Re: IDE Win98SE HD to USB?

Ummm, the values I posted were aimed at a 98se system using a _large_
amount of RAM, in this case 1 gig or more I've never tweaked the
vcache on a system using less than 256 megs. In your case, the setting
would need to be lower, and the default ratio of 1/8 would suggest a
MaxFileCache of 24576. Vcache should be set to be 10 - 25% of total
ram.
I use 1/8 (12.5%) as my rule of thumb. You'll note that your setting
of 48 megs is 25% of your 192 megs of total ram

In your setup with 192mb of ram, my vcache setting of 131072 is way
too big, by a factor of 5. Not surprised you got less than optimal
performance using that.

98 freaks out when it sees 1 gig or more of ram, which is the
rationale behind the MaxPhysPage setting. One gets a message that
there is not enough memory to boot the OS, because all the virtual
memory addresses are used up by vcache. Totally not applicable on your
setup.

The AGP is a potential factor because the AGP aperture is mapped to
memory addresses in system area of RAM. However, in your
implementation, using only 192 megs of ram, none of my suggestions
really apply. I was solving problems that occur when 98 sees 1gig of
ram, or more.

-glenn


On Jan 5, 8:02 pm, "Peter Larsen" <plar...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
geezer wrote:
Optimal MaxFileCache settings will probably vary with the specific
computer and user, so I suggested the vcache = 1/8 total ram.  You
have to take into account AGP aperture size, if it's a system running
an AGP video card, so don't set the vcache too low.  The 1/8 setting
will always work.

The system, p2-300, I made the test on had a Matrox G400 and 192 megs of
ram, this fits your suggestion, but 48 megs vcache gave a faster bigfile
transfer. I initially set it with the range 48 to 96, and didn't change it
when I doubled the ram to mobo max of 384.

I ran into a bit of initial flak over in the microsoft newstree back then,
with people telling me that I prevented the OS from doing all sorts of
wonderful things for me. I just wanted to get that box to burn CD's reliably
by minimizing CPU usage .... they got more helpful once they understood the
objective.

What does AGP have to do with this?

Did you test disk throughput or do you assume?

The reason for capping the vcache is to prevent it from using up all
avaialable ram on a big file copy because doing that leads to increased cpu
use and later also to sluggish dynamic memory allocation, a properly tuned
win9x box, applies to WinME too, has free physical ram so that it doesn't
have to swap things to vcache or to disk just to open a requester.

I have only very marginal experience with win9x on a box with more than 512
megs of ram, it was a dual booter that I had added a winme to because of one
specific game that didn't run on W2k, but it runs on XP Home.

-glenn

  Kind regards

  Peter Larsen

  Peter Larsen

.

Relevant Pages

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