Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!se-sd!dennis
From: dennis@se-sd.NCR.COM (Dennis Foster )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: HIMEM.SYS  loading device drivers past 1Meg.
Message-ID: <1998@se-sd.NCR.COM>
Date: 3 Aug 89 15:23:38 GMT
References: <26663@srcsip.UUCP> <2158@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> <3045@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: dennis@se-sd.UUCP (Dennis Foster (AEP))
Distribution: na
Organization: NCR Corporation, SE-San Diego
Lines: 51

In article <3045@blake.acs.washington.edu> djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu (Dick O'Connor) writes:
>Speaking of the Microsoft programmer's library CD-ROM package...
>
>Has anyone tried it out?

We use it here at NCR for 2 different MS-Windows development projects.
We have 8 - 10 users running 386 workstations accessing a 386 file
server.  Our network software is Novell 2.15.  We are using an ArcNET LAN.
On the LAN, we have a CD-ROM server that all users on the net have access
to.  By using 386MAX and 386LOAD, we have been able to configure our
systems to have about 525K free memory AFTER all LAN and CD-ROM software
has been loaded.  This includes the Programmers Library in TSR mode.  All
in all, our configuration makes for a quite usable system.

>How fast is access?

It's by no means a speed burner, but the performance we see is quite
acceptable.  To do a search of the MS-Windows Programmers Reference
for all occurances of CreateWindow takes about 3 seconds.  When considering
all the overhead of accessing the CD-ROM through the LAN, that's not too bad.

>Is it worth the $950?

Now that we have the thing setup and everybody configured to use it, it
is quite useful and IMHO, well worth the money.  I don't think our
configuration was $950, but more on the order of $1500 (including the
multi-user license, ...).  The biggest problem was getting our workstations
configured so that we could have the programmers library software
loaded and still have enough memory to do useful work.  Using 386MAX
and 386LOAD really helped in that area.

The users that seem to benefit most from the CD-ROM are the less
experienced in the group.  It has turned out to be a great learning
tool for developers new to MS-Windows.

>Do you actually use any of the online docs and code samples?

More so the docs than the sample programs.  We tend to use the Programming
Windows book by Charles Petzold as a training guide here and having access
to the source for examples in the book is quite useful.  Once you are up to
speed, however, you tend not to get much use out of the coding samples.

>
>"Moby" Dick O'Connor                            ** DISCLAIMER: It would
>Washington Department of Fisheries              ** surprise me if the
>Olympia, Washington  98504                      ** rest of the Department
>Internet Mail: djo7613@blake.acs.washington.edu ** agreed with any of this!

Dennis Foster
NCR SE-SD
San Diego, California