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From: ernst_witter@eva.slu.se
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Amount of Memory for 386SX Running Win3.0
Message-ID: <7244.271d6889@eva.slu.se>
Date: 18 Oct 90 07:32:09 GMT
Organization: SLU, Swedish university of agricultural sciences
Lines: 34

In reply to some queries about how much memory on a 386(SX) to
run Win3.0, the only useful information I can give is my set up,
(I'm not an expert) and saying that this does work (at speed).
I have 386SX with a total of 5Mb (0 Wait state, setting it to 1
will slow things down appreciably). In the config.sys himem is
loaded after which comes Smartdrive at 1024/768 (768 is the value
Windows recommended during SetUp). I run Windows in enhanced
mode, and typically have 3-4 quite large programs loaded (WP51,
Reflex, QPro, and sometimes SAS) and often also the Norton
Commander (still much easier and faster to use than File
Manager). All of these larger programs typically require at least
400Kb conventiol memory to run, and may (and also do) use EMS or
XMS. Access to EMS and XMS memory is regulated through their pif
file settings. As long as I stick to no more than 3 large applications
switching between them (using a Hot Key combination) is instantaneous. More
applications than that make switching a bit slower, especially if the
application is in graphic mode as things have to be swapped to and from
disk (using a permanent swap file). All applications work at what seems
to be about normal speed compared when run 'normally' from DOS (ie without
Windows) as long as I set their run mode to EXCLUSIVE in their Pif files.
Having them run in non-exclusive mode with one or two background tasks, will
slow the foreground program down to about the speed of my old XT, the
programs in the background run even slower then. This speed is however
sometimes quite adequate for things like communications or simple Word 
processing, so that a number crunching program can then be active in the
background (exclusive means nothing is active in background).
Another thing to remember with the Pif files is the monitoring of the
Video ports, these should be off whenever possible (always with the programs
I use) as monitoring of ports does definitely slow things down to a crawl.

Does this help? (all this info and more about memory vs speed can be foud in 
the Windows manual).

Ernst Witter