[TRLog] RE: MS-DOS and TRLog

[Dave_K9NX]

At 09:29 PM 11/14/99 -0800, punkymcd@pacbell.net wrote:
>
>Gil,
>
>Laptop = Compaq Presario 1235 266 mHz with Windows 98.
>
>When in windows DOS mode it tends to be very very sluggish without smartdrv.
>i.e. say in search and pounce I type in a call. Sometimes, even though I've
>typed the entire call, the full call doesn't appear in the callsign field
right
>away. Then when I press enter it takes a moment to start sending the call.
>
>Secondly, who in his right mind would be doing anything else with his
confuser
>when seriously operating a contest ??? HI
>
>73, Don, W6OA

Ah ha !

The "choppiness" very likely has more to do with the way the  WIN98 is set
up (configured) on the Compaq Presario. I suspect that the folks at Compaq
(or some other application) have some additional overhead imposed on you. I
was in fact playing with a "pre-sorry-oh" in the store yesterday comparing
it to some other machines. Try this simple test, click on Windows Explorer
and  then time how long it takes to load fully. On my machine a home built
system with an ASUS P2B mother board with a 300MHz P-II chip, Explorer
loads so quickly that it is done by the time I say the words " one thousand
one" , with the Presarios I looked at yesterday I typically can count up to
 "one thousand four " or "one thousand five" before  Explorer is fully
loaded,  some of these machines had 400+ MHz processors in them to boot
(pun intended). 

Like several other respondents I run TRLog from a "full screen" window
within WIN98. I have no problems with logging speed or choppy CW even
during a "floppy disk write" . I agree you wont find me jumping back and
forth during a serious contest. Not every contest I operate is a serious
effort though,  sometimes I'm  just there to for a hour or so on and off
giving out Q's to the deserving.Under this later condition being able to
jump back to the regular WIN98 apps is a benefit and a lot quicker than
rebooting WIN98 etc. Additionally I do find it useful to be able to get
back and forth quickly when I'm fine tuning my LOGCFG.DAT file for a
particular contest. I can leave the LOGCFG.DAT open in the  text editor
make a change and reload TRLog in less than 20 seconds.

And please everyone my little attempts at humor above is not meant to
malign Compaq only to point out that  there are a lot of things you can do
to setup  WIN98  to tune it for a particular set of applications.  In many
of those cases those tunings are not conducive to running DOS apps in a
window. Unfortunately the folks at "Micro-Squish" in spite of their
propaganda about open architecture have made WIN98 so complex and
incomprehensible that most of us mere mortals will never figure it out, or
by the time you do they have a new release for you to learn. Refusing to be
a victim I've tried to conquer WIN98, even invested several hundred $$$ in
books with alluring titles like "Secrets of Windows 98" to learn how to
"manipulate" the registry (WIN98's answer to autoexec.bat) and some of the
other "control" subroutines to my best advantage. While  I have taken back
some of the turf I'm still daunted. One villain I did discover was a
program called <FINDFAST>. If this is running in the background learn how
to disable it, it does create a lot of overhead particularly with disk
writes. Unfortunately I'm sitting in a hotel room in NH and all my notes on
how to do this are packed in a box sitting in Wisconsin waiting to be
moved. Sorry for the long winded discourse.

Good Luck
Dave
K9NX/1



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