Heya!

Wow, my first "Reply to All" on the Muskie list...  ::pauses a moment in
awe, then shakes the beer out of his ears and gets back to typing::

Well, I know Dragon has posted a lot of info on making machines faster with
AOL on the web page, I'd like to make a few suggestions of my own (repeating
a lot of Dragn's stuff too, just to double cover).

1)  Frame rate is affected just as much by the video capability as the
    proccessor/bus/memory speed.  Make sure you have at least a VESA local bus
    video card, or you might as well save yerself a lot of agony and not even try
    it.  Some people have reported mixed success with the UNI-Vibe driver in
    increasing video speed, but I haven't been able to substantiate it.  A good 2
    or 4 meg card will DRASTICALLY improve performance.

2)  Memory.  AW is a major memory hog, and so is AOL.  Here's some
    approximate figures:

    *AW takes 8 meg of availible memory
    *A well used copy of AOL takes up 2-5 Meg
    *Windows wants a minimum of 1 meg, plus another if you're using Win32s in
     win 3.1x.

That's 11 meg minimum.  Now a swapfile works best when it's above the
amount of memory you currently have availible on the machine, as it mirrors
the RAM on the drive.  That means if you have 12 meg machine memory, plus 12
meg of swapfile, you still only have 1 meg free space.  And if that nifty
screen saver decides to pop on while yer runnin to the fridge fer a coke, yer
gonna be comin back to a sign off screen.

So, make your swap file double the size of yer real RAM amount.
A good memory manger will also let you increase the use of your RAM, and
help you identify DOS tsr's that you don't need.
Actually, although a swapfile will help you get things moving, there is no
substitute for real RAM.  It's at an all time low in price now, and if yer
machine can use it, I strongly recommend EDO.  That little 20% boost is just
an extra five bucks on the price.  Take a look at this URL for a ballpark
figure of what you should be paying for RAM:
 
http://members.gnn.com/mpolo/memory.htm

3) Windows itself:  In Win3.11, yer losin a LOT of overhead to Win32s.
   Microsoft says it's faster, but I did some benchmarks, and they LIE.  Big
   surprise there.  Anyway, by removing all programs other than AOL, Program
   Manager (or Explorer/Systray), and AW from your task list, you'll free up
   resources.

Secret resource killers in Windows?  FONTS!  Get rid of all you don't use,
the suckers are murder.  Also, drivers for printer and other devices you may
no longer have, and system event sounds.  Kill 'em all.

I hate to, but I strongly recommend moving to Win95, as it's faster on
machines that are close to or above AW requirements, and will support
Direct-X, which Kesmai is gonna use to improve the AOL framerates in future
versions.  Installing it is HELL, but once it's done, it's kinda nice.

If you have a good amount of RAM on your machine, you can always go to the
System control panel, select the Performance tab, and set your machine to
"Server" instead of "Desktop".  This will help prevent some shady memory
practices that Microsoft uses to make it's own applications look like they
run faster than competitors.  Se to Desktop, only MS applications will go
straight to memory, not the swapfile.

4)  AOL.  In Members/Preferences/Graphics, there is an option for reducing
    the amount of space that AOL uses for graphics. If you are using AOL only for
    Airwarrior, reduce this to 1 meg.  This reduces the amount of memory AOL
    grabs at launch.  DON'T do this if you plan on using AOL for anything else,
    or you'll be in for a lot of art downloads. Minimize AOL and all other 
    windows in it (Close the Buddy List and that fancy screen with the shooting
    planes, they're killers).

5) AW4W.  You've probably all heard this before, but lose the sounds, the
   Artificial Horizon, and use the generic art on 640x480 resolution.  You can
   also abbreviate the range in flight with the 1-5 keys.

Check out any local computer shows too, you'll find LOTS of really cheap
stuff fer makin yer machine faster.  A friend of mine went and bought 2 UDC
motherboards with 586 133mhz proccessors fer just 129$ each.  (He bought two,
just because they were so cheap, now he has an extra computer he never uses.
Go figure). That's about the same performance as a Pentium 75-90.  512k
Pipeline burst caches are runnin about 35 bucks for those that can use them.

This is gettin pretty darn long, so I'll go ahead and start cuttin it.
Most of these steps are unneccessary for higher end computers, I'm really
just writing it for people like Wraith who are gettin a miserable 4fps when
trying to fly.

So, thanks fer lettin me wag yer ears (Or eyes), and I hope to see all of
ya in the air >=)

  o--{----Maris------------