands, this message appears. Or it appears when you try to use parameters that would be valid if KCOUNT were initialized. Checksum error. Get a new copy of KCOUNT. There was a bad download or copy of KCOUNT. Try downloading it again, or obtain a new copy from the author. KCOUNT ended. The /E parameter was specified, so the resident portion of KCOUNT was freed, and the interrupt vector hooks were removed. Error: memory not released. The /E parameter was specified, and the interrupt vector hooks were probably removed, but the memory blocks owned by the resident portion of KCOUNT were corrupted, and thus not freed. Error: /E not possible. The /E parameter was specified, but the interrupt vector table was modified after KCOUNT was installed, so the information KCOUNT needs to end is not available. KCOUNT V1.10 (C)Copyright Graeme W. McRae, November 1, 1986 Page 7 KCOUNT Programming Interface Programs may access the KCOUNT numbers directly, by invoking the KCOUNT interrupt. Seven functions are available. The function number must be stored in the AH register prior to invoking the interrupt. The values returned are accurate up to the most recent keystroke. Function 1: Return the total number of keystrokes in DX:AX Function 2: Return the total periods and used periods. The number of total periods is returned in DX, and the number of used periods is returned in AX. Function 3: Return the time KCOUNT was initialized. The time is returned in DH:DL:AH:AL as hours, minutes, seconds, and hundredths of seconds. Function 4: Return the number of seconds per period in AX. Function 5: Re-initialize KCOUNT. The time of initialization is reset to the time the last keystroke occurred. Function 6: Returns a segmented pointer in DS:SI to the name specified by the last permanent /Bxxxxxxxx parameter. The format is a one-byte length followed by an 8-character blank-padded ASCIIZ string. The choice of DS:SI made KCOUNT programming easier, sorry. Function 7: Returns the date KCOUNT was initialized, in the same format as DOS function 2Ah. CX=Year, DH=Month, DL=Day of month, and AL=Day of week. KCOUNT Changing the Default Interrupt Number The default interrupt number used by KCOUNT is 66h (102 decimal). If this interrupt number interferes with one of your existing TSRs, you can change it permanently. When you do this, the /Help message will automatically change as well. It is recommended that you choose an available interrupt in the range 60h through 6Fh. Here's how you would change it to 6Eh: A>debug kcount.com -e 103 6E -g Checksum error. Get a new copy of KCOUNT. Program terminated normally. -w Writing 0FEE bytes -q A> KCOUNT V1.10 (C)Copyright Graeme W. McRae, November 1, 1986 Page 8 Similarly, to change the default measurement interval from 60 seconds to some other number, the "e" command becomes "e 104 xx yy" where xx is the least significant byte and yy is the most significant byte of the default measurement interval in hex. Note that you must G>o (run the program) under debug after making a change before writing the changed version back to disk. Running the program automatically re-calculates the checksum. So even though the error message was issued, W>riting fixes it. KCOUNT History of Revisions 86/10/08 V1.00 Initial release supported /I, /Innn, /P, /R, and /H. 86/10/20 V1.01 Added self-checksum support to guard against a possible bad download or bad copy of the program. Total size of KCOUNT.COM is under 3K. 86/10/31 V1.10 Added /B, /T, and /E. The date was added to the display, but it is not used in calculations. The /R and /P switches were changed to show the report *before* rather than *after* the reset of statistics. Total size of KCOUNT.COM is under 4K. IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. Sidekick is a trademark of Borland International, Inc. MS-DOS is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories. CED is Copyright 1985 by Christopher J. Dunford If you have any questions about this program, feel free to send me EMAIL on CompuServe. You may distribute KCOUNT, but you must include this documentation, you may not sell it (you may charge for materials, handling, and postage), and you may not distribute a modified version of KCOUNT nor its documentation. Graeme W. McRae [73307,2453].