I was called in by Cincinnati Computer Repair that had a computer that was operating very slowly. A spreadsheet of 25 min. to load! I didn’t use the spreadsheets very often but I could not imagine one that large! The computer was an IBM PS/2 model 70. It had an 80386 processor running at 20 MHz, 2 MB of RAM, and an 80 MB hard drive. It’s not exactly a speed demon, but it shouldn’t be a turtle either. I had the computer operator load the spreadsheet while I watched. The hard drive activity lights stay lit almost constantly as the hard drive crunch away. I suspected that her hard drive was very fragmented. Fragmentation can cause increased wear and tear on the drive and cause it to slow down.
I thought that a disk defragmentation program such as the Norton Utilities program, speed disk, would help. I knew that it wouldn’t be a total cure, but it would be a start. A defragmenting program reorganizes the files on the drive and put all their parts in a consecutive order. This makes the drive work less to access the file. I ran the defragmenting program and reloaded the file this time it took 18 min., about 36% increase; still a long time to wait for a sheet to load.
Most spreadsheet programs take advantage of expanded memory if available. To utilize the memory, the memory manager program must be loaded. I wondered if the expanded memory was being used. I checked the config.sys and autoexec.bat files for evidence of the memory manager, but found nothing. I installed the EMM386.exp program included in the DOS 5.0 and configure the system to use an extra one megabyte of memory.
Again the sheet was loaded. And now took around 12 min. to load. We were headed in the right direction.
The accountant at the same company mentioned that she had the same spreadsheet on her portable computer and it only took a few minutes to load. She had stopped using the portable because the hard drive crashed and she almost lost hospital’s entire budget. She said she didn’t understand why the portable was faster, because it was several years older than the IBM.
I checked the portable system configuration and found it was 880286 with 4 MB of memory and math coprocessor, running at 12 MHz. I surmise that the extra memory and coprocessor made the difference, even though it was an older machine.
A spreadsheet is a math intensive program and is a good candidate for coprocessor chip. I suggested we add memory and a coprocessor system. We ordered 4 MB of memory and a coprocessor. I installed the parts and reconfigured the system to utilize the memory and coprocessor. The spreadsheet now loads and slightly less than 1 min.