Optimize Your Windows 9x PC For Audio

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Sun Oct 14, 2001 11:18 pm

I got rid of the nasty Intel hard drive controllers and it says to take effect I have to reboot. As soon as windows logs on again it replaces them with the exact same drivers. What should I do? Your directions weren't specific enough for me.

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Sun Oct 14, 2001 11:29 pm

Doh! I was looking at the ide controllers not the disk drive icon. Now I got dma checked.

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Mon Oct 15, 2001 11:41 am

About the memory leak in IE 5.5. I presume that version 6 is okay to use?

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Mon Nov 05, 2001 11:01 pm

I am running IE6/OE6 on my ME install for testing purposes, and it seems pretty solid so far, better than 5.5.

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Sun Nov 11, 2001 12:59 pm

The original

doodyrh · Post by **doodyrh** » Fri Feb 01, 2002 1:40 am

On 2001-05-16 09:59, subhuman wrote:
11. Make sure "DMA" is checked for your hard disks. Winkey+Pause, Device manager, Diskdrives, Properties. Or install Intel Application Accelerator.

Many thanks Subhuman!
DMA or IAA?
Must one choose between them?
Anyone any ideas which is better?

subhuman · Post by **subhuman** » Mon Apr 15, 2002 4:37 pm

DMA is automatically activated with IAA. Both seem to give similiar performace, so use what you want or perform your own tests on your machine. I use IAA just because I wanted to test it, found it worked fine on my largest projects, so I didn't bother to remove it...

Zer · Post by **Zer** » Fri Apr 19, 2002 8:19 am

it´s just like a cache or not? I guess it´s better to wait for version 2

tribadism · Post by **tribadism** » Sat May 04, 2002 1:43 am

With 3 or 4 ms latency my Creamware PowerPulsar ( wave dest ) don't work with soundforge 4.0 or wavelab 3 ....

I don't habilitate at record ...

My system .

AUSU P4B266

install INF and Intel acc.

Powerpulsar z-link

Version Pulsar 3.01b

tribadism@inwind.it

Thank

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Sun May 05, 2002 5:42 am

Windoze XP tends to automatically free it's RAM, which I don't like really. Could be good, but not when you've been editing your song in Cubase for about an hour, then go back to Pulsar OS for some adjustments: WinXP needs to load the whole GUI again to the memory.

Here's a snapshot of what happens in the memory. The initial drop of free RAM is right after opening of Pulsar and Cubase, the RAM freeing happens after a while when working in Cubase.

[edit: cut picture]

So I made an entry in the system.ini:

[386 Enh]
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

This setting will tell Windows not to use the swapfile at all until all of the RAM is used. I found only that it's for Win98, to use it's Virtual Memory like Win95 does. I haven't monitored mem usage on XP lately, but it doesn't seem to give any probs

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: at0mic on 2002-10-03 05:09 ]</font>

sandrob · Post by **sandrob** » Sun May 05, 2002 12:24 pm

On 2001-07-18 10:31, Zer wrote:
Using win9X a good Idea is to limit the cache by inserting the foolowing lines into your system.ini

[vcache]
MinFileCache=16384
MaxFileCache=16384

wether the size is the RAM e.g. 128 MB : 4 x 1024 eg. 128:4 x 1024 =32768 etc.

if you use win98 with more than 512ram - first thing what you must do after win98 instalation is set cache.
if not win98 can't work at all!!
...then you can instal drivers and everything.

i realy don't know what's the best formula and value - everyone have own teory and i'm not expert.
anyway, for 1gb i use:

[vcache]
MinFileCache=16384
MaxFileCache=16384

ernest@303.nu · Post by **ernest@303.nu** » Mon May 06, 2002 6:30 am

sandrob: word of mouth always told me that running >512mb under Win9x was impossible, either causing crashes or having Windows not recognize the second 512mb. Very curious how performance will be if I double my RAM tot 1 gig:)
Will be trying that in a couple of days

btw ATI recommends the following settings:
[VCache]
MinFileCache=524288
MaxFileCache=526336

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Mon May 06, 2002 6:56 am

That'll be correct if you're getting 1GB of RAM. The remaining RAM, on Win98, may not exceed 512MB. SO adjust your cache accordingly to remain under 512MB.

sandrob · Post by **sandrob** » Mon May 06, 2002 10:24 am

On 2002-05-06 07:30, ernest@303.nu wrote:
sandrob: word of mouth always told me that running >512mb under Win9x was impossible, either causing crashes or having Windows not recognize the second 512mb. Very curious how performance will be if I double my RAM tot 1 gig:)
Will be trying that in a couple of days

btw ATI recommends the following settings:
[VCache]
MinFileCache=524288
MaxFileCache=526336

i use: asus p4t-e with p2.2 processor and 1gb of memory (win98se). i never had better system. i can't set 3ms asio latency like in xp, but 7ms is ok for me.

btw: i have instaled all new drivers for every single hardware but direct-x is 6.1a because i'm afraid of direct-x(s) - brrrrrrrrrr

but i had big problems with first instalation because i didn't know that i must set cache. this is hard to explain for my english: blue screans, only safe mode, crashes all the time, can't instal any driver.... drunk computer - real hell!

ohmelas · Post by **ohmelas** » Sun May 12, 2002 4:38 pm

I was interested in the 2GB aspects of Windows 98 talked about in the previous link that was posted previously. I've pasted it here:

"How much memory can Windows 95/98/Me handle? (the 64 mb myth and all that)

One oft-heard myth is that "Windows 95 can only handle 64 mb of RAM" or some variant on that theme. The truth is that Windows 95 and 98 are both designed to address 2 gb of RAM and there are as yet no motherboards which can hold this quantity although with 768 mb boards now widely available the 2 gb models can't be too far behind.
This myth originated with the Pentium systems that used certain versions of the Intel chipsets (VX and TX I believe) which were designed so that only the first 64 mb of RAM would be supported by the L2 cache on the motherboard and RAM beyond 64 megabytes would therefore operate without the benefit of the L2 cache. On these motherboards the L2 cache was often described as "pipelined burst cache" and there was either 256K or more often 512K of this cache available.
The report of memory beyond 64 mb not using the cache somehow got transformed into "more than 64 mb of memory won't work" and this misinformation persists.
These particular Intel chipsets have long since gone out of production. I believe they were discontinued when the switch was made to the MMX version of the Pentium. Even if you have one of these older systems (I do) there is no need to feel that you would not benefit by having more than 64 mb of RAM installed.
First of all, the overall impact of the L2 cache on system performance is about 10%. This has been measured by doing a series of timed application tests on a PC where all of the memory was being handled by the L2 cache. Then the system was reconfigured so that the L2 cache was totally shut down and the identical series of timed application tests was repeated. The end result was that shutting off the L2 cache completely increased the time required for the test series by 10%. So if you add additional RAM beyond 64 mb to your older Pentium system and as a result some part of your processing is done in uncached RAM rather than in cached RAM the maximum performance penalty you can expect is 10% with respect to that portion of the program load that is so affected. On the other hand, if the added RAM has the effect of reducing the use of the virtual memory swap file because more of the total system load can now be retained in physical RAM then the performance will be improved many many times. Raw access times for RAM are 1000 times faster than a hard disk, and data transfer rates are at least 25 times as fast. So the gain is very substantial indeed.
The actual RAM limit for Windows 95. 98 and Me is 2 gb of physical RAM, as described in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q181594 http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb ... 1/5/94.asp
However there are some vcache limitations that should be put into place with larger amounts of RAM by adding a MaxFileCache value to the [vcache] section of system.ini. The value entered should be approximately 70% of the total installed RAM in kilobytes, with an absolute maximum of 512000. Thus for a system with 384 mb of RAM the entry would read
MaxFileCache=275000
and for systems with 700 mb or more it would be
MaxFileCache=512000
The 70% limit is intended to prevent problems with vcache "runaway" that can otherwise occur when working with huge data files, meaning files that are equal to or greater than the total installed RAM, or when working with folders that contain vast numbers (tens of thousands) of data files. The 512000 absolute limit is an additional protection against "out of memory" errors that can otherwise occur if the vcache builds up to a very large value resulting in a lack of space in the 1 gb system components portion of the 4 gb virtual address space used by Windows."

All in all this might be what I need instead of upgrading to the new Cubase and XP. I'm thinking about it.

Zer · Post by **Zer** » Mon May 13, 2002 4:01 am

@ sandrob in your case I´d run windows from a ramdsik, that will be the fastest windows ever...

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Fri May 17, 2002 4:17 pm

windows and RAM -> http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... US;q253912

It would in my opinion be a total waste to load of 2GB in such a system. And those 70% are way to high in my opinion too.

Immanuel

Lugian · Post by **Lugian** » Mon Jun 17, 2002 4:36 pm

There are very good optimisation guides for Win2K/XP, Win9x/Me, and Mac on this page:

http://www.tascam.com/products/us428/downloads.php

Scroll down a little and you'll find them.

Hope that helps... maybe that link has been posted before but I didn't see it.

Omb · Post by **Omb** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 6:58 pm

where can i check if Creamware are not sharing any IRQ's with other cards ?
does it matter if in witch PCI slot the card is in?

great stuff.

omb

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Mon Nov 11, 2002 8:12 pm

Go to controll panel -> "system"
(winkey + Pause/break)

Device manager

Double click "Computer"

Immanuel