TrackIt 2.0 (final release) (c) '95 by Dietmar Bos (CIS:70007,5261) --------------------------------------------------------------------- QUICKSTART ---------- Copy the files TRACKIT.EXE DLL32.DLL DLL16.DLL to a newly created directory, or one that you feel compfortable with. If in doubt, or having access problems, copy the two dlls into your W95 System32 directory. Use the explorer then to drag the Trackit Icon to your desktop, or add the file to your autostart group. Another way to autostart the program is to add an entry to the 'load'-line into the win.ini file. This entry consists of the full path plus the name of the executable you want to start e.g: [windows] load=c:\w95\trackit\trackit.exe Once the program runs, you can change the size by draging the borders. To configure TrackIt, you have to move the mouse over the TrackIt area and there you press the right mouse button. The dialog there allows you to select colors, fonts and items to display and so forth. Change to your requested needs and press the OK button. If you changed the size and the position then, you don't have to take care of anything in the future, because TrackIt remembers any change you once did. Have fun! --------------------------------------------------------------------- GENERAL ------- Trackit gives you access to any vital system resource information. It also provides access to the remaining diskspace of any of your drives. TrackIt is designed to be as small as possible, using the least possible space on your desktop. TrackIt is Freeware! ..and now the usual: I am not responsible for any damage in any form that might happen due to the use of this program! (not, that I expect this to happen...this is just in case!) Even if this software is freeware, the permission to copy it and/or spread it to second persons or to a BBS is allowed only, if both the program itself and this text file are copied together. No changes in any form, to this document or the program, are allowed. So, finally, what you should get is: TRACKIT.EXE TRACKIT.TXT DLL32.DLL DLL16.DLL !!!!!!!! Note: In the Setup dialog you will find an option 'calc. task slice'. Use this with caution and only if needed, because it uses pretty much CPU cycles. It is just a tool to provide you with time consumption information of your environment on demand. The same applies to the 'use timer' option. Try to use the timer of possible. Deselecting this, causes Trackit to consume lots of CPU cycles. In the best case, you have 'calc. task slice' deselected and 'use timer' selected. This is the healthiest possible setting. In the latter scenario, CPU utilization is approximatly 1-3 percent, depending on the timer delay. !!!!!!!! Sidenote: Resizing is done only vertically after you chose the settings in the setup dialog. This is due to the fact, that trackit does not limit the use of fonts. You can use any font you like, even proportional font. For the latter it is almost impossible to calculate the fitting width. But is shouldn't be to much work, to adjust the width by dragging the window border once setup is done. Remember, you only have to do this once, or better, any time, you changed the font. popup-window display. You can choose between popup window for display, or an ordinary window. The popup requires less space on the desktop and it also looks nicer, but, the drawback is, that you only can end the program now in the Settings dialog. The advantage of the usual window is, that you can put Trackit in Iconized mode. In W95 it will then show the memory utilization in the taskbar. In Popup mode, you can change the size with the border around the popup frame. To move the window, klick on the client area, hold button and drag the window to the new location. Remember: To enter setup-mode still requires to press the right mouse button while the cursor is over the TrackIt client area. This is both true for popup display and ordinary window display. ..and finally: English is not my native language, as you might have found out on your own now . Forgive me bad vocabulary. I hope the text is redundant enough to make out the meaning . If you have questions left, conntact me on CIS:70007,5261 --------------------------------------------------------------------- SETUP DIALOG ------------ What follows now, is a description of the available options in the setup dialog and some useful hints and notes. Remember, that you can access the dialog, if you move the mouse over the TrackIt area and then press the right mouse button. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The OK button: confirm all settings in the dialog and continue with the program. (Remember, click-right to get into the dialog) The FONT button: Select a font of your choice. All attributes are supported. I would recommend to use a fixed-pitched font for a cleaner look. The COLOR buttons: Select a color of your choice for the foreground, background and the percentbar. THE SYSINFO BOX: ---------------- memory usage in %: If this is checked, you will be displayed the current memory utilisation of the system. The information is so important (I think), that it is not displayed in the window (if popup is not choosen). Instead it goes to the windows caption. This has the advantage, that under Windows95 you can see the memory usage in the taskbar,even if the program is minimized. total physical mem: Displays the total amount of available physical memory. Interestingly enough, the values differ under W95 and NT. I got 29MB under W95, 32MB under NT. avail.physical mem: displays the current available physical memory. Since this amount is seldom more than 5MB, the information is always displayed in KB. All other memory info is displayed in MB and will change to KB, if the value drops to less than 1024. total pages: The total number of memory pages. avail. pages: The number of available pages total virtual mem: The total number of virtual memory. avail. virtual mem: The amount of available MB in swapspace. pagesize: The size of a memorypage. min.appl.address: The lowest possible startaddress for an application. max.appl.address: The highest possible endadress for an application. processor type: displays the typename of the processor. Interestingly enough, it always reports wrong on my machine. The reason is, the defines are different from the real results of the involved SDK function call. Since I do not know, if this is a mistake in the function itself, or a mistake in the (MS) headerfile, I could not do anything about it. Once the final version of W95 is out, I will supply an update to TrackIt1.1 which fixes this then. SystemDate: shows the current local date. Dateformat differences is taken care of. The DRIVES box: --------------- There is nothing much to say here. Choose the drives you wish to get displayed. A and B are always displayed in KB, all the others in MB. This will change to KB also, if the free space drops to less than 1024KB. NOTE: The availability of the checked drive is not checked. If you choose a not valid drive, the main window will display a 'not available'. The MISC box: ------------- always top: If checked, the TrackIt window will reside on top of the desktop all the time. calc. task slice: This is sort of tricky. What is displayed here, is _not_ the current CPU utilisation. Measured here is the the speed of overall message throughput. I think, this value gives a fairly good idea of what 'is currently going on' in your system regarding time consumption. The higher the value, the better. To give you a better idea: Try to copy a big file to drive A: and see, how drastically the value drops. This is due to some DMA access to that drive, which requires most attention of the system. At that point, all running applications cannot receive as much msgs as they could do in idle state. That's why the value drops. Experiment with some applications, especially time consuming ones, and you will see, that the value presented is unfortunately 'pretty possible'. Average values in idlestate, I could check on my own are: P90: 80-92 P60: 61 NOTE: calc. task slice does ONLY work, if 'use timer' is disabled. use timer: Installs a timer for triggering some actions (like repainting) after the sample delay has passed. Usually such an application would always use a timer to trigger acurate measurement of the sample delay. Since the program does not rely on such critical timing, I have embedded the option to disable the timer usage. There could be two advantages if you disable this option. First, timers are _very_ limited and if you run some more applications, you might fall into a situation, where an application does not start anymore due to a 'can not allocate timer' error. Disableing the timer in TrackIt would free a timer, that then can be used by another application. The second advantage is, 'calc. time slice' works ONLY, if 'use timer' is disabled, so once you want this calculation, you need to disable the timer anyway. smp.delay: The sample delay is the time in milliseconds that has to pass, before an information collection and the repaint of the new information is triggered. The larger this value, the fewer system time is wasted. But if the value is to large, the information might get 'out of date' when it is next displayed. A value between 1000-5000 is good enough for every day usage. A value below 100, or an incorrect value (e.g: mixed with characters) will be set to 100 automatically. percentbar under text: If an information returns percent values, you will have a colored bar under the text, that represents the value displayed in this line. percentvalue in string: Instead of displaying the percentbar, you can have all the percent information displayed int the info string itself: The THUNK box: ------------- GDI,System,User: All three checkboxes reflect the values you all might know of the old W3.1 environment. It represents the free User, GDI and System Resources of W.3.1. However, this function now does reflect the status of W95 too, so it is a pretty usefull information. HAVE FUN!