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ZENO.DOC
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1986-06-12
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Author's Documentation:
ZENO.COM: M. Lazarus, June 11, 1986
ZENO is a small, fast, core-resident program that
speeds up certain screen writes. The actual increase in speed is
almost three-fold, but the increase you see on the screen depends
on the application program in use. An example: with BCOMM
operating at 9600 bps, the increase is approximately 20-30
percent. Only certain programs take advantage of ZENO; but those
that don't (including PC-Write) are usually fast enough without
it.
ZENO reduces available memory by about 900 bytes.
ZENO operates with all screens. On some color screens,
however, it may cause snow -- harmless but annoying. If that
happens, remove ZENO with the instructions below.
Important: Do not change back and forth between
monochrome and color displays while ZENO is installed. Users of
monochrome graphics boards: this includes you.
To load: At the DOS prompt, type ZENO. A message will
appear.
To remove: At the DOS prompt, type ZENO/K (use no
spaces; must be capital K). A message will appear. Important:
First remove all core-resident programs loaded after ZENO.
Additional Comments:
(1) ZENO, like many other fast screen programs,
eliminates the wait for the retrace. But ZENO also trys to speed
up the BIOS routines in other ways as well. For details, see the ASM
listing. Roughly speaking, ZENO assumes that the underlying
program is trying to use the BIOS call in the most likely manner;
it tests for that, and if the assumption is right, uses a faster
method. If ZENO's assumptions are wrong, the test of the
assumption slows down ZENO's performance in comparison to a
program that only eliminates the retrace delay. Therefore, if
the underlying program's use of INT 10 is extremely unusual,
there may well be faster screen speedup programs faster than
ZENO. But that is likely to be true only of very rare programs.
(2) TEST.COM does nothing but a series of BIOS screen
writes, counting timer interrupts. It then writes out the number
of timer interrupts that have elapsed. Useful for comparing fast
screen programs, although, obviously, it does not test them under
all conditions.
(3) Comments and suggestions are best addressed to me,
David Seidman, on Bob Blacher's bulletin board, 202-547-2008.