First of all, bear in mind that WL writes the entire log file to disk every
time it does a save. The only way to avoid this would be a complex record
I/O system that would take Wayne a lot of time to implement and debug.
I would speculate that saving the log gets progressively slower because
Windows 95/98 run low on memory the longer the machine is operating. Windows
95/98 memory management is notoriously bad. My experience is that the longer
the machine runs, and the more processes you launch and terminate, the less
free memory you have left. I think there are bugs in the code that's
supposed to recover memory released by running and terminated processes. The
user never knows about the problem because when Windows runs low on RAM it
uses "virtual memory" -- which is really disk space. When this happens,
portions (pages) of your running programs and data are stored on disk
instead of in RAM. Of course, programs can only execute when they are in
RAM, so portions (pages) of your programs and data rapidly swap in and out
of memory, slowing everything down. The log file slowdown might be caused by
contention for the disk I/O channel between programs/data needing to swap
and regular file I/O (such as saving the log file.) It also might be caused
by a lack of buffer space available to the device driver for writing the log
file. Obviously, the problem gets worse as the log gets bigger.
Rebooting releases all that locked memory and you get a clean slate -- until
next time.
Perhaps the reasons I didn't have a problem in 8P-land were 1) one of the
machines was running Win2K, and 2) we had to reboot the machines so many
times to fix networking problems that the memory never got a chance to fill
up on the Win98 machines :-)
73, Dick WC1M
> -----Original Message-----
> From: writelog-admin@contesting.com
> [mailto:writelog-admin@contesting.com]On Behalf Of PY5EG
> Sent: Saturday, November 02, 2002 5:55 PM
> To: 'GW4BLE'; writelog@contesting.com
> Subject: RES: [WriteLog] AUTOSAVE - SERIOUS PROBLEM FOR SERIOUS
> CONTESTERS!
>
>
> Hi Steve:
>
> We had the same problem during our M/2 ZW5B operation.
> Interesting:
> When we made the reboot return to a better speed.
>
> 73
>
> Oms PY5EG
>
> -----Mensagem original-----
> De: GW4BLE [mailto:GW4BLE@btinternet.com]
> Enviada em: sábado, 02 novembro, 2002 14:37
> Para: writelog@contesting.com
> Assunto: [WriteLog] AUTOSAVE - SERIOUS PROBLEM FOR SERIOUS CONTESTERS!
>
>
> Hello All,
>
> Clive Whelan GW3NJW wrote :
>
> Hi
>
> Two separate users, one of whom is me, using two versions viz
> 10.36G and 10.35x have failed to disable autosave by the
> prescribed method.
>
> Surely there is a problem. Wayne?
>
> Yes indeed, as a serious competitor in last weekends' CQWW SSB Contest it
> became a *real* annoyance in the later hours of the contest!
> With over 3500
> contacts in the log the Autosave booting in had the potential to
> s-l-o-w the
> logging rate.
>
> Could some attention be paid to this fault please. I am
> certainly surprised
> that few others have mentioned it. Could it be that the WL users
> don't make
> that many QSOs to notice? Prove me wrong someone, please!
>
> Steve
>
> GW4BLE
>
> Contest Cambria - GW7X (http://www.gw7x.org)
>
>
> 01442 297738
> 07710 055612
>
>
>
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