About this program (Best viewed using E.EXE with word wrap on) This is a freeware benchmark for OS/2. Like all such benchmark programs, its results can be read in many ways. Beware of making too many decisions based on its output - by their very nature, benchmark programs are *not* real world applications. By tuning your system with the aid of benchmarks, you may end up with a system that runs benchmark programs wonderfully well but runs applications badly! Just so you're aware.... There are a number of executables in this version of Sysbench. All MUST be in the same directory or the CPU benchmark tests will fail. The executables exist so that the CPU tests can be multitasked on SMP capable machines. Each is run as a separate process and passes the results back as a return code. You may run any of these tests on their own and use the return code from them to determine the test result if you wish. Results produced using 0.9.2 may not be compared directly with results from previous versions of the program - sorry. I realised that the disk I/O tests results were being distorted too much by the values returned by the "Cache/bus xfer" tests. In real life this result makes little difference to the speed of your disk subsystem so I've changed the weighting assigned to it in calculating the "Disk I/O mark". The values returned by the test itself are pretty much the same. The results returned by all the CPU tests are also likely to be different to previous versions since these tests are now run as separate processes. For this reason alone you should not compare CPU results from 0.9.2 with previous versions. In addition the CPU test EXE files have been compiled using the single thread version of the VisualAge C++ runtime library and this will also change the values that are returned. You'll also find that the graphics tests now run fullscreen so the values from these will also differ from previous versions. If you have the original Warp 3 or Warp Connect without any fixpacks do NOT attempt to run the file SBCPUSE.RUN or your system will stop with a TRAP 000E. This is the executable that measures the amount of CPU usage by using the new API call however the mere act of loading it causes OS/2 to TRAP if run on a system that does not support the new API call. Sysbench determines whether your system supports this or not and automatically calls it if it is supported. I have named the executable sbcpuse.run to make it more difficult for the unwary to trap their system. The complete set of tests from end to end is likely to run for about half an hour. This program was distributed complete with all source needed to compile it. The source was originally written by Henrik Harmsen and was donated to the OS/2 community by him when he moved off to use Linux. The source has undergone many revisions, bugfixes and has a number of new functions since that time. Please do not report problems to him as he hasn't touched the code for a long time. The last version of the source that was included came with Sysbench 0.9.1d which was distributed as SYSB091D.ZIP. Due to space constraints I have now REMOVED the source from the archive in order to make it smaller (~330Kb instead of ~770Kb). If you want access to the source, email me and ask for it. If I get more than a couple of requests for it, I'll upload it as a separate archive. Since I suspect that the source is redundant for most people I hope it makes life easier. The version of the program you now have was coded by me, Trevor Hemsley, and you should report any and all problems to me (Trevor-Hemsley@dial.pipex.com). The detailed log of the changes from the prior releases are now itemised in changes.txt to save clogging up this readme file with them. There is a site on the internet where results are collected. It's run by Jonipentti Jarvinen who collects the results and posts them. His e-mail address is jonipentti.jarvinen@toty.joensuu.fi. I've specifically added a "Save results as HTML" option to the File menu to save a set of results in the format ready to be posted on this site... so if you aim to send your results to JP, use the HTML option and assist the task of maintaining the site. The site is http://toty.joensuu.fi/staff/jp/os2bench.html if you want to go have a look around. Do not send me your results unless you are reporting a problem with the program and are including them as documentation to demonstrate the error. I have attempted to gather some hardware information from within the application as it initialises. I'm attempting to get hold of the BIOS manufacturer and the video card/chipset in use. If these are incorrectly filled in please send me a mail and let me know which video card, how much memory and the debugging information that's output in a set of text results. This should be enough to add this video card to the next version of Sysbench. Similarly for the BIOS, if it is misidentified, I need to know what is output from within MSD using Print and selecting only the information for Memory Browser and pointing it to a file. Disclaimer Standard disclaimers apply. This program is supplied in good faith but I am not responsible for any loss or damage that may result from use of it. All use of this program is strictly at your own risk. Program Usage You can either invoke the program by typing SYSBENCH at a command prompt and then use the menus to perform the testing or you can run it in automatic mode using the parameters /ALL - run all tests and then quit saving the results to the current directory as RESULT.TXT and RESULT.HTM /R:filename - specify the filename to which to save results. It must specify a pre-existing directory if a directory name is given. /H:filename - specify the filename to which to save results in HTML format. It must specify a pre-existing directory if a directory name is given. Running SYSBENCH /all /r:y:\sysbench\res091.txt will run all tests and save the results to the file \sysbench\res091.txt on the Y: drive. The HTML format results will be saved as RESULT.HTM in the current directory since it isn't overridden. Be aware that running this way from a command line will generate a set of results full of "Unknown machine" type comments. If you want to have it include some reasonable data you'll need to invoke Sysbench from a command line without any operands and go through the definition dialog pages to enter data about your machine. You can also copy SYSBENCH.INI from another machine but it'll be identical to the definitions on there if you do this. The complete suite of tests may run for some considerable time. Sysbench 0.9.1 This is a revision of the Sysbench 0.9.0 program, originally written by Henrik Harmsen. His introductory readme file has been renamed to README.HCH in this package and needs to be read in conjunction with _this_ file. Warning - Warning - Warning. You should NOT compare results produced using this revision of the program with results produced from versions prior to 0.9.1. Too many things have changed - timing bugs have been eliminated, methods of calculating test averages have changed and a different compiler has been used. You should be able to compare results from this version with any from 0.9.1 on upwards. I would also suggest (very strongly) that this benchmark program NOT be run on any machine that has critical applications running on it. It sets itself to be the highest priority thing on your system at points in its execution and this can adversely affect other processes. It will probably stop any communications apps you have running and connections may be lost. Installation No special installation steps are required to install this program. I have included the latest DIVE.DLL from The Developer Connection for OS/2 volume 10. It may not be necessary as the program appears to work with the version that's on my system dated 17-02-95 4:51p. I have included the latest version anyway as that's the one I've done all my testing with. If you want to use this, copy it to your \MMOS2\DLL directory _after_ saving a copy of the existing version. This copy is *older* than that shipped in Warp 4 so don't use it for this release of OS/2. It's also possible that IBM have shipped a newer copy with a fixpack so check the date and time of your file before replacing it. Sample result files I have included sample result files from my two machines in this file. All results on the smaller machine were generated using OS/2 Warp Connect V3 as I do not have MMOS/2 installed on the copy of V4 that is on this machine. MMOS/2 is required for the DIVE tests. Res091.486 is generated using Sysbench 0.9.1 on my Dell 486DX2/66, 24MB RAM, with Diamond Stealth32 2MB VLB graphics card and Promise DC4030-VL2 4MB cache IDE controller, Western Digital AC31200 1.2Gb hard disk. Res091b.486 is generated using Sysbench 0.9.1b on my Dell 486DX2/66, 24MB RAM, with Diamond Stealth32 2MB VLB graphics card and Promise DC4030-VL2 4MB cache IDE controller, Western Digital AC31200 1.2Gb hard disk. Res091c.686 is generated using Sysbench 0.9.1c on my Dell machine which now consists only of the original case with completely new innards! This is a Freetech 586F62 motherboard based on the Intel 430HX chipset, Cyrix P120+ running at 100MHz, 40MB RAM, with no-name S3Trio64V+ 2MB PCI graphics card, Western Digital AC31200 1.2Gb hard disk attached to the onboard PCI EIDE controller. Res091c1.686 - same system as above, running Warp 3 with an ATI Graphics Xpression 2Mb card. Res091c2.686 - same system as above, running Warp 4 with an ATI Graphics Xpression 2Mb card. Res091.PRO is generated using Sysbench 0.9.1 on a Micron Pentium Pro 200MHz, 64MB RAM, with ATI Graphics Pro Turbo 4MB VRAM, Adaptec AHA2940UW PCI SCSI controller, Seagate Barracuda 2.1Gb fast/wide hard disk (ST32550W). This set of results uses the Conner 1Gb narrow SCSI disk that's also installed. Res091b.PRO is generated using Sysbench 0.9.1b on a Micron Pentium Pro 200MHz, 128MB RAM, with ATI Graphics Pro Turbo 4MB VRAM, Adaptec AHA2940UW PCI SCSI controller, Seagate Barracuda 2.1Gb fast/wide hard disk (ST32550W). Res091c.PRO is generated using Sysbench 0.9.1c on a Micron Pentium Pro 200MHz, 128MB RAM, with ATI Graphics Pro Turbo 4MB VRAM, Adaptec AHA2940UW PCI SCSI controller, Seagate Barracuda 2.1Gb fast/wide hard disk (ST32550W) and IBM DCHS-04W Scorpion, fast/wide 4.3Gb hard disk (the subject of this test). Bugs. None that I know of (but there are bound to be some). If you find one, report it to me - Trevor-Hemsley@dial.pipex.com - and include as much information as you can. If it falls over and displays an error box with registers, quote them (a HELP SUPPRESSPOPUPS on Warp will tell you an easy way of collecting this information and save you some tedious typing). If the program generates a log file called SB_ERROR.LOG, include that too. Tell me about your machine in as much detail as you can, even if it seems irrelevant As of 0.9.1b there's a section in the results file that reports on video data. If you suffer a video problem please save a set of results (even if they're blank) and include the video data section in your bug report. It'll tell me more about your video card and might help to solve the problem.