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?

#101

Post by cek » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:54 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've told the exact same story. Weird.

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

#102

Post by DoubleCribble » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #90

Swenrekcah wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find the Progress bar is usually about as accurate as the Time Remaining calculation. Both are better than nothing but more of a fiction than reality.

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

#103

Post by tomcatfish » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #72

butisaidsudo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love these kind of issues, here are two classics: - Open Office won't print on Tuesdays: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161... - Can't send email more than 500 miles: http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

One thing about the famous "500 miles" post that I realized doesn't make sense: ---- An odd feature of our campus network at the time was that it was 100% switched. An outgoing packet wouldn't incur a router delay until hitting the POP and reaching a router on the far side. So time to connect to a lightly-loaded remote host on a nearby network would actually largely be governed by the speed of light distance to the d…

I believe one version of this story explains that the math (and the situation) has been simplified for the sake of this story in order to make it readable.

Makes sense, I can share this story to people without any computer knowledge, but something explaining how connections are established would be wholly incomprehensible to them.

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

#104

Post by wongarsu » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #90

Swenrekcah wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I implement progress bars I most often implement "pessimistic progress", so "considering all timeouts, worst case we are 46.5% (of the time) to some result", with an update every few hundreed milliseconds. As possible mix in data from completed subtasks.

Nobody ever complains if the process suddenly speeds up because progress was made before the timeout, as long as your initial estimate wasn't absurd (looks at Windows Explorer). Even a naive progress bar counting down the 60s timeout is more informative and satisfying to watch than an endless spinner.

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

#105

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

cek wrote: post #101

samstave wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've told the exact same story. Weird.

Also $926?

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

#106

Post by blihp » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

zellyn wrote: post #32

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.

Back in the day it wasn't a bug, but rather more of a cheat to make your system feel faster than it really was: if the system actually gave the UI a fair share of CPU cycles, the system would feel incredibly sluggish. Conversely, if it gave the UI the lions share of CPU, nothing would ever get done in the background. So it compromised and gave the UI preferential treatment when the user was active (i.e. when there was recent mouse/keyboard activity), and a more fair allocation when they weren't so other things could get done.

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

#107

Post by jwandborg » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #72

butisaidsudo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love these kind of issues, here are two classics: - Open Office won't print on Tuesdays: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161... - Can't send email more than 500 miles: http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles

One thing about the famous "500 miles" post that I realized doesn't make sense: ---- An odd feature of our campus network at the time was that it was 100% switched. An outgoing packet wouldn't incur a router delay until hitting the POP and reaching a router on the far side. So time to connect to a lightly-loaded remote host on a nearby network would actually largely be governed by the speed of light distance to the d…

The speed of electricity in copper is lower than the speed of light in a vacuum. The speed of light in fiber optics seems to be even lower.

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

#108

Post by mcguire » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

Entertaining, but probably unrelated: there was a systems paper from the late '90s or early 2000s (SOSP?) where the authors used an extremely low priority process recording timestamps to instrument system behavior. Basically, because the process wouldn't run if anything else was runnable, it wouldn't generate its periodic timestamps. As a result, they could easily see relatively low-level details about system CPU behavior.

One thing they discovered was that Windows 95 would enter a tight CPU polling loop if you held the mouse button down. So, don't do that.

[Edit: dammit, I cannot find the paper. Sorry. It was really interesting.]

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

#109

Post by omnibrain » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

DCoder wrote: post #51

kabwj wrote: post #8

Reminds me of https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=32233

Raymond Chen's blog is always a great source of interesting information. But I remember the times when that blog didn't look like a webdesign internship project in progress. And there were interesting comments…

So much history was lost when microsoft migrated the blogs and deleted the comments...

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

#110

Post by mcguire » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 5:21 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…

"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.”"

At which point you lit up your Havana Muy Gordo with a $1000 bill and said, "Don't sweat it?"