*Nat'l Tech Echo*
07/01/88 14:05:00
From: RANDY SCOTT
To: ALL
Subj: FREE COMPUTER UPGRADE
Many of you may have seen the recent PC Magazine article on RAM refresh 
cycles.  For those who didn't, here's the basic idea--dynamic RAM has to 
be updated, or "refreshed", every so often.  This takes a certain amount 
of time away from your processors usual mircosecond-to-microsecond 
activities, resulting in lost "overhead" time.  Most RAM doesn't need to 
be refreshed near as often as your normal computer does it.  Increasing 
the time between refreshes will, obviously, lower the overhead, resulting 
in a performance increase. 

I've written a program called REFTEST that will test for the optimum 
refresh cycle time and create a small program called QFRESH (identical to 
the program in the article) that you can put in your AUTOEXEC.BAT to 
automatically modify the refresh time upon bootup.  This can result in a 
performance increase of 5 to 25%.  Maybe not a tremendous increase, but 
hey--the price/performance ratio is GREAT. 

Look for REFTEST.ARC, 17K bytes.  It is in File Area #3 (New Public 
Domain) on The Drawing Board, 505-525-0844.  (Sysops--it is file 
requestable, node is 15/2.)

I would really appreciate hearing from people on the kinds of performace 
increases they get. 

ras



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* Origin: -=p[The Drawing Board]p=-  (505-525-0844)  Las Cruces, NM (Opus 1:1
