solution comes from reader Darwin Boyle, who dug through the Windows 95 Resources Kit to find things that Microsoft's technical experts didn't seem to know when I asked for help.
Boyle suggests that I go into Network from the Control Panel, select File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks, and hit Properties. Change the setting for LM Announce to No and set Browse Master to Disabled. This does help. It seems that on a Microsoft peer-to-peer network, the computer designated as the Browse Master periodically goes out to see what new machines have been added. This speeds up browsing, but it also brings the machine to its knees while it's doing it. With a fast-enough machine you may not see the hesitation, but with a Pentium 60 or slower it's noticeable.
Alas, while that fixed some of the problem, it didn't get it all. I still have short hesitations, perhaps not as bad or as often as before, but real enough. Kay Nelson
suggests that periodically Win 95 likes to talk to the disk. While doing so, it hangs up the system; and there's nothing you can do about it. The problem with that explanation is that Pentafluge uses a Distributed Processing Technology caching controller with 16 MB of cache memory, so talking to the disk is or should be as fast as talking to memory.
I may never know why I get these hesitations because I'm about to change machines. Pentafluge is "only" a Pentium 60. That was state of the art when we built him, but it's way behind the curve now, even with the caching controller speeding up disk access. The machine is solid enough that I can attach a big SCSI string to it: the Pioneer DE-SH7101 read/write external optical drive in addition to the Maxoptix T3-1300 optical drive already built in, a Pioneer DRM-624X six-pack CD-ROM changer, and a good digital audiotape (DAT) drive.
The CD-ROMs I use most, especially Microsoft Bookshelf, the Oxford English Dictionary, and Grolier's Encyclopedia, reside
on the DRM-624X. This is a triple-speed unit, which is a bit slow for multimedia, but it's good enough for text retrieval across an Ethernet. The only problem with the DRM-624X drive is that each CD-ROM has to be mapped as a separate drive letter.
What I really need is a system that sees the six-pack as one drive and then hunts until it finds the CD-ROM that I'm trying to access. I seem to remember that early Bureau of Electronic Publishing programs would seek through a series of drives, but that was long ago. Anyway, the notion is that Pentafluge will become a resource and backup server and go off to the cable room.
My new main machine will be Cyrus, a Cyrix 6x86-P166. Cyrus isn't quite the fastest machine in the house; that honor still belongs to the Intergraph TDZ-400, a dual Pentium Pro 150, which does graphics so fast it scares me. However, Cyrus is the fastest "ordinary" system I have.
It comes in a neat little tabletop tower that can sit right next to the monitor. There's a Matrox M
GA Millennium video board--I currently recommend Matrox as the preferred video board--a Sound Blaster AWE32 card with a Cambridge Soundworks multimedia speaker system, 32 MB of memory, and a six-speed EIDE CD-ROM drive running off an Adaptec Ultra SCSI board. Cyrus came with a 17-inch CTX monitor, which is quite good. It has a steady image with no flicker and good color, but I'll replace it with my wonderful 21-inch ViewSonic Professional Series PT810. I'll also bring over my Northgate OmniKey keyboard.
We've been testing the Cyrix machine for just about a month now, and we've found two glitches. The first turns out to be endemic to all fast systems. We noticed that if they were left to themselves for a few hours, the machines would lock up. This happened to RacingCow, the Gateway 2000 P5-133XL, and then later to the Cyrix machine. Neither machine had the problem when we got it. The log showed that the problems developed just after we installed Windows 95 Plus. Great heavens, Holmes, a clue!
When
you install Windows 95 Plus, the default is to install System Agent, a utility that waits for the system to be idle and then goes out and checks your hard disk and does other system cleanup things. If that's installed in a system with a "green-machine" CPU manager (not a screen saver, but a BIOS-level power manager) that puts your system to sleep after a set period of time, then sooner or later, System Agent and the "sleep" utility are going to collide. When they do, they'll lock up your system. It can happen during long installations or file transfers.
By coincidence, I had dinner tonight with a Corel team demonstrating the new Corel intranet videoconferencing system (excellent!), and they sometimes have mysterious problems with the IBM ThinkPads they carry for the networking demonstration. I noticed they had System Agent running during the demonstration.
A partial solution is to disable System Agent. This is no great loss, because System Agent does nothing that Norton System Doctor doesn't do be
tter. I strongly recommend that if you're running Win 95, you install and run System Doctor. Unfortunately, while that will stop lockups when the system is simply sitting idle, it will not prevent the stupid power manager from putting your machine to sleep during long network file transfers or downloads.
Eventually, both System Agent and BIOS-level power managers will be written by people who use computers instead of theoreticians, and they'll check for file transfer and communications activities as well as keystrokes; but for now, you're safer turning both those silly things off and using a screen saver.
Alas, Norton System Doctor is the other incompatibility I've found with Cyrus. There were two problems, both related to the great speed of the Cyrix 6x86-P166. One was amusing. When you shut the system down, the "IT IS NOW SAFE TO TURN YOUR COMPUTER OFF" message appears 2 seconds before Norton System Doctor is finished writing its backup information to disk. The result is that when you bring the
system up the next time, it goes into safe mode. Shutting down from that lets the system come up naturally. The remedy is to count to five after the message appears.
The other problem--that the machine could lock up during a long, unattended download--is more serious and has no remedy other than not to run System Doctor. However, when I reported these problems, both Symantec and Cyrix were concerned enough that Cyrix shipped Symantec a system by Federal Express, and they got their software gurus on the case. I have no doubt that by the time you read this, you'll be able to run Norton System Doctor with the Cyrix. Stay tuned.
Those were the only glitches I had with Cyrus. Otherwise, it has run everything I have thrown at it, including DOS games running under Win 95. Two DOS games, Whiplash and ChronoMaster, wouldn't run properly on the Gateway 2000 P5-133XL as it was shipped, but they run just fine on the Cyrix right out of the box. For that matter, This Means War, which has managed to crash every
system we've tried it on, runs faster and causes fewer problems on the Cyrix than any other system we tried it on.
I'll leave benchmarks and other systematic tests to BYTE's technical people, who can do it much better than I can. My bottom line is that the Cyrix 6x86-P166 with Win 95 is certainly fast enough for any application I have to run on it. I have enough confidence in its compatibility that next week I'll set it up as the main system here; my only real holdup is furniture, and that's just a minor problem. I'll have more next month, but I think Intel now has a serious competitor.
I'm having real problems getting PCI-bus network cards to work properly.
That's independent of the machines: the problem is that the PCI bus wants to do one kind of Plug and Play management, and Win 95 wants to do another. The result can be sheer hell.
In theory, Win 95 should be able to find and recognize new hardware, assign it an unused interrupt request (IRQ) and addresses, and get ever
ything running properly without intervention. In practice, it's a bit different.
First, many of the newer systems are pretty full. The Gateway 2000 P5-133XL came with a bus mouse, an internal modem, a sound card, and two serial ports. There was precisely one IRQ available for a network card. When we wanted to add a SCSI controller card, we had to disable one of the serial ports. Given we have both modem and bus mouse, that's no particular loss, but it turns out to be a bit tricky.
The first thing we do with a new machine is to get it on the network. I had a new Plug and Play Ultimate PCI-3000 Ethernet card from Applied Creative Technology. The Cyrix is billed as a Plug and Play machine. It seemed a fair test: insert the card and turn the machine on. It locked up to hardware reset. I took out the board, restarted, and tunneled down through Control Panel, System, to Device Manager, where I discovered that since the Cyrix came with a SCSI controller, every IRQ from 0 to 15 was in use by either the sy
stem itself or Win 95.
After the Ultimate PCI-3000 Ethernet card locked up the system, I took it out and inserted an Intel EtherExpress card on the ISA side of the bus. This time, Win 95 noticed the card, which happened to be addressed to IRQ 3. When I let Win 95 install the drivers for the card, it did so, automatically disabling COM2, which had been using IRQ 3, and all was well. Once I was sure the network worked properly with the Cyrix, I tried again to get the Ultimate PCI-3000 Ethernet card to work.
It wouldn't. The problem was that I needed to make the system set that card to IRQ 3--the only available interrupt--and it just didn't want to do it. Even putting the card into another machine and running software to force it to be IRQ 3 did not work, because as soon as it was put back, the PCI bus and Win 95 between them would reset it to something else. This isn't a Cyrix problem, nor is it the fault of the PCI card. We've had this difficulty on every PCI-bus machine that doesn't have several f
ree interrupts.
There is a way to do it. What you must do is get into the Cyrix BIOS (press the Del key as it is booting up) and go into the menu item called Advanced Features; go from there to Integrated Peripherals. Disable COM2, which uses IRQ 3. Do a cold reboot--turn off the system--so that both the PCI management firmware and Win 95 know what you've done. Now you can insert your PCI-bus card, and both the PCI bus and Win 95 will know that IRQ 3 is available. Then, Plug and Play will take over, and things will proceed nicely.
I've just done that. Cyrix has a BIOS revision that frees up another interrupt. I downloaded that from the Cyrix BBS. The instructions said make a bootable floppy disk, which I did through Win 95's My Computer and the help screen; copy the BIOS revisions to the floppy disk; boot up with the floppy disk; and issue the command
Flash ecs.bin
. That took about 2 minutes. While the machine was turned off, I removed the EtherExpress card and turned on the machine. Win
95 reported that the network card wasn't working, which was hardly surprising, and then continued to boot. When it was done, I went into Device Manager and removed the Intel network card driver, turned off the machine, inserted the Ultimate PCI-3000 Ethernet card on the PCI bus, and turned on the machine.
I was expecting the worst, but in fact the system came up, the network set itself up, and everything worked splendidly, all untouched by human hands. When Plug and Play is working properly, it
really
works painlessly. Of course, it doesn't always work properly.
Pournelle's law: when installing hardware, it's important to turn off the system, not just do a warm boot. Alex found this out trying to install a D-Link Ethernet PC Card in a Texas Instruments Extensa laptop. He used the new hardware feature of Win 95, but when the network came up, the CD-ROM drive wouldn't work. The remedy was to go into the Device Manager with fire and sword, deleting all drivers, including the PC Card-to-PCI b
us bridge. Kill 'em all, God will know his own. Then turn off the machine. When it comes back on, it will notice that it has unrecognized hardware and look for drivers. "Aha! I have a CD-ROM drive! Aha! There's an Ethernet card!" Eventually, it will reload its drivers, and this time it will have both a CD-ROM drive and a network. No other procedure seems to work.
The PCI bus was supposed to solve all our compatibility problems, but instead it has created more. It's the same with Plug and Play, and the reason is the same in both cases: there's a lot of legacy hardware out there, and making provision for that to work involves compromises that can cripple modern stuff.
There's no way around the shortage of IRQs with present-generation equipment. SCSI tries, but it's very often one more way to make you crazy. You can reduce the danger of insanity when setting up SCSI strings by using Granite Digital SCSIVue Gold Diagnostic Cables. About half the trick to SCSI is getting the termination right, and 90 p
ercent of what's left is being sure you don't have cable problems. Granite Digital cables always work, and the blinking lights tell you right away if you've got termination and a good connection. If you often do SCSI, get Granite Digital cables.
The real remedy to the interrupt shortage will be the universal serial bus (USB). Unfortunately, this will take more than a new card; it's probably going to have to be built onto the motherboard. Then we'll need peripherals that can use it. When it's done, though, you'll be able to add digital video cameras, scanners, sound dictation systems, game controllers, and all kinds of stuff to your system without having to get inside the box and without going through the IRQ hell.
At least that's the way USB enthusiasts talk, and you can believe as much of it as you want to. I want to believe it all, but I do wonder if I haven't heard this song before.. . .
Game enthusiasts, rejoice!
You don't have to wait for USB to have multiplayer game co
ntrols. Advanced Gravis Computer Technology is shipping The Ultimate Team Sports Set. This is a hub that connects to the game port on your sound card (or your motherboard if you have that kind of machine). Install the software, and you can connect up a joystick and a pair of game controllers. Actually, you can run up to four controllers; I've tested it with only two because that's all I have.
These are the kind of two-hand game controllers all the kids use, with a round button that functions as a joystick for your left thumb, a bunch of buttons for the right, and triggers for both index fingers; they're guaranteed to have a steep learning curve for adults. There are several configurations, all "standard" in the sense that every game fanatic seems to understand them instantly. Once you've learned to use these controllers, you can play two-person games like Mortal Kombat; or you can use just one of them to really control an electronic pinball game.
That's the good news. The bad news is that most gam
es, including the PC version of Mortal Kombat, aren't aware of the multiple joystick hub. Apparently, it wouldn't be hard to recompile two-person games that now use different parts of the keyboard to control the action to make use of this system, but I don't know how many companies will actually do it.
This will become obsolete when we get USB. With USB, you could have half a dozen game controllers connected to the same system. And then someone can write a multiplayer version of Doom.. . .
It isn't often that I get a program so complex that I can't even
list all its features, much less describe them; but Wall Street Analyst 2-CD from Omega Research has managed it. This probably isn't the ultimate in stock-charting and analysis software, but it's not likely that anyone but a mathematician will want anything more; and there's no guarantee that a mathematician can get better results.
There are two approaches to stock-market investments. Brokers have their own terminology, but I
call them "real-world factors" and "trend analysis." Real-world factors include what the company makes, how efficient it is at making and selling it, and factors that influence supply and demand, for example, weather and climate.
Some brokers call the other method "technical factor analysis." It's a system based on predicting the future by analyzing the past, and in its pure form, what the company makes or whether it makes anything at all, is irrelevant. The important things are ratio and trend lines. In the old days before computers became common, this was done by drawing lines on charts of the stock's past history and trying to extrapolate trend lines into the future. There were all kinds of rules of thumb having to do with the technical factors of the market, such as the ratio of railroad stocks to industrials. It all sounded very complicated, but it wasn't, and you could learn most of the technical theory in a week.
Then in World War II, military-operations research people developed all kinds
of mathematical techniques for predicting the future based on a chart of the past. The intention was to develop ways to predict where an airplane would be at the time an antiaircraft shell could get to an interception point, and the problem was sufficiently complex that some of the first high-speed computers were developed to solve the equations in time to do any good. It wasn't too long, though, before market analysts got interested in the same techniques, and thus was born a new era in market analysis.
The new theories also spawned some science fiction clichés, such as the boy with the computer who is able to manipulate the market and end up owning the earth. The author of that story didn't consider what might happen if everyone on Wall Street also had a computer..
That is the situation today, and since many of the technical analysts use the same techniques and often the same analytical software, it's hard to get much of an edge by doing market trend analysis. It's even harder to get an
edge you can act on in time to do you any good; after all, many of your opponents have a direct wire to a floor trader, and they'll get their orders in while you're trying to call your broker.
If, after you've thought about that, you still want to try your hand at technical market analysis, the best bet I know of is to get Wall Street Analyst 2-CD and spend some time with it. Spend enough time, and you'll know quite a lot about the subject. All the analytical tools are in the package, and the instructions, while sometimes tedious, are complete. You'll learn about buy and sell factors, and you can call on the built-in expert systems to check your work. There's other software that will watch for trends and alert you when buy or sell conditions have been met. You'll learn about support and resistance lines, and all the other technical stuff that fascinates Wall Street analysts.
The best part is that you can do all this without risking a cent beyond the cost of the software; meaning you can develop a
system and test it before you jump into the market. There's always the chance your system will work perfectly until the day you invest real money. None of that will be the fault of the software.
Wall Street Analyst 2-CD is the best and easiest-to-use technical market-analysis program I have seen. They have really worked at it. The CD-ROM version gives you the complete stock history of a large number of companies, including Microsoft and Apple. It's fun to superimpose their charts. Then you can add IBM and finish by looking at the trends for a fertilizer company. The result should be instructive. Highly recommended as software.
The
game of the month
is SSI's Fantasy General. This is a tactical-level game with a long story scenario. It's turn-based, so you have plenty of time to decide how to proceed. I found it restful after some of the more frantic real-time war games. It's not quite as addictive as This Means War, but for compensation, there's no random sabotage factor, and while
it will crash when run under Win 95, it doesn't do that often. Each episode of the game takes under an hour, but there are a
lot
of episodes. I haven't finished it yet, but I intend to.
A good companion to
Windows 95 Is Driving Me Crazy
by Kay Nelson is
Optimizing Windows 95
The
book of the month
is
Expiration Date
by Tim Powers (Tor Books). It's a typical Powers story: well-researched details of a world that you'd swear is modern Los Angeles, but it clearly isn't, since in the first chapter the protagonist finds a vial containing the ghost of Thomas Alva Edison. I don't think you'll be bored.
The
CD-ROM of the month
is Critical Mass: America's Race to Build the Atomic Bomb, from Corbis. This is a well-done history of how the atomic bomb was developed. It also includes lessons in the basic science involved. Of necessity, it emphasizes some of the Los Alamos people while ignoring others, but the selections have been done reasonably well.
Corbis is "Bill Gates's other company"; like all Corbis products, this one is slick and easy to use. It has a sophisticated interface. There's one problem: it will not run on a networked CD-ROM drive. The disk has to be in a drive native to the machine running it. That may be a problem for educational institutions.
As usual, you can find more of this column on the BYTE Web site. You might also want to check out
http://www.earthlink.net/discontinuity
, where John C.
Dvorak and I argue critical issues.
Adieu, Pentafluge....Hello, Cyrus
