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…
Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
81–90 of 201 posts
Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
#82This reminds me of using NUM LOCK to see if your CPU was responding to the A20 interrupt.
And this reminds me of when I accidentally figured out playing MOD sound files in DOS 6 with a new and especially beautiful STM/MOD player at the time would sound considerably better from my 486's PC speaker if I pressed the pause/break key to literally lock up the system. Apparently the player would buffer enough of the song that even though everything froze up, the sound would continue playing. I couldn't afford a dedicated Soundblaster/Gravis sound card but I still pined to hear all the amazing music coming out from the demo scene. The quality of course wasn't comparable to a dedicated soundcard but it was still a huge improvement over the typical beeps/bloops of the built-in PC speaker.
Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
#83From 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…
It even works on my latest Firefox beta on Windows 10 (on this HN page). Hmm...They may not the same thing.
Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t the use of the lock buttons, like, the standard way to test whether the OS/hardware still responds to something or if it’s reboot time?
They’re soft now. It might indicate your usb driver is wedged, not if your CPU is responding to interrupts at all. This is a problem for NTP developers - finding real serial ports on modern hardware
The keyboard lights have always been soft. There are certainly more layers now between a keyboard and an os though.
Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I often would use the mouse cursor to 'mark' the position of the loading bar (we really are spoiled for speed these days). This is just me, oh my gosh. I thought I was the only one who did that. But now I come to think about it, it can't be true. It has been a really long time since I used that technique last time...
What ? I still do that at least once a week/month. Last time it was for the linux dropbox updater, last week. I am also a fan of using another window so I can use the mouse and still have a marker to monitor progress.
I do this all the time too, but unfortunately many processes today only go around in circls instead of showing the actual progress.
Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
#86This 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…
Was this a win95 only bug? I remember doing the mouse thing on 98 as well.
Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
#87I used to open the CD drive when the entire computer would freeze up. I wonder if its the same thing.
Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
#88Now the only thing left is to figure out why Dungeon Keeper II crashed roughly 50% of the time at startup. Don't ask about my procurance of said software; we do not speak of such things.
EDIT: And of course, a person who should not be named at the time remarked: "Computers always do the same thing, DKII can't be crashing sometimes and other times not..."
Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally it's cheap/poorly designed audio amplifier circuits. Even though modern PC audio is mostly digital, the final stage (getting sound out the speaker) is still analog. If the motherboard designer isn't careful about how they place/isolate/ground the analog audio circuitry, it can pick up some of the PC's stray high frequency noise which gets worse the more you turn up the volume since now the noise gets amplif…
They claim the PC is emitting the sound, not their speakers. So they are likely describing coil whine, not interference.
You're assuming a precision in their post that I wasn't (i.e. that it's actually coming from the PCB, rather than 'the collection of parts called a PC sitting in front of me'... which would include the speakers for most people)
Re: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
What ? I still do that at least once a week/month. Last time it was for the linux dropbox updater, last week. I am also a fan of using another window so I can use the mouse and still have a marker to monitor progress.
I do this all the time too, but unfortunately many processes today only go around in circls instead of showing the actual progress.
to be fair, "actual progress" is almost always a misnomer anyway.