Whoa ... this is _great_!

[Mr. Matti]

First off, thanks to whoever is responsible for developing CrystalControl. I'd tried out most of the third party tools, and this is far and away the best driver for my 632. Nearly fell of my chair when I opened the settings and saw all the variables we can display.

Three suggestions for the next go-round: First, like the previous posters, I'd really like to display the current IP address. Mighty helpful for boxes getting DHCP assignments.

Second, it looks like scrolling/bouncing relies on character-by-character movement, while the hardware itself can do pixel-by-pixel smooth scrolling. Would be great to support the hardware's pixel movement, since the result is much easier to read.

Finally, I'd like to have access to horizontal bar graphs, where we get to set an overall length and let CrystalControl handle the increments. LCDsmartie has something like this, and it's nice for quick looks at the memory and CPU loads.

Again, thanks very much for the time and effort behind this thing -- it's been a fun waste of the last hour of my life.

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[CF Mark]

Hi,
Thanks for the kind words

Now you mention it, IP information for finding out DHCP assignments would be quite a useful thing to have.
Ill see if it can be in the next version.

Pixel by pixel scrolling ill also add to the to-do list.

Because of the way CC is programmed, bar graphs will be very difficult to add
Im trying to work out a way for it to be added.

 

[Mr. Matti]

...
Now you mention it, IP information for finding out DHCP assignments would be quite a useful thing to have.
Ill see if it can be in the next version.

Pixel by pixel scrolling ill also add to the to-do list.

Because of the way CC is programmed, bar graphs will be very difficult to add
Im trying to work out a way for it to be added.

Glad you liked the first two ideas. As for the horizontal bar graphs, maybe it wouldn't be hard using block characters. The ROMs provide incremental solid blocks in ranges 208-212 and 214-218. Since the full block width is five pixels, each of the "blocklets" in these ranges would represent .2 of whatever the full blocks equal.

Suppose you'd like a nine-character graph to show the current memory usage (~MEMPPU~). Installed memory is 256M and the current load is 160M. CrystalControl divides 256 by 9, so each block represents 28.44M. CC then divides 160 by 28.44, to yield 5.63. Right away, five consecutive blocks are filled in with character 208 (or 214). The .63 remaining is represented by character 210 (or 216) in the sixth position.

I don't know the limitations CC imposes, but in the abstract this makes sense to me. One last thought on the subject -- some sort of dampening would probably help. I've currently got CC showing % Processor Time (~PM06\Processor(0)\% Processor Time~) and the display is pretty twitchy, just because of the nature of the rapid-fire updates from the OS. As a graph, it'd be mostly a blur (unlike memory or disk load, which change more slowly). So, some sort of extended averaging would help readability of processor activity.

Again, thanks a bunch for an excellent tool.

 

[CF Mark]

The problem with getting the graphing going is the whole ~tag~ scheme. Im working on a better way though.


As for the eratic perfmon stats... try slowing the perfmon checking time in the overall options down. Doing this will create the averaging effect.
I used 0.5sec update times, but 1sec is probably more accurate.

 

[Mr. Matti]

The problem with getting the graphing going is the whole ~tag~ scheme. Im working on a better way though.

As for the eratic perfmon stats ... try slowing the perfmon checking time in the overall options down. Doing this will create the averaging effect.
I used 0.5sec update times, but 1sec is probably more accurate.

You know, I'd tried that and it didn't seem to work before. Now I see what's going on ... whenever I open the overall options screen, the performance monitor time resets itself to .1 seconds. If I set it to 1 or more seconds, then exit CC, it'll remember the intended setting next time it starts up. But any reloading of the overall options screen -- to change something else -- drops the perfomance monitor back to .1 second timing.

Weird. This is under Win 2K Pro. At least now the stats have stopped twitching and I know what to look out for. Thanks ...