On Mon, 07 Jan 2002 21:30:40 +0000, Uncle Slacky wrote: > I'm looking for the "best" way to configure a 286 laptop I have in order > to run Arachne most efficiently. It has 5Mb of RAM total, so a RAMDISK > or a large cache are both possible. It's currently running DR-DOS 7.03, > but I have a copy of PC-DOS 2000 if list members think it's worth a try. > The built-in video is VGA mono, with colour output to an external > monitor. What kind of settings would be best for things like FILES, > BUFFERS, etc.?
> Thanks in advance > Uncle Slacky... Welcome back, uncle Slacky.<g> For some clues, check out Aramdisk.txt which, I believe, is shipped with Arachne from about V1.64 onward. Since you can not have XMS with a 286, the choices are simpler. First, set Buffers 15-16 and Files 30 and then optimize your HD cache size for speed using speedchk.bat: You can set stacks=0,0. http://www.hwcn.org/~ao773/myfiles/download/Clarences/speedchk.zip There ARE differences between HD cache programs, and I would recommend Ncache as long as you don't use any Wincrap 9x or + . You will probably be surprised to find a size between 200k to 800k to be best for an old box like that, depending on the speed of the laptop. That's probably gonna leave you 3.2-3.4 Mb, and it gets a bit hard here. Make a Ramdisk of whatever you end up left with, and you will certainly want to set Cache2TEMP Yes in Arachne.cfg. Make sure you have BOTH a \TEMP dir on the RD + a line in autoexec.bat: Set ARACHNETEMP=RD:\TEMP. You can probably get by with only 1MB of space for TEMP - I hardly ever have more than that in mine - but this will depend on your surfing habits. Big images will kill it almost instantly. Mail will go on it temporarily and unfortunately the clearcache function doesn't wipe the mail or images from TEMP unless you re-write it. For the rest of the space, load as much of Arachne as possible on it, but keep your cache, mail and download directories pointing to the HD. The \TEMP on the RD will be used whenever Arachne thinks it's useful. Use Aramdisk.txt to help decide WHAT to load onto that little ramdisk. I hope some of the above turns out to be useful, or even correct.<G> Good luck. - Clarence Verge. -- Using Arachne 1.66 on DSL.
