TrackIt 1.1 (interim release) (c) '95 by Dietmar Bos (CIS:70007,5261) --------------------------------------------------------------------- This release is interim, because it is still missing the GDI,Heap and User thunk due to lack of an SDK in Sync with my current build of W95. If I have the required handy, there will be a new release with this feature too (meaning, staying as a 32bit application, but having the Resource info). Anyway, there are too many changes between rel. 1.0 and so many bugfixes,that I thought it might be useful, to have this release out. In case you find any bugs, please keep me posted. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the second public release with the following changes: popup-window display. You can choose now between popup window for display, or an ordinary window. The popup requires less space on the desktop and it also looks nicer, but, the drawback is, that you only can end the program now in the Settings dialog.The advantage of the usual window is, that you can put Trackit in Iconized mode. In W95 it will then show the memory utilization in the taskbar. In Popup mode, you can change the size with the border around the popup frame. To move the window, klick on the client area, hold button and drag the window to the new location. Remember: To enter setup-mode still requires to press the right mouse button while the cursor is over the TrackIt client area. This is both true for popup display and ordinary window display. some Notes: I got some responses from Trackit 1.0 and I think, it is necessary to comment on some issues, one might not be feeling completely comfortable with. First of all, you can asume that the values displayed are correct. The reason for this statement is, that users of TrackIt runing both W95 and NT did notice the drastically different numbers. For instance a memory utilization of 30-50% under W95 is usual. With NT you will get 0% pretty often. That is due to the different memory managers. NT counts _all_, even virtual space, to its memory resources. Now calculating down the required mem combined with the 'free' mem just gives '0', I can't help it . Another topic was the number of CPU cycles TrackIt consumes. This is depending on different factors. The most important one: 'Task slice' is consuming most of the time (but under my impression even this is acceptable). If you think, your machine suffers from missing CPU cycles, turn 'task slice' of. If still the condition is not as good as it should be, turn on 'use timer'(this is done automatically, if you switch of 'task slice'). This is the best you can get. Change 'timer delay' then to a value around 3000-4000. Now it should be pretty save. Note, that if you select some remote drives or worst of all, some floppy drives to monitor, then you have a problem. Since this is the slowest possible access (this does apply to network drives, Peer2peer, parallel connected cables too, it is just a bit faster than floppy drives.) Trackit will wait for the messages from the system, 'til the system is done, no way to avoid it. So, you should switch on such drives on occasion only, not permanent. Personally I would not keep too much attention to time consumption of TrackIt. As you might have noticed, I tried to keep the program as small and tight as possible. For instance, that you have to resize the borders in single windows mode on your own is not, that I was to lazy to automatically change the dimensions , it is just, that I wanted to spare me (you!) even this code. (Note, that you can even use _all_ the fonts, your system suplies, not only fixed pitched fonts, like most resource trackers use. It is much easier to calculate occupied space for fixed pitched fonts only, but I did not want to limit that.) The system monitor of W95 reports me on a P90: 4% CPU usage with 'task slice' on, 3% with 'use timer' on. ..and finally: English is not my native language, as you might have found out on your own now . Forgive me bad vocabulary. I hope the text is redundant enough to make out the meaning . If you have questions left, conntact me on CIS:70007,5261 - the original documentation with the program description follows- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TrackIt 1.0 (c) '95 by Dietmar Bos (CIS:70007,5261) --------------------------------------------------------------------- First of all the good news. This software is Freeware, you don't have to pay anything for it! --------------------------------------------------------------------- The program itself is a little resource monitor, that runs both under Windows NT and Windows 95 (it was written completely under W95. Execution tests for NT were done with the release 3.5) The main intention was to create a small program, that uses little space on the desktop, uses little system resources and finally is very easy to use. To use the program, copy it to your favourite location on your harddisk and run it from the program-manager, explorer or whatever program you like as a function starter. It is very convenient to place it in your autostart-group, what spares you the process of restarting it by hand all the time. The first time you start the program, you best place the mouse over it's window and press the right mouse button. Choose whatever information you like to get displayed by using the checkboxes in the dialog. Press ok when done. Then you should resize and reposition the window to your favourite place on the desktop. Note: All settings and position information is saved automatically, so you only have to do all this once. --------------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT!: I am not responsible for any damage in any form that might happen due to the use of this program! (not, that I expect this to happen...this is just in case!) Even if this software is freeware, the permission to copy it and/or spread it to second persons or to a BBS is allowed only, if both the program itself and this text file are copied together. No changes in any form, to this document or the program, are allowed. So, finally, what you should get is: TRACKIT.EXE TRACKIT.TXT --------------------------------------------------------------------- What follows now, is a description of the available options in the setup dialog and some useful hints and notes. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The OK button: confirm all settings in the dialog and continue with the program. (Remember, click-right to get into the dialog) The FONT button: Select a font of your choice. All attributes are supported. I would recommend to use a fixed-pitched font for a cleaner look. THE SYSINFO BOX: ---------------- memory usage in %: If this is checked, you will be displayed the current memory utilisation of the system. The information is so important (I think), that it is not displayed in the window. Instead it goes to the windows caption. This has the advantage, that under Windows95 you can see the memory usage in the taskbar, even if the program is minimized. total physical mem: Displays the total amount of available physical memory. Interestingly enough, the values differ under W95 and NT. I got 29MB under W95, 32MB under NT. avail.physical mem: displays the current available physical memory. Since this amount is seldom more than 5MB, the information is always displayed in KB. All other memory info is displayed in MB and will change to KB, if the value drops to less than 1024. total pages: The total number of memory pages. avail. pages: The number of available pages total virtual mem: The total number of virtual memory. avail. virtual mem: The amount of available MB in swapspace. pagesize: The size of a memorypage. min.appl.address: The lowest possible startaddress for an application. max.appl.address: The highest possible endadress for an application. processor type: displays the typename of the processor. Interestingly enough, it always reports wrong on my machine. The reason is, the defines are different from the real results of the involved SDK function call. Since I do not know, if this is a mistake in the function itself, or a mistake in the (MS) headerfile, I could not do anything about it. Once the final version of W95 is out, I will supply an update to TrackIt1.1 which fixes this then. SystemDate: shows the current local date. Dateformat differences is taken care of. The DRIVES box: --------------- There is nothing much to say here. Choose the drives you wish to get displayed. A and B are always displayed in KB, all the others in MB. This will change to KB also, if the free space drops to less than 1024KB. NOTE: The availability of the checked drive is not checked. If you choose a not valid drive, the main window will display a 'not available'. The MISC box: ------------- always top: If checked, the TrackIt window will reside on top of the desktop all the time. calc. task slice: This is sort of tricky. What is displayed here, is _not_ the current CPU utilisation. Measured here is the the speed of overall message throughput. I think, this value gives a fairly good idea of what 'is currently going on' in your system regarding time consumption. The higher the value, the better. To give you a better idea: Try to copy a big file to drive A: and see, how drastically the value drops. This is due to some DMA access to that drive, which requires most attention of the system. At that point, all running applications cannot receive as much msgs as they could do in idle state. That's why the value drops. Experiment with some applications, especially time consuming ones, and you will see, that the value presented is unfortunately 'pretty possible'. Average values in idlestate, I could check on my own are: P90: 80-92 P60: 61 NOTE: calc. task slice does ONLY work, if 'use timer' is disabled. use timer: Installs a timer for triggering some actions (like repainting) after the sample delay has passed. Usually such an application would always use a timer to trigger acurate measurement of the sample delay. Since the program does not rely on such critical timing, I have embedded the option to disable the timer usage. There could be two advantages if you disable this option. First, timers are _very_ limited and if you run some more applications, you might fall into a situation, where an application does not start anymore due to a 'can not allocate timer' error. Disableing the timer in TrackIt would free a timer, that then can be used by another application. The second advantage is, 'calc. time slice' works ONLY, if 'use timer' is disabled, so once you want this calculation, you need to disable the timer anyway. smp.delay: The sample delay is the time in milliseconds that has to pass, before an information collection and the repaint of the new information is triggered. The larger this value, the fewer system time is wasted. But if the value is to large, the information might get 'out of date' when it is next displayed. A value between 1000-5000 is good enough for every day usage. A value below 100, or an incorrect value (e.g: mixed with characters) will be set to 100 automatically. HAVE FUN!