| Tools of the Trade By Shui-Che Lim | ||||
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Part I: Overhauling Windows 95 This is the first of a series of articles that focuses on the hardware and software that makes up today’s gaming PC. Each article will focus on specific aspects of the PC and what you, the user, can do to maintain it in tip top running condition. This first article will focus on performance tuning for Windows 95. During the days when DOS reigned supreme as the environment of choice for gaming, performance tuning was a relatively simple task. All you really needed was a fast CPU and a fast DOS VGA card. Then in August of 1995, Microsoft released Windows 95 and it heralded the dawn of a new age for gaming. While Windows 95 was a more DOS tolerant version of Windows, it also offered a new set of tools for developers to use to write native Windows games. Today all new games are being written to run under Windows 95. DOS games, for the most part, have disappeared except for some classic combat simulations that may still remain on hard drives, such as Falcon 3.0 or Tornado. While Windows 95 and Direct X may have revolutionized gaming, they’ve also brought along a whole host of problems as well. Whoa…radical Pinto, Dude Windows 95, in its default installation, is not optimized to run as fast as it can. It uses a relatively conservative configuration that virtually guarantees that it will run on any machine without a problem. You can make an analogy to an automobile. An automobile – even a sporty one – is designed and built to strike a balance of safety, performance and economy. To get that car to really perform, you would need to make all sorts of engine, exhaust and suspension modifications. Similarly, to get Windows 95 to really perform, you’re going to have to get under the hood and "tweek" it a little. You will find that it’s really not very hard to do and is not particularly time consuming, if you make the proper preparations beforehand. What you get in return for your efforts, however, is a system that will run Windows 95 as fast as it possibly can, which will have a direct impact on Windows games and your gaming experience. Flavor of the Week Before you go making any changes, you’ll need to know which "flavor" of Windows 95 you’re running. Since the release of Windows 95 in August of 1995, 3 additional versions have been released. There was an updated retail version, which was released in early 1996, that included all the fixes available on Microsoft’s website as Service Pack 1 for Windows 95. Further there were two OEM service releases, OSR2 which was released in late 1996 and OSR2.1 in early-mid 1997. These versions were not sold at retail, but instead were given to system vendors to bundle with new systems that were sold. OSR2 included a new FAT32 file system (more on this later), while OSR2.1 included support for USB devices as well as some minor bug fixes. To see what version of Windows 95 you have, you can double-click the System icon in the Control Panel. On the General tab, you’ll see the version of Windows 95 listed.
TIP: To ensure you’ve got all the latest patches available for Windows 95, visit this page on Microsofts Website: Updates What was that middle thing you said? If you wanted to spend money on any single upgrade to improve Windows 95 performance, you cannot do better than to buy more memory. It’s no secret that Windows 95 loves memory… lots of it. Microsoft has said in the past that Windows 95 can run with as little as 4MB of system memory, to which I would have to reply that they must have been using the word "run" in the broadest sense. While I have some doubts as to the usefulness of this claim, I can honestly say that I have better things to do with my time than watch Windows 95 do a good impression of a slideshow. Given the complexity and resource requirements of modern applications and games 32MB should be the absolute minimum memory in your system simply because Windows 95 runs best with at least this much memory. Adding additional memory beyond 32MB does not affect performance appreciably, but any additional memory will help to reduce the amount of times Windows must swap out to virtual memory on your hard disk. Currently, a single 32MB SDRAM module only costs 15% as much as a 16MB SIMM cost 5 years ago. Memory is so cheap that there really is no good excuse to skimp on it. TIP: 64MB of system memory may seem like overkill for gaming, but if you want to reduce to an absolute minimum those intermittent pauses that occur when Windows 95 pages out to virtual memory, this is the way to go. Nothing ruins a perfectly good combat sim experience like a few intermittent pauses with the hard disk grinding away while in the middle of some intense dogfight. The Big Picture As mentioned previously, Windows 95 OSR2 and OSR2.1 included a new feature called FAT32. This was a new addition to the Windows 95 file system that did two things:
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Going to 32-bit addressing for the file system allowed hard disks as large as 8.4GB to be formatted as a single partition. FAT16, on the other hand topped out at 2.1GB per partition. Also, FAT16 increased the size of clusters as the size of the partitions grew. Keep in mind that hard disk capacities have grown far beyond the artificial limits imposed by the Windows 95 file system. When Windows 95 first came out, mainstream hard drives had between 520MB to 850MB! FAT16 could only track 2 to the 16th power number of clusters (thus the name FAT16). Since the number of clusters that could be tracked on any disk was finite, as the size of the disk increased, FAT16 compensated by making cluster sizes larger. Cluster sizes could range from 2K all to way up to 32K per cluster. If you do to math you’d find that 2 to the 16th clusters x 32K/cluster will give you 2.1GB. Under FAT16, partitions greater than 750MB would have 32K clusters. Since the average hard disk is now 3.2GB, this virtually guarantees that you’ll be using 32K clusters. Under FAT16, if you had a file that was 50K in size, it would take 2 clusters of storage space. However, you should be able to immediately spot a problem. Two 32K clusters can store up to 64K and yet this 50K file still takes up 2 clusters, in essence wasting about 14K (about 30%) of storage space. Since FAT32 could track a much larger number of clusters, the cluster size for any size partition up to 8.4GB could be set to 4K. Using the same imaginary 50K file above, you would need 13 clusters with wastage of only 2K on the last cluster. Therefore, very large clusters can waste a large amount of your disk space on very large partitions. FAT32 not only allowed much larger single partitions, but it also improved the efficiency of how files were stored. You can expect, on average, to reclaim at least 20% more storage space when using FAT32 and figures as high as 30% are not uncommon.
The only way to get FAT32 is to have OSR2 or OSR2.1. The problem is that there is no automatic way to set up FAT32 since it can "break" some older Windows programs which may not be FAT32 aware. These are mainly restricted to older anti-virus or hard disk utilities. Therefore, Microsoft played it safe and didn’t include any obvious method for the user to select FAT32. If the system maker you bought your computer from didn’t enable it then you’re out of luck… well, sort of.
Once the boot disk is created, cancel the installation of Windows 95 and boot from the floppy. Assuming you have a hard disk larger than 528MB, running FDISK will result in the program asking you if you want to enable Large Disk Support. Answering "Y" to this question will allow you to create FAT32 partitions on your hard drive. ** Warning ** FDISK is not a very pretty program since it is totally text driven, and it is not particularly intuitive. If you’ve never used this program before and don’t know how, I advise you against doing so. Using FDISK will wipe out your hard disk since resetting partitions with this program will require that you also reformat your hard drive. You have been duly warned and only those with expertise, a deathwish, or balls of steel need apply.
As is the case with any sort of operation that has even the most remote possibility of major catastrophe, you should make sure that you backup your hard disk or at least the important data on it that you don’t want to lose. The second way to enable FAT32 support is to use a commercial piece of software called Partition Magic. The reason this is a much more preferable alternative is that Partition Magic can convert a FAT16 partition into a FAT32 partition assuming that you already have OSR2.x installed on your system and it is using the FAT16 file system. It’s a very painless process because Partition Magic doesn’t destroy any data, and it doesn’t force you to reformat your hard disk and reinstall Windows 95. Partition Magic also allows you to create, remove and reset partition sizes on the fly without destroying any data in the process. Plus, it has a very easy to use and intuitive graphical interface. Even for people not using OSR2.x, Partition Magic allows you to set up multiple smaller partitions on your hard disk. By using smaller partitions, you can reduce the cluster size. Smaller clusters are inherently more efficient in terms of disk space usage. This is a good tool to have in your Windows 95 toolbox and it comes highly recommended. TIP: To make that Windows 95 floppy truly useful, you can add some additional files to it that are not copied by default. These include ATTRIB.EXE, SYS.COM, EDIT.COM, DELTREE.EXE and DISKCOPY.EXE. You can also copy your CD-ROM driver and MSCDEX.EXE to this floppy as well as your current CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Be sure to write protect the floppy to ensure that any viruses won’t infect it in the future.
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Das Boot
You can find the FDISK.EXE file under the C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\ directory if you’ve already installed Windows 95 OSR2.x, or it will be placed on your Windows 95 boot floppy if you had chosen to make one during a prior installation of Windows 95. If you’re installing Windows 95 OSR2.x for the first time, the easiest way to get to FDISK is to start the installation of Windows 95 normally, and then choose to make a Windows 95 boot disk.
