CompuServe Thread

#excessive disk access

4 messages in this thread
#178135From: Michael HagerJul 1, 1995 2:33 PM
HELP! I'm having problems with excessive disk access. Shouldn't I be running almost completely in memory? I need some answers. The standard "Clean boot" routine does nothing. If I remove all excess TSR's, and environment variables, the symptoms are the same. If it's a bug, tell me and I'll be content to wait for a fix. If it's me I need to know how to CORRECT THE PROBLEM! Ihave been rendering furniture and playground equipment by drawing in AutoCAD R13 and exporting to 3D Studio with the 3DSOUT command. Most of my meshes are manageable in size. I recently began to work on a fairly complex structure. The mesh file is 14MB. It takes 3 to 4 hours to render normally but I set it off one evening and returned in the morning to find it grinding furiously at the hard drive and still creating reflection maps EIGHT HOURS LATER! I aborted the rendering, rebooted the computer and the iage completed itself in 4-1/2 hours. I set it to rendering a 72 key looping camera animation Friday night. It will be interesting to see when it finishes THAT! I have had a number of instances where there seems to be excessive hard drive access. The mesh and image are being created on a network drive, nothing should be saved or written to the C: drive but still, under certain situations, C: drive access is very excessive. A constantly fluttering light and racket on the drive for hours at a time. Am I missing something simple in my setup? Hardware specs follow. HELP! Michael Hager I am running the following hardware setup on a Novell network server: HP Vectra XU 5/90C (Pentium 90) 80 mb RAM (64 accessible by DOS) 540 mb drive, (120 mb free) Matrox video card with 2mb video ram . Matrox video driver (RCMGA.EXP) Teac 4X CD drive. DOS 6.22 AutoCAD R13_c2 (3/11/95) running in DOS 3D Studio R4_c1 Novell Netware 3.11 SummaSketch III 12×12 tablet HP 650C DesignJet E-Size Plotter My computer boots with the following start up routines: CONFIG.SYS device=c:\windows\himem.sys device=c:\dos\emm386.exe noems highscan i=b000-b7ff buffers=25,0 files=49 dos=umb lastdrive=e fcbs=16,0 dos=high devicehigh /l:1,9728 =c:\teac\teac_cda.sys /d:teac-cda /p:230 /t:1 devicehigh /l:2,35648 =c:\mga\setup\rambios.sys devicehigh /l:1,12048 =c:\dos\setver.exe devicehigh /l:2,23024 =c:\quickcmd\cmd640x.sys devicehigh /l:1,4560 =c:\windows\ifshlp.sys shell=c:\command.com c:\ /e:640 /p stacks=9,256 AUTOEXEC.BAT LH /L:1,13984 c:\dos\share.exe LH /L:0;2,45472 /S c:\dos\smartdrv.exe /x 2048 128 LH /L:2,65792 c:\teac\corelcdx.com /d:teac-cda /m:15 /cache=2,2,2 /xmssize=-1 c:\mouse\mouse c:\mga\setup\mgavesa.com LH /L:1,9296 c:\lan\lsl LH /L:2,36528 c:\lan\pcntnw LH /L:2,30576 c:\lan\ipxodi c:\lan\netx f: login capture lpt2 q=printq_2 nb nt nff ti=90 capture lpt3 q=printq_3 nb nt nff ti=120 castoff prompt $p$g path C:\WINDOWS;c:\;c:\ndw;c:\dos;c:\quickcmd;c:\mouse;f:\ng;%path% set acad=c:\acad\common\support;c:\acad\dos;c:\acad\dos\support;c:\acad\common\font set acadcfg=c:\acad\dos set acaddrv=c:\acad\dos\drv;c:\mga\acadrv set dspadi=c:\mga\acadrv\rcmga.exp set rdpadi=c:\mga\acadrv\rcmga.exp set rcpadi=c:\mga\acadrv\rcmga.exp set lmouse=c:\mouse set mga=c:\mga\setup\ set temp=c:\temp set include=f:\clipper5\include;f:\catools\include set lib=f:\clipper5\lib;f:\catools\lib set obj=f:\clipper5\obj;f:\catools\obj set pll=f:\clipper5\pll;f:\catools\pll set ng=f:\ng c: After start up, at the first C:> prompt, the memory display from the DOS MEM command shows: Memory Type Total = Used + Free —————- ——- ——- ——- Conventional 640K 109K 531K Upper 187K 163K 24K Reserved 384K 384K 0K Extended (XMS) 64,325K 17,841K 46,484K —————- ——- ——- ——- Total memory 65,536K 18,497K 47,039K Total under 1 MB 827K 272K 555K Largest executable program size 530K (543,152 bytes) Largest free upper memory block 19K (19,728 bytes) MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area. The DOS SET command shows: COMSPEC=C:\COMMAND.COM PROMPT=$p$g PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\;C:\NDW;C:\DOS;C:\QUICKCMD;C:\MOUSE;F:\NG;Z:.;Y:.;X: ;W:.;V:.;U:.;T:.;S:.;R:. ACAD=c:\acad\common\support;c:\acad\dos;c:\acad\dos\support;c:\acad\com on\fonts ACADCFG=c:\acad\dos ACADDRV=c:\acad\dos\drv;c:\mga\acadrv DSPADI=c:\mga\acadrv\rcmga.exp RDPADI=c:\mga\acadrv\rcmga.exp RCPADI=c:\mga\acadrv\rcmga.exp LMOUSE=c:\mouse MGA=c:\mga\setup\ TEMP=c:\temp INCLUDE=f:\clipper5\include;f:\catools\include LIB=f:\clipper5\lib;f:\catools\lib OBJ=f:\clipper5\obj;f:\catools\obj PLL=f:\clipper5\pll;f:\catools\pll NG=f:\ng Having set my AutoCAD environment variables at start-up, I run ACAD.BAT To start AutoCAD as follows: c:\acad\dos\acad %1 %2 3D studio is started from the 3DS directory in the setup default
#178142From: Jul 1, 1995 3:57 PM
Michael: After a quick look at your configuration, my first question is why is DOS only using 64 megs or your 80 megs of memory? If your current configuration won't use it, switch to QEMM, which will. It sounds like you are swapping up a storm, and only additional memory will stop it on these big files with lots of automatic reflections you are creating. Greg Pyros
#178262From: Michael HagerJul 3, 1995 1:52 AM
Greg, First of all, for some reason, as you can see, memmaker gets me 531K of DOS memory low, and QEMM will only come up with 475K after trying combinations with FIVE commas! (it took nearly an hour to work through them all). Even after QEMM was installed,the MEM command only reported 64MB, even though the memory check at boot shows 80. I don't know if its there or not but the word from Microsoft tech support was that DOS only sees 64MB. Even so, it seems that I should not be swaping to disk so excessively, even with complex constructions. Still baffled. Michael Hager
#178315From: Jul 3, 1995 1:20 PM
Michael: >> for some reason, as you can see, memmaker gets me 531K I've never seen QEMM lose a battle of finding memory! Interesting! There is a command line switch with QEMM to tell it how much memory you have. It even comes with a utility called something like Scanmem to first determine what number to insert on the command line! Since 3D Studio doesn't use much main memory, it would be worth it in my opinion to have it to see the 80 megs! Greg Pyros