Windows and the mcmaster – Kingston Technology MCMASTER MC133PD User Manual

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Appendix C Troubleshooting

Kingston Technology Company

MCMaster User’s Guide - Rev. B06

If you upgrade your system to a 486 after installing DOS 5.0, there are a few
steps you can take to take advantage of these features.

1.

Insert a call to EMM386.EXE in your CONFIG.SYS file.
Consult your DOS documentation for details.

2.

If you intend to run Windows in 386 Enhanced mode, copy the
file WINA20.386 from the DOS distribution diskettes into the
root directory of your boot drive. This file is in compressed
format. Use the DOS EXPAND command to uncompress it.

Performing these actions will allow you take advantage of the 486 architecture,
gaining more than just speed from your new 486 CPU.

Windows and the MCMaster

There are a few items to note with regard to Windows and the MCMaster.
These are not fatal problems, but they can affect Windows' performance.
"Reinstalling Windows" applies to Windows 3.0 or 3.1. "Configuring
SMARTDRV.SYS" applies only to Windows 3.0.

Also, if your system contains a SCSI disk controller, you might need to use the
driver described in "Special Drivers for SCSI Adapters".

Re-installing Windows for the 386

At installation time, Windows checks the environment it's going into and, if it
doesn't detect a 386 processor, doesn't install the 386 Enhanced Mode files.
This means that if you install the MCMaster in a 286-based machine such as a
Model 60 after installing Windows, you'll have to reinstall Windows to take
advantage of Windows' 386 mode.

Configuring SMARTDRV.SYS

With the release of Windows 3.0, Microsoft made dramatic improvements in
the installation procedure.
One of the improvements, however, is that examining system memory is no
longer a separate step. Therefore, when you install Windows 3.0 on a system
with a MCMaster, Windows' SETUP program doesn't "see" the

MCMaster

memory, and sets the disk cache to a much smaller size than it would if it knew
about the MCMaster memory. This results in a lot more disk reads than are
necessary, degrading performance significantly.

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