Programmer 7500

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Programmer 7500 / MAX_PROGRAMMERS.iso / PROGRAMS / UTILS / HARDWARE / SPC46.ZIP / SPC.DOC next >

Wrap

Text File | 1990-09-07 | 67.2 KB | 1,478 lines

SPC 4.6 The integrated multidrive equipment utility Copyright 1990 by R. M. Eyer [73230,2620] Sept 7, 1990 Table of Contents ----------------- Topic Page Introduction ............................. 1 Use of documentation ..................... 2 Compatibility ............................ 2 How to run SPC ........................... 3 Use of options ........................... 5 Explanation of the main display .......... 6 Examples ................................. 13 Credits and Warranty ..................... 16 Appendix A: Video ........................ 17 Appendix B: Drive measurement ............ 19 SUBSTed and DUPlicate drives ........ 19 CDROM drives ........................ 20 BOOT drives ......................... 21 LASTDRIVE ........................... 21 Numerical precision and style ....... 21 Appendix C: Print window ................. 23 Appendix D: Speed measurement ............ 26 Brief history of the problem ........ 26 Philosophy of speed measurement ..... 27 Speed graph ......................... 27 Technical basis of SPC indices ...... 27 The coprocessor index ............... 29 EMS ................................. 29 Appendix E: Processing errors ............ 30 - 1 - FUNCTION -------- Reads descriptive information from any IBM compatible computer and displays it in an orderly, balanced, and compact format without menu options, and in a way allowing exchange of computer information via Email. SPC is an "integrated" utility, in the sense that it draws together the functions of conventional multidrive listers, speed testers, equipment report, communications status, and printer status utilities, while providing highly relevant information about your computer which no other such utility offers, such as coprocessor speed, motherboard status information, printer and DOS spooler status, and keyboard, DOS verify, share, network, and EMS handle status, as well as SUBSTed, duplicate link, multitasking, lastdrive status, and type of UART. SPC is designed to provide all such information faster than any other equipment utility and to do so as reliably as possible. The speed tests, both together, require just 1.42 seconds on all machines (the minimum consistent with speed test reliability), and, on a mid-range 386/387/20 machine, all other processing requires only about 0.32 seconds, as can be seen when using SPC in a disk-cached environment. - 2 - USE OF THE DOCUMENTATION FILE ----------------------------- If you have some ideas for improvement of SPC, or criticism of its faults, do not hesitate to inform me. I can be addressed at Compuserve Easyplex via userid [73230,2620], CD Access (PCanada) (416-751-6337) via userid PC1629, or at the Canadian Microcomputer Exchange (416-277-2363). This file has been paginated and it contains extended ASCII characters used for window borders. However, most printers in use today support the extended graphics characters of the ASCII set. So, if you wish to print this document as a manual, you should be sure that the appropriate printer switch is set, so that the extended ASCII graphics characters are not translated by your printer into meaningless capital letters. COMPATIBILITY ------------- SPC requires the minimum DOS 2.0+ and 80x86, 8088, or NEC v20 processor, as well as a minimum 80-column video display. SPC is not designed to work in environments which use equipment or operating systems which do not satisfy these requirements. - 3 - HOW TO RUN SPC -------------- Syntax: SPC [? H V I A F E D S P port] [=identification] [>file] [>PRN] Options (any order, any case, any combination) ---------------------------------------------- ? or H or HELP - Brief help screen [default is no help] V - Use CTTY redirectable video. For use in communications environments, and when using DOS screens which are dimensioned to display more than 80 columns per line. For details see Appendix A. [default is direct video] I - Intensify foreground colour. Has no effect where the V option is used. If foreground is already intensified, SPC will not attempt to intensify further (which would otherwise cause the screen to blink). [default is no intensification] A - Use standard ASCII character set, to accommodate Epson compatible printers. Modern Epson printers can also handle the extended IBM character set by switch setting; so this option will only rarely be needed. [default is to use the extended ASCII character set.] F - Include drives A: and B: in drive report. [default is not to display such drives, as they are usually floppy drives with long access times.] E - Exclude UNDEF drives from totals. For details on drive measurement, see Appendix B. [default is to include drives flagged as UNDEF. Such drives return, by definition, FFFFh for the total number of clusters.] - 4 - D - Force DUPlicate detection instead of SUBSTed detection in drive report and net duplicates out of the totals. For details on this topic, see Appendix B. [Where neither the D nor S option is specified, SPC selects the default detection mode on the basis of whether SPC is run in a standard multiprocessing network environment. If it is, SPC uses DUPlicate detection; if it isn't, SPC uses SUBSTed detection.] S - Force SUBSTed detection instead of DUPlicate detection in drive report and net SUBSTed drives out of the totals. For details on this topic, see Appendix B. [Where neither the D nor S option is specified, SPC selects the default detection mode on the basis of whether SPC is run in a standard multiprocessing network environment. If it is, SPC uses DUPlicate detection; if it isn't, SPC uses SUBSTed detection.] P - Display print window only. Even if no files are spooled to the printer, the P option will cause SPC to provide printer and spooler information. For details on the interpretation of the print window, see Appendix C. [Default is to display the print window below the drive totals, only where files are spooled to the printer. In default mode, SPC does not display any printer or multiplexer status information if no file is spooled to the printer.] = - Identification string. SPC puts your identification string on the right half of Line 1 of the display, overriding the author credit, if you use '=' followed by your selected identification information. SPC looks for the occurrence of the equals sign on the commandline and interprets everything following it (up to but not including redirection and piping symbols) as an identification string rather than as an option. This option should be used after specifying other processing options, if any. If you try putting other commandline options after an identification string, SPC will merely add them to the string, without testing them for their intended effect. The maximum length of an identification string is 31 characters. [default is to display author credit] - 5 - > - Redirect SPC output to the printer or to a disk file, in the usual DOS manner. Direct video is 'convertible' - that is, if SPC detects that the user wishes to redirect output, the program will convert to redirectable mode, even if the V option is not used. However, converted redirectable mode is not equivalent to CTTY-redirectable mode: See Appendix A for details. Separate Displays ----------------- Although there is just one main display, SPC supports two other snapshot displays: The Print Window, and the Help screen. Use of SPC options ------------------ SPC is designed so that all the information the end-user might want to know (except information about drives A: and B:) should be displayed just by issuing the SPC command with no options specified (known hereafter as using SPC in 'default' mode). The defaults (no help, direct video, no intensification, extended ASCII display, no "floppies," include UNDEF drives, default detection mode, display print queue if one exists, author credit, and no redirect) were chosen so as to suit the largest number of users who may wish not to bother with command line options. SPC options are provided largely to supply fine-tuning in SPC applications as well as solutions to specialised problems which few users will have. For example, only network operators who are not using the network types which SPC can detect will find it necessary to use the D option. Only occasionally will a user wish to examine the print spool many times in quick succession, for which purpose the P option would be used. To get help on the use of SPC options, just enter SPC H - 6 - EXPLANATION OF THE MAIN DISPLAY ------------------------------- Much of what an SPC display means is fairly self-explanatory. However, it is useful here to identify systematically all the parts of the main display, so as to avoid confusion. The following is a hypothetical display, showing all equipment connected, a scenario in which SPC is run remote via communications in a shell to a node connected to a small netbios LAN. The node in question has VGA, a 3 button MS compatible mouse, and so on. (Command: SPC V =LAN REMOTE) ┌ Monday 09-03-1990 20:47:11 ────────────────────────────── SPC 4.6 ┐ │ DOS 3.20 VGA Color 1 PAR 3 MB ID: LAN REMOTE │ │ FC (01/15/88) ISA - K R 8259 - E-CNS 1 SER/1: 16450 MR TR RS CD │ │ 80386 36.7: X....1.......2.........3.*.....4........ 80387 467 │ │ VER SHARE PC LAN RAM: 655/204 - EMS 4.0: 1524/934 1 │ │ Drv────Status───Sector──Cluster──────Free───Allocated───Total───Drv │ │ C: BOOT 512 2048 3.119 23.515 26.634 C: │ │ D: 512 2048 9.329 17.313 26.642 D: │ │ E: 512 2048 15.020 11.622 26.642 E: │ │ ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │ │ Z: Totals less DUPlicate drives: 27.468 52.450 79.918 Z: │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Let's take this apart line by line. Line 1 (DOS, peripherals, and ID string) ----------------------------------------- This line, with the exception of the DOS version, is devoted to peripheral equipment, listing in order the DOS version, type of adaptor, color/mono, number of PARallel ports, number of MS-compatible Mouse Buttons, and the optional identification string. Items needing comment: - The adaptor/video mode supports VGA, EGA, CGA, and HERCules, and SPC will supply the Interrupt 10h return code where the adaptor doesn't fall into one of these four categories. - SPC substitutes a '-' character if 0 is returned for parallel ports or MS Mouse buttons. Zero MS Mouse buttons means that a Microsoft compatible mouse is not connected; it does not mean that a non-Microsoft mouse is not connected. - The identification string should be 31 characters at most. - 7 - Line 2 (ROM bios information, keyboard, and communications) ----------------------------------------------------------- Again, the dash ("-") is used to indicate logic low, zero, or that the feature is not installed. FC (01/15/88) ISA - K R 8259 - E-CNS 1 SER/1: 16450 MR TR RS CD ─────────────────────────────── ───── ─────────────────────────── BIOS motherboard information Keybd Communications In order, within each category, the information is as follows: BIOS info - --------- Model number (e.g. FC) BIOS release date (e.g. 01/15/88) Bus type (MCA or ISA) Wait for external event installed (E or -) Keyboard intercept used (K or -) Real time clock installed (R or -) Second 8259 installed (8259 or -) HD BIOS uses DMA channel 3 (3 or -) Keyboard info - ------------- Enhanced keyboard (E or -) Insert mode (I or -) Caps lock set (C or -) Num lock set (N or -) Scroll lock set (S or -) Communications info - ------------------- Number of serial ports (1 SER, 2 SER, - SER, etc) Port selected on command line (1 or 2) default is 1. UART on port card (8250, 16450, 16550, 16550A, or -) Modem Response (MR or -) Data terminal ready (TR or -) Request to send (RS or -) Carrier detect (CD or -) Items needing comment: - The model number specifies a species in the genus "IBM compatible computer" which in fact identifies the main type of basic input/output system (bios) used in the machine. For example, IBM's main list goes as follows: FF - IBM PC FE - IBM PC-XT FD - IBM PCjr FC - IBM PC-AT FB - IBM PC-XT(rev 1) FA - IBM PS/2 Model 30 F9 - IBM PC Convertible F8 - IBM PS/2 Model 80 - 8 - Over the years, this terminology has tended to be adopted by IBM's competition: For example, very nearly all 286, 386, and 486 class machines usually carry IBM's model number FC. However, some 286 XT's use FB as the model number. Most 8088-class machines carry the model numbers FF or FE. However, many of the 8088 class machines sold during the early 80's had BIOS's with model numbers in a large spread ranging from 00 all the way up to IBM's standard identifications. - MCA means microchannel (for PS/2 models) while ISA refers to the standard IBM compatible architecture. The keyboard intercept refers to scancode interpretation automatically performed by the BIOS, if supported. Real time clock (R) means the real time clock is on the motherboard, not on a multi-i/o card. Advanced motherboard architectures use a second programmable interrupt controller (8259) to achieve 16 interrupt levels for smoother processing. And some BIOS types use DMA channel 3 for hard disk i/o. BIOS fields following the bus type (MCA or ISA) are replaced by blanks for BIOS versions which do not support extended information recovery. - All SPC readouts on this line use the '-' character to represent zero or logic low. For example, if the old standard 84 key keyboard is detected, the enhanced keyboard flag will appear as '-'. Similarly for Caps Lock, Num Lock, and so on. The default communications port for SPC is 1, but this value can be overridden by specifying 2 on the commandline. Use of any other number but 2 causes SPC to select 1 as the port. - 9 - - The keyboard Insert mode (I or - in the Keyboard field) is generally meaningful only when SPC is run through the shell of an editor or wordprocessor. DOS commands issued directly from the keyboard should automatically reset the insert mode. - If a machine shows 2 communications ports, one of them (port 2) may be associated with an internal modem. - If the hardware exists for the given communications port, SPC will report the type of UART on the card, otherwise a dash will appear, indicating no hardware support for that port. - The modem response (MR) indicator is based on the DSR flag, and indicates whether a modem is connected and turned on. Turning off the modem or disconnecting it should result in a dash indicator in the modem response field. The modem response flag should also provide an elementary test of whether your modem is working. If the modem is turned on and is electrically connected to the port card, but has a bad chip or the cable is defective, the modem response field will probably report a dash. Line 3 (The processor line) --------------------------- Line 3 presents 5 pieces of information, left to right: The processor type, the Norton-based speed index for this processor, the graph of the processor speed index, the coprocessor, and the Norton-based speed index for the coprocessor. The speed graph is a 40-point one-line logarithmic scale which enables SPC to display the position of a specific computer's processor within the spectrum of processors actively in use today. (80386 36.7: X....1.......2.........3.*.....4........ No NCP) 80386 36.7: X....1.......2.........3.*.....4........ 80387 467 Benchmark Processor ----------- ------------------------- X 1.0 8088, 4.77 MHz, (IBM XT) 1 2.0 80186, 4.77 MHz 2 7.0 80286, 6 MHz 3 29.0 80386, 16 MHz 4 94.0 80486, 16 MHz [486 criterion] * 36.7 This machine (386/20) The relation which SPC uses to map the CPU speed index to a specific point in this 40-point scale is: Point # = 1 + 6.838 * LN (index) - 10 - 1 corresponds to the CPU index value of 1, while Point 40 corresponds to the value of 300 for the index. For details on speed measurement and presentation see Appendix D. If your machine does not have a coprocessor, SPC will replace the fields at the right end of the processor line with the message "No NCP", as the example in parenthesis above indicates.) Line 4 (Verify/Network/Memory Line) ----------------------------------- The fourth line is devoted to memory - what critical software is loaded, how much standard memory, how much extended, and so on. (VER SHARE PC LAN RAM: 655/204 - No Expanded Memory) VER SHARE PC LAN RAM: 655/204 - EMS 4.0: 1524/934 1 ─── ──────────── ──────────── ────── ──────────────────────── C Net/MTask RAM EXT Expanded memory C info - ------ The C field indicates whether DOS VERify is set. File copying will be faster, though somewhat less safe, if Verify is not set. Net/MT info - ----------- SHARE status (SHARE or -) Network/multitasking status (type active or -) RAM info - -------- Total RAM available (in 1000s) Free RAM available EXT info - -------- Total Extended memory available (in 1000s) Expanded memory info - -------------------- EMS version number Total EMS memory (in 1000s) Free EMS memory Number of EMS handles in use - 11 - Items needing comment: - If the computer has no EMS available, SPC will use the message 'No Expanded Memory' instead of listing a series of null fields, as seen in the example in parenthesis above. - Unlike other equipment programs, SPC displays numerical information in decimal format, rather than mixed decimal/binary. - The specific information in Line 4 above implies that the computer in question has about 2 megs of memory, all of the extended of which is converted by driver to EMS. - A typical number of available EMS handles is about 64. SPC reports only the number actually used. The information given here is not normally part of equipment displays, but may be useful in debugging certain kinds of EMS applications which have shelling capabilities. - Three network types are supported - PC LAN, MS/LANtastic/3Com, and Novell Netware; as well, SPC supports identification of two multitaskers - Desqview and DoubleDos. there a network is present, the network id overrides any multitasking indicator. (However, the presence of a network does not override multitasking detection and SPC's action of pausing task switching during certain critical operations.) The purpose of detecting networks is chiefly to enable SPC to select the proper detection default for drive measurement. See the discussion of the Totals Line below and Appendix B for further details. The main purpose of detecting multitasking status is to enable SPC to pause task-switching during sections of SPC's code which are known to cause interference with operations occurring concurrently in other multiplexed windows. These pauses last no more than a few milliseconds, and so should not be noticed in those other windows. Line 6+ (drive report) ---------------------- Drv────Status───Sector──Cluster──────Free───Allocated───Total───Drv C: BOOT 512 2048 3.119 23.515 26.634 C: Here, hardly any explanation is necessary, since each column of data is identified by header. However, the sector and cluster sizes appear in bytes, whereas the Free, Allocated, and Total numbers appear in megabytes. SPC supports the display of very large sector and cluster sizes, as well as very large drives. - 12 - The Status column indicates the special role a particular drive may play in the overall system. SPC supports BOOT, DUP, SUBST, CSPEC, and UNDEF specifiers. For DOS 4.0+, BOOT indicates from which drive the machine was originally booted, while CSPEC indicates on which drive DOS looks for COMMAND.COM. Where these drives are the same, the BOOT indicator overrides the CSPEC indicator. For earlier versions of DOS, SPC does not distinguish the boot and comspecked drives, but merely labels the drive on which DOS looks for COMMAND.COM as the BOOT drive. DUP means that the given drive has the same total and free space as some other drive listed earlier in the alphabetic sequence (such as a duplicate link in a network), and so is not counted in the grand totals. DUP is not assigned where the drive is reported as UNDEF. SUBST means that DOS sees the given drive as SUBSTed from a directory of another drive, and the numbers associated with the SUBSTed drive are not accumulated in the grand totals. UNDEF means that the number of clusters on the given drive equals 65,535 (FFFFh), indicating that DOS cannot define the number of clusters. Previously, some versions of SPC used a "CDROM" assumption to handle cases of this sort, due to the fact that CDROM drives typically return FFFFh for the total number of clusters (in fact CDROM disks may have a much smaller or much larger number of clusters). SPC 4.6, however, merely reports the statistics which DOS returns for such drives, while providing a warning to the user in the form of the UNDEF flag that the total and free space numbers may not be reliable. The E commandline option excludes UNDEF statistics from the grand totals at the bottom of the SPC display, otherwise these statistics are included. See Appendix B for further details about drive measurement. Last Line (Lastdrive, Totals Line) ---------------------------------- Z: Totals less DUPlicate drives: 27.468 52.450 79.918 Z: The drive listed at the beginning and end of the line is the value of LASTDRIVE specified in CONFIG.SYS (or which DOS uses as a default). See Appendix B for further details about LASTDRIVE. The title of the line shows which kind of detection is in force during an SPC run. If DUPlicate detection is active, the title will read "Totals less DUPlicate drives"; if SUBSTed detection is active, the title will read "Totals less SUBSTed drives". These two modes are mutually exclusive. - 13 - SPC in default mode uses the following set of conditions to activate duplicate mode as the detection default: (1) SPC detects DOS 4+ and a supported network. (2) SPC detects DOS 3+, and either the SHARE condition (for IBM LAN or TAPESTRY-like networks) or a supported network. If neither of these conditions is met (as would typically be the case in standalone environments), SPC defaults to SUBSTed detection. Specifically, even though DOS 4+ requires SHARE, SPC will default to SUBSTed detection, unless it detects a network. However, for DOS levels below 4.0, SPC uses the SHARE condition as indicating the presence of an IBM LAN type network. The user may override SPC's internal defaulting activity by specifying what mode to use on the commandline. S means SUBSTed detection; D means DUPlicate detection. See Appendix B for further details on drive measurement. EXAMPLES -------- Example 1: SPC HELP --------- will provide brief help screen on the use of SPC. Example 2: SPC ? --------- will provide help using direct video. Note1: Any occurrence of the H or ? characters will cause SPC to display the help screen, regardless in what order these characters appear on the commandline, or in conjunction with what other characters they are used concurrently. Note2: If the default mode is used to obtain SPC displays, and you print these displays to a printer which does not have support for the extended ASCII character set, the nice clean ASCII graphics borders will be replaced with letters of the alphabet by the printer. For the solution of this problem see the next example: - 14 - Example 3: SPC AH [for direct printer feed use: SPC AHV >PRN] --------- will provide help using the standard ASCII character set to accommodate printers which cannot use the extended IBM character set (which includes ASCII graphics). The A option does not affect SPC's video mode. You do not, however, need to use the A option, if you have a printer that supports the extended ASCII character set (the more modern Epson printers have a switch which provides this feature), or if you use MPMPrint (a memory resident utility by MPM Enterprises, which provides even better support for the extended IBM character set than does the IBM ProPrinter). Like all SPC options except the help options, the A option can be used with any SPC function. Example 4: SPC FV --------- using CTTY-redirectable video, will list all drives including floppy drives, identifying drives defined by DOS as SUBSTed, and will net the SUBSTed drives out of the totals. If any drive has more than the DOS limit on the number clusters (65,534), SPC will indicate such drives as UNDEF and count them in the totals. If the DOS print multiplexer is properly loaded and there are files spooled to the printer, these will be displayed below the totals line. Example 5: SPC FE ---------- using direct video (using YOUR colour scheme), will list all drives, identify and net out the SUBSTed drives, and will exclude UNDEF drives from the grand totals. If PRINT is loaded and files are in the spool they will be displayed. Example 6: SPC P --------- will present the DOS print spool status alone, without the main SPC equipment display. Example 7: SPC V2 --------- will use CTTY-redirectable video (or COMMAND.COM redirectable, or redirectable via GATEWAY, or DOORWAY, etc), listing all drives using duplicate detection rather than SUBSTed detection, and will present the communications status for port 2. This is the sort of option mix that might be chosen by a Novell, 3Com, or Tapestry Sysop who wishes to call his system remotely, drop to DOS, and inspect a node which is currently using #2 communications port. If there is trouble about erroneous SUBSTed flags, use the D option, as follows: - 15 - SPC VD2 If the UNDEF drives are not desired in totals, use the E option: SPC VED2 Another SPC run, using the F option [SPC FV >diskfile] ------------------------------------------------------ Let's now take a look at the same computer's SPC display using a standalone scenario: A RAMdisk and two SUBSTed drives are created, and we have two floppy drives, the B: drive of which is 3.5" 720K. At this time, there is no disk in drive B:, while there is an unformatted disk in drive A:. Running the command above, we obtain the following display: ┌ Monday 09-03-1990 11:44:00 ────────────────────────────── SPC 4.6 ┐ │ DOS 3.20 VGA Color 1 PAR - MB by Bob Eyer 1990 │ │ FC (01/15/88) ISA - K R 8259 - ----- 1 SER/1: 16450 MR - - - │ │ 80386 36.7: X....1.......2.........3.*.....4........ 80387 473 │ │ VER - - RAM: 655/589 - No Expanded Memory │ │ Drv────Status───Sector──Cluster──────Free───Allocated───Total───Drv │ │ A: Unformatted disk A: │ │ B: Drive door not closed B: │ │ C: BOOT 512 2048 3.115 23.519 26.634 C: │ │ D: 512 2048 8.567 18.075 26.642 D: │ │ E: 512 2048 14.883 11.759 26.642 E: │ │ F: 512 512 1.044 - 1.044 F: │ │ G: SUBST 512 512 1.044 - 1.044 G: │ │ P: SUBST 512 2048 14.883 11.759 26.642 P: │ │ ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │ │ Z: Totals less SUBSTed drives: 27.609 53.353 80.962 Z: │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ In this test, the old standard 84-key keyboard was used, and so there is no E display in the keyboard field. Capslock, Numlock, and Scroll-lock are all off, DOS Verify is ON (VER), and we chose to define the ramdisk (F:) out of XMS memory rather than EMS. As a result, the use of the ramdisk does not reduce coprocessor speed, and does not grab memory from conventional RAM. (Use of EMS reduces coprocessor speed by about one-third; see Appendix D for further information about this effect.) Since the modem is still connected to #1 communications port, we see that the Modem Response flag is on, although the DTR, RTS and Carrier detect lines are all at logic low. In the drive report we see the action of the F option. SPC correctly observes that A: drive contains an unformatted disk and that there is no disk in B: (drive door not closed). See Appendix E for a complete discussion of SPC errors. - 16 - Obviously, the ramdisk is drive F:, with a cluster size of 512 bytes. Since no files are currently allocated on that drive, SPC reports a dash in the apparent UNITS place for allocated space. Before we ran SPC this time, we created two SUBSTed drives, one (G:) off of the root of F:, the other (P:) off of the root of E: Examination of the listing shows the two SUBSTed drives, and a calculator check reveals that these drives are not included in the totals. All the totals are exactly correct, despite rounding and hidden digits. The LASTRDIVE in CONFIG.SYS is read as Z:, and all drives detected are defined by DOS (no CDROM specifiers). For LASTDRIVE details, see Appendix B. CREDITS ------- I wish to give special thanks to Paul Tucker for providing the hint that led to the solution of the SUBSTed detection problem. Thanks to Paul also for providing much testing and debugging assistance as well as certain programming ideas which are used by SPC in the network detection area. Thanks also to Jud Newell and Ian Singer, who tested some versions for compatibility problems in very large Novell networks. Thanks to Lee Perryman who pointed out the problem with running SPC 4.2 on PS/2 Model 70's, and to Rob Campbell who did most of the DoubleDos multitasking experiments. Also I wish to thank Greg Andrews at Compuserve IBMCOM for conveying to me the correct procedure for detecting UART types. And I must also express my gratitude for the fine work done by Hal White in critically reviewing SPC's documentation, and to Ralf Brown, without whose interrupt documentation this program would not have been impossible. WARRANTY -------- The author of SPC hereby disclaims all warranties relating to this software, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The author will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data or any other reason, even if the author has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall the author's liability for any damages ever exceed the Shareware contribution for this software, regardless of the form of the claim. The person using the software bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software. - 17 - APPENDIX A: VIDEO ----------------- Commands: SPC ... SPC I... On Line 1 of SPC's main display, video adaptor and color mode information is presented. Despite the fact that these indicators are bracketted by multitasking switches, there is still the risk that they will not reliably return the correct information when run under DoubleDos. In other environments, there does not appear to be any problem with these indicators. DoubleDos is known not to use the same screen address for its two windows, and this may have something to do with the lack of stability of adaptor readouts during DDOS operations. SPC provides two ways of sending data to the screen: CTTY-redirectable display and direct video display. Direct video display is the default mode. If your screen has more than 80 columns (e.g VGA Wonder card using resolution 132 x 44), then SPC should not be run in direct video mode. Use of direct video on high-resolution text screens having more than 25 lines results in garbled video displays. When using high resolution DOS text, the V option should be employed. In direct video mode (no V option), SPC reads the colour scheme the user has selected within DOS and then uses that colour scheme to display results. [The colour scheme read is in fact that scheme observed by SPC at Column 1, Row 1 of the screen; consequently, if screen colour is interrupted by another program, so that the upper left portion of the screen is different from your preference, SPC will reflect whatever is there. To eliminate this problem, just issue CLS from the DOS prompt and try again.] If DOS redirection is used with direct video, as in - SPC >SPC.TXT the content of SPC.TXT will be unaffected by the colour issue, since the redirection symbol causes SPC to use redirectable standard output. For best results, however, it is recommended that the V option be used with DOS redirection: SPC uses a space padding routine with direct video to prevent the default background colour from being interrupted with black patches. This space padding does not affect the visual format of the display, but will cause line lengths of capturefiles to exceed the usual 72 character limit for standard BBS messagebases, and so will cause the resulting message upload to such Email message areas to have a garbled appearance. - 18 - When the V option is used, SPC uses CTTY as well as DOS redirectable video, which means that its output can be redirected to a communications port by activating a GATEWAY driver or similar or by executing the CTTY command before executing the SPC command. In this mode, it is not necessary for DOS to see the redirection symbol '>' on the commandline in order for redirection to occur. [If you are running SPC remote at a host installation, and the host uses a dual redirection driver such as GATEWAY or IBMAUX, you can choose whether or not to allow the Sysop at the host end to see SPC output by using either SPC V or SPC V >COMx. The former will show the output to the Sysop as well as transmit it to remote, whereas the latter will not allow the Sysop to see the output.] The V option may be used with any other valid option, with precisely the same effects as discussed above. If foreground colour intensification is desired by selecting the I option, the V option should not be used. (Colour intensification works only on direct video). Thus, as examples, the following calls will intensify the foreground colour, if it is not already intensified: SPC I SPC IH SPC IP SPC IEF and so on. The following calls, however, have no effect on foreground colour: SPC VI SPC VIH SPC VIP SPC VIEF and so on. - 19 - APPENDIX B: DRIVE MEASUREMENT ------------------------------ SUBSTed and Duplicate drives ---------------------------- SPC uses DOS Services to identify SUBSTed drives, thus enabling identification of SUBSTed drives without the old equal space test. This new method corrects the old bug of not displaying the last real drive in the list, when a SUBSTed drive is defined with a drive letter which is prior to the letter used for the last real drive. The DOS Services approach to SUBSTed drives is supported as far back as DOS 2.0. Where SPC sees that SUBSTed detection is inappropriate, or where the user selects the D commandline option, SPC uses duplicate detection rather than SUBSTed detection. In versions of SPC prior to SPC 4.2, SUBSTed drives were netted out by identifying duplicate total and free space entries. The current version, however, distinguishes SUBSTed drives from mere duplicates, by analysing how specific drives are redirected by DOS. The disadvantage of making this distinction is that it leads to difficulties when SPC is run in networks which do not support SUBSTed drives or which override DOS drive redirection. Therefore, SPC attempts to detect the presence of a network; and the resulting information is used to determine the drive detection default. The network detection system is by no means complete; and so, the user may find it necessary to employ the D option to override the system default on the commandline if the network environment is not detected by SPC. If SPC does not detect your network properly, then you need to use the D option explicitly; if you use such a network, please let me know about it. In SPC, a drive is said to be a "duplicate" of another drive if, and only if, (a) it occurs later in the alphabetic drive display than its original, and (b) it has the same total and free space as its original. When the D option is used, duplicate drives are netted out of the grand totals at the bottom of the main display. - 20 - CDROM and other non-standard drives ----------------------------------- Where SPC detects a non-conventional drive which returns FFFFh as the total number of clusters, it will flag such a drive with the UNDEF indicator, showing which drives may not be accurately measurable by DOS alone. These drives will nonetheless be included in the totals line, unless the E commandline option is used. The problem here is that all versions of DOS, including DOS 4.0, report the number of clusters as a hex word (two bytes). The maximum unsigned value of such a number is 65,535. Where a drive actually has more clusters than can be accommodated by the DOS format, DOS returns FFFFh (65535) -- which means that DOS cannot define the value. It follows that the maximum number of clusters which DOS can define as a measurement is 65,534. BOOT drives ----------- For DOS 4.0+, SPC distinguishes the BOOT drive and the drive mentioned by the COMSPEC statement in CONFIG.SYS to identify the position of COMMAND.COM. Where these two are different, SPC uses BOOT for the boot drive and CSPEC for the comspecked drive. This is sometimes useful in checking whether the user has moved COMMAND.COM to a ramdisk to speed up DOS operations. Where the two drives are the same, the BOOT indicator overrides the CSPEC indicator. For the normal case of DOS 3+ operations, SPC associates the BOOT flag with the position of COMMAND.COM, since lower versions of DOS do not permit separate detection of the original boot drive. BOOT and CSPEC drives, where flagged, are included in the grand totals. The LASTDRIVE ------------- The drive listed at the beginning and end of the Totals Line is the value of LASTDRIVE specified in CONFIG.SYS (or which DOS uses as a default, if LASTDRIVE is not given in CONFIG.SYS). SPC will obtain this value from DOS for DOS 3.0 and later. For earlier versions, a double blank entry is used. The LASTDRIVE info makes it possible to see at a glance what the value of this variable is, avoiding the need to do separate experiments. - 21 - Precision of space display and computation ------------------------------------------ Drive space numbers are displayed by means of a special mode of representation that can be defined by the following rules: 1. Internally, all numbers computed to double precision but represented as rounded decimals. (Normally available) 2. Absolute 5/4 rounding. (Not normally available: usually the available rule is vector 5/4 rounding.) 3. Zero results replaced by a dash in the apparent units place. (Not normally available) 4. Arithmetic totalling done only on the visible portion of numbers, with hidden digits excluded from calculation. (Not normally available) 5. Drive space numbers in megabytes, correct to three decimal places (correct to the nearest thousand bytes). [SPC is the only multidrive utility that uses this rule.] 6. All numbers reported in decimal format. [SPC is the only equipment utility that uses this rule.] The purpose of this mode of representation is to make SPC number displays as faultless and readable as possible. These rules assure that the user will never discover a discrepancy between the grand totals which SPC reports and totals obtained by otherwise summing the entries. The decision to diverge from tradition and represent drive space in megabytes with three decimal places was motivated by the desire to achieve better readability and relevance in a snapshot drive display. On the one hand, most users think of their drives in terms of megabytes rather than bytes; on the other, unit sizes in file storage are generally measured in thousands of bytes (determined by the cluster size), so the number of decimal places should be neither more nor less than three. - 22 - The dash is used to replace zero entries to facilitate scanning columns of numbers. Unlike the usual dash replacement available in some computer languages, SPC's dash is justified on the apparent units place, rather than the right margin of the number field: "000.000" usually means "0", not ".000". The decimal representation rule diverges from the tradition of using mixed decimal/binary representation. For example, it is usual to report the conventional RAM capacity of a desktop computer as being 640 k, and to report drive space in multiples of the cluster size. This, indeed, is due to the way numbers are represented internally by DOS. For the end-user of a computer, however, is accustomed to use decimal representation. A finished space utility should not force the end-user to make unnecessary external calculations to find what is wanted. This need to make additional and theoretically unnecessary external calculations is an annoying shortcoming of the general run of multidrive and equipment utilities. - 23 - APPENDIX C: THE PRINT WINDOW ---------------------------- If SPC is run during a DOS PRINT session, extra information about that print job will be displayed below the totals line. For example, we may start by configuring PRINT with the appropriate multiplexing options - for example, /D:PRN /B:4096 /M:2 /S:18 /Q:32 which means use a 4K print buffer, allocate two clock ticks to sending information to the printer, define one time slice as being identical to a clock tick, and set the maximum queue size to 32 files. The following shows the SPC default display when run during a spooled print job with the above PRINT parameters: ┌ Monday 09-03-1990 13:02:21 ────────────────────────────── SPC 4.6 ┐ │ DOS 3.20 VGA Color 1 PAR - MB by Bob Eyer 1990 │ │ FC (01/15/88) ISA - K R 8259 - ----- 1 SER/1: 16450 MR - - - │ │ 80386 36.7: X....1.......2.........3.*.....4........ 80387 386 │ │ - - - RAM: 655/578 - No Expanded Memory │ │ Drv────Status───Sector──Cluster──────Free───Allocated───Total───Drv │ │ C: BOOT 512 2048 3.117 23.517 26.634 C: │ │ D: 512 2048 8.567 18.075 26.642 D: │ │ E: 512 2048 14.883 11.759 26.642 E: │ │ F: 512 512 1.044 - 1.044 F: │ │ G: SUBST 512 512 1.044 - 1.044 G: │ │ P: SUBST 512 2048 14.883 11.759 26.642 P: │ │ ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │ │ Z: Totals less SUBSTed drives: 27.611 53.351 80.962 Z: │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤ │ LPT1 status: Selected │ │ │ │ Files currently in PRINT queue: │ │ │ │ D:\BBS\PROPOSE2.TXT --> LPT1 │ │ D:\BBS\PROPOSAL.TXT │ │ D:\BBS\JULY90.RM │ │ D:\BBS\34087-.RM │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ If the spool contents and printer diagnostics report is desired by itself, simply use the P option [SPC P]. The spool readout is particularly useful for obtaining information about spool status during a lengthy print job AFTER all files desired are submitted to the queue. The DOS PRINT command will indicate this type of information only when adding new files to the queue, not after the last file is submitted; and so the spool readout and diagnostics here supply a feature unavailable elsewhere. - 24 - Use of the Print Window alone: [SPC P] ------------------------------ Commands: SPC P SPC VP SPC IP The print window will display a PRINT multiplexer line and then one or more printer status lines, if no file is spooled to the printer. If at least one file is spooled to a printer port, then the spool report will be preceded by a printer status report, showing which port is the current target of the spool. SPC supports printer status readouts for up to 4 printer ports (LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, and LPT4), and will display status information for any and all such printers in the same window, if they are supported either by actual hardware or by being selected by the DOS PRINT multiplexer. Where no files are sent to a printer port, the print window will display only those printers for which there is hardware support. The supported PRINT multiplexer messages are: - DOS PRINT spooler not active - No files spooled for PRINT job The supported printer status messages are: - Selected - Not selected Where no files are sent to a printer port, the selected status refers to the online condition of the printer itself; where files are sent to a printer port, the selected status refers to the port chosen as the target of the spool. The following displays show what is meant here: Display (1) ----------- ┌ Wednesday 08-22-1990 13:02:21 ─────────────────────────── SPC 4.6 ┐ │ No files spooled for PRINT job │ │ LPT1 status: Selected │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Display (2) ----------- ┌ Wednesday 08-22-1990 13:02:21 ─────────────────────────── SPC 4.6 ┐ │ LPT1 status: Selected │ │ LPT3 status: Selected │ │ │ │ Files currently in PRINT queue: │ │ │ │ C:\BOB\SPC\SPC.TXT --> LPT3 │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ - 25 - In the first run of SPC P, the PRINT spooler is not resident, and so the Selected status of LPT1 indicates that only this printer is online. However, before running SPC P on the same system for Display (2), we activated the PRINT multiplexer using the LPT3 port, and then sent SPC.TXT to that port. Now two ports appear in the display, but the Selected status of LPT1 shows the online condition of LPT1, while the Selected status of LPT3 shows merely what port was used as the target for the PRINT multiplexer. Obviously, in this case, no printing is actually taking place, since there is no online printer connected to LPT3, as shown in Display (1). - 26 - APPENDIX D: SPEED MEASUREMENT ----------------------------- Brief history of the problem ---------------------------- The original intent of my development of speed readouts for the processor and coprocessor was to provide a faster and more integrated way of measuring speed than is available by means of the Norton SI. The Norton SI is an almost universally used standard of speed measurement, even though it suffers from many criticisms which have led other authors to develop their own benchmarks. Not the least important of these are the relatively complete benchmarks provided by PC Labs. SPC's indices are based on Norton's early work, but behave rather differently from the SI for the faster machines which are available today. The focus of much early benchmark development was the attempt to define a representative mix of operations which describe the normal use of a computer. Probably the best known attempts to reduce 'the normal mix of computer operations' to a single number are Chips and Technologies' MIPS index and Richard B. Johnson's SPEED index, both dating from 1986. Johnson's work had the advantage of looking at twice as many operations; whereas C&T's work had the advantage of comparing the test machine to two or three other machines in the spectrum. At PC Labs, however, it has been recognised that the attempt to find such a representative mix of operations may be doomed to failure, with the result that PC Lab benchmarks focus on dozens of operations separately, providing indices for each. For scientific accuracy and scope of testing, there probably isn't anything else easily accessible in the market which does a more complete job than the PC Lab benchmark series. - 27 - Philosophy of speed measurement ------------------------------- Some of the older tests, unlike the PC lab benchmarks, did, however, tend to provide a relatively quick snapshot of performance. By 'quick,' I mean a few seconds. Unfortunately, owing to the complexity of the tests which the PC Lab BENCH series perform, it takes a few minutes, let alone a few seconds, to run them. The Norton SI runs in a matter of seconds. This kind of speed is essential for routine use of speed indices, where they are used to determine the effect of operating environments on machine speed. The guiding principle behind the design of SPC is to provide the most information possible as a single-screen snapshot (or less) in the quickest possible way. Thus, the approach taken by PC Labs is entirely inappropriate for integration within SPC. The speed graph ------------------- The SPC speed benchmark graph, as previously noted, is a 40-point logarithmic scale which shows the position of the test machine in the spectrum of all the main types of IBM/DOS-compatible equipment in use today. The "feel" of a run of the mill 386 is that it is substantially faster than an AT, and the "feel" of a 486 is that it is substantially faster than a 386. The logarithmic plot, in a general way, reflects these differences in "feel", while not being sensitive to speed differences which would be imperceptible to the ordinary user. The technical reason why the log scale was chosen is that a linear scale "bunches" nearly all machines in general use at the lower end of the scale, making it difficult to distinguish them visually. Technical Basis of the SPC indices ---------------------------------- SPC's speed indices are based almost entirely on high-level math operations, integer addition for the main processor, and the SINE function for the coprocessor. These indices therefore treat the computer as though it were a calculator. The SINE function is used to measure the coprocessor, since, if a coprocessor is available, SPC will use it to perform SINE function and other floating point operations; if not, SPC emulates such operations at the software level. - 28 - The two indices generated by SPC are based on a count of how many times the selected operation (addition for the processor, the SINE for the coprocessor) is performed in a fixed interval of time. The processor and coprocessor loops are fixed at 0.82 and 0.60 seconds, respectively, so that, for all machines, total speed testing time is exactly 1.42 seconds. For a 386/20 machine this accounts for about 82% of execution time (exclusive of DOS search and load time). Speed testing time was not chosen arbitrarily, but was determined as a result of hundreds of experiments, the objective of which was to show the best tradeoff with index stability. In detail, each speed loop contains an imbedded loop; in the processor loop, each imbedded loop runs 2500 integer additions, while in the coprocessor loop, each imbedded loop runs 8 SINE calculations. The relation between the number of outer loops executed and the rating is expressed by the following regression formulae: Processor: RATING = -1.27 + 0.2391 * LOOPS Coprocessor: RATING = -1.93 + 0.5340 * LOOPS The reason why these are regression formulae, is that they were generated by plugging loop counts and corresponding Norton SI data into a standard linear regression analysis. The purpose of doing this was to make sure that the indices related to the Norton SI, at least within the range for which the Norton Index was originally designed (XT's and AT's). All of the points used were in the range below SI = 10. Above SI=10, SPC's index will begin to diverge markedly from Norton's, especially for models in the 386 or 486 class. For example, SPC measures the speed of a Micronics 386/20 at about 36.7, whereas the Norton measure is about 22.0. 486 machines are measured by SPC in the 94-240 range, reflecting their enormously greater calculating power, but the Norton measure merely places them, indifferently, in the high 30's. An Apricot 486/25 measures out to 152 for the CPU and 1300 for the NCP, while the same machine is measured by the Norton index merely at 38.8. Thus, the Norton index displays what mathematicians call asymptotic behaviour - a faster machine will be rated higher by this index; however, increases in the index will fall short of increases in underlying performance, as though the SI were approaching a limit or asymptote. The value of this limit for the Norton index is probably about 40. In contrast, the maximum values of the SPC indices are much higher - about 670 for the CPU and about 8900 for the coprocessor. These limits were chosen so as to prevent speed testing hangs. - 29 - The Coprocessor Index --------------------- The coprocessor option can be turned off, causing the program to perform floating point operations internally, even when a coprocessor is present. This is done by setting the NO87 environment variable, thus - SET NO87={any string desired} To turn the coprocessor option back on, simply execute SET NO87= which has the effect of removing NO87 from the environment. When NO87 is set, the coprocessor speed index should be about the same as the CPU speed index, reflecting the fact that the SINE function is being executed in the software, rather than hardware, environment. This normalised setting for the coprocessor index is not exact for all machine types, but should be fairly precise for mid-range 386/20 machines. The main purpose of this normalisation setting is to relate the coprocessor index to the processor index, which is, in the region 1.0 to 10.0, based on the Norton SI. The coprocessor index therefore should provide a rough idea of how much faster the coprocessor is, as compared to the processor. It would obviously be desirable to adjust the NCP index so that setting NO87 in the environment would always have the effect of making the NCP speed reading equal to that of the CPU. Such an exact normalisation, however, has the effect of making the NCP speed measurements depend on the CPU readings, thus removing the NCP index as a separate measurement of the coprocessor. EMS --- Users of EMS will notice that the NCP speed index will drop by about 33% on raising an EMS application such as a ramdisk, Desqview, or Lotus 123 Release 3. Release 3 of Lotus 123, however, is the only application known to permanently reset the NCP speed after exiting back to DOS. This condition, however, may be corrected by rebooting. I have no explanation why the use of EMS should have this kind of effect on coprocessor speed, other than that the use of at least 2 EMS handles causes the coprocessor to do some kind of EMS polling. (With an EMS driver present, using only 1 handle, this effect does not occur). - 30 - APPENDIX E: SPC PROCESSING ERRORS --------------------------------- SPC is written so as to be thoroughly error-trapped throughout all its procedures. If, in the unlikely event that programming or logic related errors occur, SPC reports them in the form "Error XY in Line ZA" This type of error should be reported to the author as soon as possible, together with an account of the circumstances with which it was associated. Beginning with SPC 4.5, errors of this type will not stop processing with a direct exit to DOS, but will merely continue until the program ends normally. Errorlevels ----------- SPC returns DOS error level code 0 when termination occurs normally. If there is not enough memory or string space to operate SPC, however, processing returns with an error level of 1. Drive Errors ------------ Drive errors, unlike those discussed above and unlike in many other multidrive utilities, are not treated by SPC as reasons for the termination of processing, but rather as means for identifying drive status in the drive listings. The status message is written automatically into the line corresponding to the drive where the drive error occurred, beginning at the left margin of the Status Column. The status messages which are currently supported in SPC run as follows: Unformatted disk Drive door not closed Drive timed out Device fault Disk media error Thus, SPC can return some useful, though elementary, drive diagnostic information - although by far the most useful drive status indicators will tend to remain the first two listed above.