Boldly Go Collection/version40.iso/TS/25D/SLOWER10.ZIP/SLOWER.DOC

Text File | 1992-04-22 | 6KB | 106 lines

04/22/92
Slower v1.0, the fast system slowdown utility by Kenneth Kline,
certain "Copyleft" privileges retained.

Unsolicited donations welcome. Solicited donations sent at donors
discretion.  If you find that this program is helpful to you
and want to say thanks, $2.00 US cash or money order drawn on US
funds (no checks, PLEASE!) may be sent directly to me at:

34 Monmouth Ave.
Clementon, NJ 08021-7115 USA

$5.00 will get the next version sent directly to your continental
USA (only) address as soon as (and if) it becomes available.
Anything in excess of $5.00 will be donated to the Animal Welfare
Association or similar charity org., and will be appreciated.

Inasmuch as I am placing the software into the public domain, I
relegate all responsibility for it's behavior on the users' system
to the user.  If you wish to forego your responsibility in this
respect, don't run the program.  If you don't read the docs, don't
bitch.

Rates and terms subject to change at author's discretion without
prior warning; you may have contradictory legal rights...

This program is a TSR. It intercepts the timer interrupt, calls the
original timer interrupt, disables interrupts, displays the current
time on the upper left-hand corner of your screen and enters a
simple do-nothing loop for a count (from 0) to a user specified
value before re-enabling interrupts and returning.  This
effectively slows down your system and allows such things as
playing older games on newer, faster systems, giving you an added
edge over some of the faster-paced arcade-style games, debugging
program output, and/or increasing the amount of time screen images
are displayed so you can capture them.

I make no guarantees that this will be successful in every case,
nor do I make any warranties against system crashes, damage, and/or
loss as a result of using this program in some combination of other
programs on some systems.  All I can tell you in this regard is that
it should work in a large number of cases, I don't know of any
reason for it to crash, and that it hasn't caused me any damage yet.

To use the program, at the DOS prompt type SLOWER and press return.
You will be prompted for a slowdown factor from 0 to 32767.  Higher
values entered make the machine slower while entering zero will
have very little effect on the system speed (if you just want the
clock in the upper left corner, enter 0).  Entering a negative
value will abort the TSR installation.  The only totally safe way
to disable the TSR function and un-install it is to reboot the
machine by pressing your reset button or shutting down and
restarting the system.  There are utilities that claim to be able
to uninstall unruly TSRs... They may or may not work with this
program.

Precautions!
DO NOT run the program twice without either rebooting or running an
uninstall program.  Running this program twice will almost
assuredly cause your system to lock up!  If this happens by
accident, rebooting is your only recourse.  It is also unadvisable
to run this utlity from within other programs that allow
"launching" of applications or temporarily shelling to DOS.
Running Slower from within multitasking and task-swapping shells
will almost always lead to catastrophe.  DON'T DO IT.

Slower is a very powerful utility.  On my 25MHz 386 I can count
seconds between hitting the enter key and seeing the DOS prompt
return when I set the delay to 32767.  Start out with much lower
delays especially if you are running at less than 25MHz.
Experiment with the setting, rebooting between successive attempts,
to tweek in the right value for your game/application.

Special considerations should be given to disk accesses.  When
programs write to the disk, they update pointers in sensitive areas
on the disk (e.g. the FAT and DIR).  While a program that only
reads the disk won't present any difficulties when using this
program, if you aren't sure whether the disk is being read from or
written to, DO NOT reboot until the disk settles completely.
Rebooting before this time will corrupt data being written.  If
this happens, run DOS's CHKDSK with the /F option or another good
disk repair program.  Chances are you will be able to recover most
if not all lost data.  For this reason it is suggested that you
thoroughly test the application with this utility on a floppy
and/or after making a complete backup of any files your application
might use.

Note: The clock may disappear while running some programs -- this
is normal.  The clock will usually re-appear after the program has
returned to DOS.  On some systems (monochrome, for instance) the
clock might not appear at all.  This is to be expected -- the clock
is written directly to video RAM at segment B800 hex -- no check is
made to determine if this is the correct segment for the system.

Viruses: I am not a cretin.  I make no purposeful attempts to
damage other peoples' property.  If you suspect that this program
has been infected, please alert your BBS SysOp or distribution-site
manager.

Distribution fees: additional terms for distribution sites (you may
have contradictory legal rights...).  Although the software has
been placed in the public domain, for this version I retain certain
"copyleft" privileges.  Please charge no more than $5.00 US above
and beyond any "normal" consideration for collection and/or
distribution of this software.