Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#31

Post by DonHopkins » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

When I used to hang out at Radio Shack in the mall to play on a TRS-80's after school, they would draw a pair of asterisks in the corner of the screen and occasionally flash one of them on and off, as they loaded from cassette tape.

One of the older kids who hung out there would tell us newer kids that we could speed up loading by repeatedly pressing the up arrow key on the keyboard.

Of course us new kids didn't realize that the loading speed was completely determined by the cassette tape speed, which the keyboard couldn't possibly affect.

But at least it gave us something to do while waiting, and the older kids something to laugh at.

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#32

Post by zellyn » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

I definitely remember seeing scrolling-is-faster-if-you-wiggle-the-mouse on Linux too, back in the day, and being surprised that a bug (? misfeature?) like that would show up on such different stacks.

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#33

Post by air7 » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

FillardMillmore wrote: post #3

Here I was thinking this was some sort of urban myth caused by superstitions in an age with less abundance of easily accessible tech information. Guess I owe my dad an apology now.

Me too. What a humbling slap-in-the-face, no? Sometimes when an idea sounds silly, and comes from a less technical person, one might disregard it even though it's easily testable/provable.

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#34

Post by cantstop » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 2:19 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #28

It's this bit of code: while(GetMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0) > 0) { TranslateMessage(&msg); DispatchMessage(&msg); } The mouse isr would cause a loop like this to execute at some point, processing all the messages on the queue. Win95 had preemption, but it ran at 100hz. Moving the mouse caused additional queue processing on top of the time sliced preemption.

At that time, it was more like the 75mhz range.

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#35

Post by metalchianti » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

_trampeltier wrote: post #16

From a comment: Try opening a large file with Notepad on a contemporary machine. The window must not be full screen. When loaded, mark all text using the mouse (the keyboard works as well, it just needs more manual skill). While still holding the button down (and marking) move the mouse down, so the text gets marked and scrolled. Now compare the scroll speed while holding the mouse still versus wiggling it. Depending…

Strange but mine doesn't scroll UNLESS I move the mouse. I wonder if this is because I have the "Adjust for best performance" option set?

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#36

Post by samstave » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #13

This wasn't just restricted to COM port based I/O either. Back then I had a Logitech bus mouse. The mouse was connected directly to an ISA card, and didn't use the COM ports as most mice did back then. (I needed the extra COM port/IRQ for my modems.) I too witnessed the 'windows is running slow when installing' bug. I often would use the mouse cursor to 'mark' the position of the loading bar (we really are spoiled fo…

Get off my lawn!

But what newbies will bever know the heck of: dip switch settings for IRQ for modems.

Thats what literally got me into computers...

In order to dial up BBSs and play tthe Pit and dl warez.

—-

Ive told this story before, but in about 1992? Or so - i got grounded for a month because i had been calling in long distance to a bbs in san jose to play the pit - and racked up a long distance bill of $926 - my dad was livid.

He yelled at me and said “why are you wasting all this time with computers! Its never going to do anything for you!”

Years later after i became successful with yee olde computerz! He apologized to me and said “im sorry i yelled at you for that time you cost me all that money in long distance charges.”

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#37

Post by nemo44x » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #31

When I used to hang out at Radio Shack in the mall to play on a TRS-80's after school, they would draw a pair of asterisks in the corner of the screen and occasionally flash one of them on and off, as they loaded from cassette tape. One of the older kids who hung out there would tell us newer kids that we could speed up loading by repeatedly pressing the up arrow key on the keyboard. Of course us new kids didn't real…

Reminds me back in the day using a file sharing/community program called Caraccho (for Mac) - similar to Hotline. Often people would queue up on someone's server (running of their desktop computer) to download a file since the server admin could set how many concurrent downloads from all users were allowed. Folks would send messages to people saying that if they hit Command-Q it makes the client run in "quick mode" which will speed up their download. Of course some folks would fall for this and you'd see their name drop off the server, moving everyone up 1 spot in the queue. Super effective for users that had not setup an avatar indicating they were new to the system and would fall for anything once.

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#38

Post by woliveirajr » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

One thing that also worked was to open and close the CD-ROM tray. It felt like HDD was waiting for something that open-close action on the CD-ROM drive would trigger some reaction.

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#39

Post by nottorp » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

Had that in an app i was working on ages ago.

We were doing some processing on a database and updating the progress bar every record. We processed the UI messages at that point as well so any click on Cancel could get through.

As customer databases grew, the processing began to exhibit this behaviour.

If I remember well, we fixed it by only updating the progress bar every 1%. It may have been more complicated than that though, I had moved on to another job when the fix was done.

Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

#40

Post by chasingthewind » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #36

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #13

This wasn't just restricted to COM port based I/O either. Back then I had a Logitech bus mouse. The mouse was connected directly to an ISA card, and didn't use the COM ports as most mice did back then. (I needed the extra COM port/IRQ for my modems.) I too witnessed the 'windows is running slow when installing' bug. I often would use the mouse cursor to 'mark' the position of the loading bar (we really are spoiled fo…

Get off my lawn! But what newbies will bever know the heck of: dip switch settings for IRQ for modems. Thats what literally got me into computers... In order to dial up BBSs and play tthe Pit and dl warez. —- Ive told this story before, but in about 1992? Or so - i got grounded for a month because i had been calling in long distance to a bbs in san jose to play the pit - and racked up a long distance bill of $926 - m…

I also got yelled at by my dad for racking up long distance charges in 1991 or 92 but in my case it was only about $150 for calling the Sierra BBS to download stuff for King's Quest games or something :)