Refresh rates (XyDos in XP Window)

[michael.norman@xxxxxxxx]

At 2/27/2003 09:37 PM -0500, Robert Holmgren wrote:
> Maybe XyWrite just runs too quickly on a
> modern machine. I admit, I have to slow down execution of STARTUP.INT on my
> faster (>1Ghz) machines, by introducing BX pQ2 commands (1 second pauses) at
> various points in it, to get it to execute properly. It's almost as if the
> WAIT command doesn't really wait until the previous command completes before
> proceeding. Can you try moslo before buying?
I'm ignorant, literally, of the fine mechanics of what happens between the
pressing of a key and the appearance of text on paper. I understand the
notions involved, the transmission of bits and bytes by pathways
electronic, but refresh rates, repainting the screen and so forth, are only
ideas to me, ideas without the vital architecture necessary to really talk
about them. So I worked the problem backwards, taking some clues from
Robert's last two posts.
To wit: XyDos in XP VDM (Window...DosBox...) is jerky, the cursor appearing
to leap forward after a delay after the key is pressed. The keystroke
signal in a VDM passes first through ??? (NTFS OS) then ??? (XyDOS) to the
screen. It *seemed* as if one or the other -- XyDos or the OS -- was
running ahead, as it were, and the signal was trying to catch up. At first
I thought it a screen problem and searched for solutions involving refresh
rates. I thought perhaps the DOS gamers might lead us to an answer, but
after locating a number of utilities used by the gamers, I found I was
wrong (though some reported *lag* in their running). Their issues, for the
most part, involved flicker, hence for them the refresh rate issue. So I
started again, this time using the word "jerky" in multiple-term searches,
which led me to the MoSlo site (through posts on XP on Google's "group"
sites). Reading the MoSlo solution for Biz apps, the speed issue seemed to
make sense, more sense than the refresh issue, at least to this uninitiated
searcher. IF speed was the issue, then the question was: what's running
ahead of what? XY or the OS? And that's where I am at the moment. Robert
suggests that faster CPU's might be involved. But if you were to try to run
XyDos in XP on, say, a 333, then would you get the same problem? I'm
guessing -- only guessing -- that it's the way the OS controls or mitigates
the hardware and its speed, not the actual speed itself. Thinking this all
the way through, then, one is led to ask: how is a slow-down utility going
to help? What's it slowing down? Hardware? Software? I was thinking that,
perhaps, if the application is running ahead of the OS and the utility
slows the application (as the MoSlo site suggests), perhaps the conflict
would be resolved. Again, I'm doing a lot of guessing and inferring here.
PS: I think the trial of MoSlo is not full-featured, but it's cheap enough
to try, which I'll do. (PSS: I tried to infer the basic principles of TAME,
hoping for some more clues there -- Did it, for example, attempt to control
speed? -- but there was not enough information on the WEB site.)
Michael Norman