Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!cornell!rochester!ur-tut!ur-valhalla!micropen!dave
From: dave@micropen (David F. Carlson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Anyone have or seen a copy of FlickerFree software?
Summary: big win
Keywords: flickerfree Gibson Research software PC
Message-ID: <521@micropen>
Date: 14 Jul 88 13:28:45 GMT
References: <638@drexel.UUCP>
Organization: Micropen Dirent Writing Systems, Pittsford, NY
Lines: 22

In article <638@drexel.UUCP>, jeff@drexel.UUCP (Jeff White) writes:
> 
>   Has anyone in netland every worked with a piece of software called 
> FlickerFree?  I've seen in advertised a couple of times InfoWorld.  It's
> published by Gibson Reserach (ala Steve Gibson), and advertises itself as 
> a 7k byte assembly language driver that completely replaces the BIOS screen
> display calls to make screen updates much quicker.  It looked to be a decent
> 						Jeff White
> 						Drexel University - ECE Dept.
> 						rutgers!bpa!drexel!jeff

Because the bios screen routines are in ROM, they require mucho wait-states
to access (250nS rom vs. 150nS ram).  By simply relocating the bios into ram,
as many 386 boxes do, a factor of ~2-3 is made.  So this was never the miracle
that Steve Gibson might have liked to have sold.  ("Up to 7 times faster"
translates in non-marketing lingo to actually only ~2-3 times faster anyway.)


-- 
David F. Carlson, Micropen, Inc.
...!{ames|harvard|rutgers|topaz|...}!rochester!ur-valhalla!micropen!dave

"The faster I go, the behinder I get." --Lewis Carroll