How to solve the top two complaints about the Dauphin DTR-1 Original by Nick Dolezal 1. My Dauphin is too slow! It doesn't even run Doom at a decent speed. Well, the Dauphin is slow because of several factors: It uses a Cyrix chip, and Cyrix chips suck Intel 486DX/33: 70 Cyrix 486SLC/25: 40 (Norton SI 8.0). 'Nuff said. The CPU has 1K of cache, not the Intel 8K The external bus is 16-bit, not 32-bit It has an ISA classic bus video, not PCI or even VLB video So what can you do about this? Some no-cost speed enhancements I recommend are: Make sure "turbo" is on Remove EMM386 from your autoexec/config.sys, this really does help It even improves the port speed D/L the DRAM speedup program from Toby's page and include in your autoexec: "C:\DRAM\DRAM.COM 200" (or wherever you put it) This also improves battery life a bit Speedup of about 5% Defrag your hard drive Up the disk spindown time in your BIOS setup Run GEOS instead of Pen Windows, not nearly as many apps, but it sure is fast! Use a disk cache (or for DOS/4GW protected mode apps, don't) Gee, you couldn't of guessed this: upgrade the CPU! Speedup: About 90% New CPU: 486SXL/2 50mHz, TI chip with RISC microkernal and 8KB cache Cost: $160 (plus shipping) Who: SHEX consulting & trading GmbH Mr. Shervin Shoushtary Tel. (011 - 49 4101) 372 021 Hempbergstr. 1 25462 Rellingen Germany E-mail: shexcon@aol.com Note: this upgrade increases battery life 2. The Dauphin's battery life... sucks. Hey, it uses DRAM, a hard drive, and a backlit display. But here are some things you can do to improve it: In the BIOS, make sure power savings is enabled Disable the 3.5" floppy drive (the circuity will be shut off then) Turn disk spin-down to 10-30 (?) seconds Low spin down time: High wear Uses lots of juice powering up again High spin down time: Not as much wear Higher consumption when on, but doesn't use so much juice powering back up (15x(?)) Turn sleep/doze to 1 and 2, respectively If you slow down the CPU to 8mHz to save batteries, make sure you enable the cache Slow/turbo off disables the cache. Use LCD.EXE to turn it on, or: Autoexec.bat: "C:\DAUPHIN\LCD CACHE ON" The cache uses hardly any power (~0.025mA) because it's SRAM Don't use modem.com in your autoexec, or power up the ethernet port on bootup Use 2MB of cache in Pen Windows/DOS Autoexec: "C:\DOS\SMARTDRV 2048 2048" Disable the swapfile in Pen Windows OR Toby Reed documents an unusual way of saving power with Windows: Get Stacker 4.0 Make a 3.5-4MB RamDisk (remember to still have the disk cache) Compress it with Stacker Make Windows use this drive as it's swapfile Doesn't seem to make it much slower I think there are RAM compression programs that get the same effect Get the CPU upgrade Dim your screen brightness (contrast doesn't eat batteries, don't worry about that) If you take the brightness down too low, it becomes hard to see the screen Solution: invert the screen colors How: AUTOEXEC.BAT: "C:\DAUPHIN\LCD REVERSE GRAPHIC REVERSE" Buy an extra battery pack Buy the 8-hour battery pack ($400) Make this: Get 8 D-cell batteries and two D-cell holders at radio shack or somewhere Note: Radio Shack alkalines suck! Get a jack that'll fit into the Dauphin's power in Wire it up, and make sure you get the polarity right I'm in no way responsible if you fry your Dauphin Now enjoy an incredible 25 hours of battery life Weight: about 2.5 pounds It may be possible to make a smaller device with less capacity if you step up the voltage You get about three hours if you step up the voltage from only one D battery NiCd's will work, as will Renewals, but the capacity will be severly diminished and you will need more cells to make 12 volts. © 1996 By Toby Reed / toby@eskimo.com