Tame Upgrade History Version 3.3 New Features: ------------ Tame now detects and fully supports Windows NT. Tame /Run now returns with the same errorlevel the program returned Tame /BOOST is now more effective when the system is extremely busy. Specifically, Tame is more effective in the situation where all of the following conditions are met. 1. The Tame /BOOST option is used 2. Two or more tasks are working simultaneously 3. One or more of the programs poll while working 4. The operating system uses a small timeslice Version 3.2 New Features: ------------ Version 3.2 is available as a commercial and as a shareware product. Tame may now be used with programs that do not poll when idle. Tame can detect that the program is doing no real work and release time slices accordingly. The new /II NOWORK option enables this feature. Version 3.1 Version 3.1 is available as a commercial and as a shareware product. New Features: ------------ Native support for OS/2 has been added New options: /KeyWaitPoll, /SETtings, /TaskSwitchRepeat New /IdleIndicate option: PSPPOLL /NoTimer option has been improved for better compatibility Tame now can find its auxiliary files using the TAME= environment variable. Any Hardware IRQs may be monitored directly for activity, which allows more programs to be tamed. Version 3.0 Version 3.0 is available only as a commercial product. The options have been reorganized and several options have been added. New Features: ------------ Pop-up monitor indicates the degree of performance improvement. Pop-up parameters allows you to view Tame statistics and adjust Tame parameters without exiting your program. Hardware ports can be monitored directly for activity, which allows more programs like communications packages to be tamed. New comprehensive documentation (100+ indexed pages). Support for PC-MOS has been added Version 2.61 The /KeySwitch option was modified to be more effective in many cases. I now recommend that some programs be run using /KeySwitch, even when running in a supported multi-tasker. It also has a side affect that quickly throws away the opening screen of some programs. Negative values for Tame arguments were being misinterpreted. This was evident in the TAMETUNE.BAT file which specifies /MAX:-1. The problem has been corrected. Version 2.6 Slow screen writing was sometimes reported. This has been addressed (and hopefully cured) with a new option which will turn Tame off for a brief period after each key press or I/O (these tend to imply that the program is working hard). The amount of time to keep Tame off after a key press or an I/O may be adjusted separately using the /BOOST option. The default boost is two clock ticks (0.11 second) for each. You may now turn off Tame for a specified amount of time. This is done with /OFF:time where time is measured in PC clock ticks (0.055 seconds, or 18.2 ticks per second). The maximum is 32,767 ticks, which corresponds to about 30 minutes. Note that Tame will automatically turn back on after as a key is pressed. Tame may now read its parameters from a file. This is done by specifying /@filename on the command line. Also, Tame may dump its parameters to a file. This combination provides a good way to save and later restore Tame parameters. For example, the following lines will run 123 with a specific Tame parameter, and then restore them after it is done. TAME /WriteOptions >c:\hold123.tmp TAME /FREQ 64 123 TAME /@c:\hold123.tmp Tame sometimes detected Double Dos on a system running Novell Netware and Windows. This has been corrected. TAME-ANL is now included in the Tame zip. Version 2.54 Running a command with "TAME-RES cmdline" was sometimes acting wierd. This has been fixed. Version 2.53 Command line processing was enhanced to no longer require cryptic syntax. Now, /FREQ:10,5 is the same as /FREQ 10 5 and /FREQ 10,5. Also, the command line may now contain @file, where the actual command line comes from that file. Version 2.51 Some default parameters with version 2.5 were not computed correctly. For example, /FREQ would default to /FREQ:0,0 and /FGONLY would default to /FGONLY:0. This is clearly incorrect, and the problem has been corrected. Version 2.5 Tame will now help many DESQview-aware (and Topview-aware) programs become aware of Windows and other environments. A new /DVAWARE option has been added to do this. If the only programs being run are DESQview-aware then parameter-based tameing may not be needed. In this case, specify the following options for best results: /NoKeyIdle /NoKeyPoll /NoTimePoll /DVAware The following programs have been tested using this option: PCBOARD, Pro-Yam Version 2.44 A problem with /Geiger on systems with the ATI video card was corrected. Version 2.43 Tame uses another method to detect Omniview. The /Clone option may now save the tasker along with other Tame options. If the tasker is to be saved, then the /tasker option must be specified on the /Clone line, and must be before the /Clone option (e.g. Tame /Omniview /Clone:tame-ov) Version 2.42 Tame is now effective with the StupenDOS shell, and will probably help other programs that poll the keyboard the same way StupenDOS does. The first parameter of the /Geiger option may now be specified in units of "clock ticks" between geiger ticks. This is done using a negative value. Version 2.41 Tame will now automatically detect Omniview. Tame Geiger counter was fixed so that the defaults are appropriate on fast 80486 based machines. The /Geiger option will now be Tamed to use almost no CPU whenever TAME-RES is loaded and Tame is properly tuned. This is because the Geiger counter now polls the keyboard many times between ticks. When /Geiger:0 is specified, it will tick each time this task gets a time slice. This requires TAME-RES be loaded to work effectively. A new batch file, GEIGER.BAT is included. It will run the geiger counter as fast as possible and fully tamed. Version 2.4 Windows support, and a new /WINdows switch were added. Tame can be effective with communications programs, and other programs that are not affected by the "Idle" box in the Windows PIF setup. Many thanks to Wim Morrison for supplying the information I needed in order to tame Windows. TAME-RES can now be provided a command line to run. It will tame the command line and not load Tame as a resident program. This means you may no longer need batch files to start up your program in a DESQview/Windows task. See the docs for restrictions on this way of running Tame. The /CLONE option has been enhanced to optionally specify the name of the command to run automatically when the cloned .COM is run. Version 2.31 /Geiger defaults were not determined properly with FAST machines. this has been corrected. Also, the default Geiger defaults are more accurately indicated. Version 2.3 Support was added for OmniView, VM/386, and TopView compatible multi-taskers. New options were added to specify which multitasker is in use in case Tame cannot correctly determine which it is. New /NoKeyPoll option allows keyboard polls to be ignored. This allows switching to be based only on the date poll. The Tame status report now indicates how many times Tame forced the task to run only in the foreground. New metering options that I may not document. /Idle_METER will list how much time the CPU is idle. /Task_Switch_Meter will count task switches per second. Compatibility problem with Taming Prodoor 3.1 in DESQview was solved. The /FGOnly option now has a synonym /NoBackGround due to nomenclature changes in DESQview. Also, /NoFGOnly has a synonym of /BackGround. /KeyIdle is no longer the default key-idle option. Version 2.2 This version has many new options, making Tame even more effective at reducing Multi-tasking overhead. New -FGonly:N option forces the task to not run (at all) in the background during the periods that it is polling the keyboard. An optional "N" numeric argument allows activating this only after N successive forced task switches. This works only in DESQview, and is not recommended for all applications. However, when it may be used, it is extremely effective. See the DOC file for more details. The -KeyIdle option now allows specifying the poll threshold to use after an idle interrupt is detected. With version 2.0 and 2.1, /KeyIdle defaulted to being on with a fixed threshold of 0. The default now has /KeyIdle off, and if turned on, its default value is 2. New -Frequency:n,m option may be used in place of -MAX, and will switch tasks only if that many polls come in one timer tick (18.2 ticks per second). This requires individual tuning, but it gives Tame the best indicator of how much the task is really working. A nominal value for "n" is suggested by Tame if you specify /Frequency with no value. New -CLONE:filename option will make a new TAME-RES with the current parameters as its defaults. Must be run as the only Tame option on the command line. This feature is available only to registered users. Some general cleanup of DESQview handling was done based on information in the DESQview API manual Tame now uses DESQview to make sure DOS is not busy. This is more effective than the previously used method when using DESQview. An incompatibility with the DX shareware utility was corrected. The problem may have affected other programs. Version 2.1 A problem with Tame locking up some machines has been fixed. New -INT15 option added to use version 2.0 INT15 handling Registered users may now easily register new releases of Tame. Version 2.0 Tame is now a TSR, and it uses less than 1K of memory. The function of the previous -Key_Idle option has been removed. A new option has been added with the same name, but a completely different meaning. The following options are no longer supported: 1 -CALLS 2 -DESQVIEW 3 -IDLE 4 -POLL The following options have been added: 1 -GETALL 2 -HALTSWITCH 3 -OFF 4 -ON 5 -SERIAL 6 -STATUS 7 -UNINSTALL The following options have been renamed 1 -KEY is now -KEYSWITCH 2 -TIME is now -TIMEPOLL 3 -TOTALS is now -STATUS