WHAT IS SLOWDOWN?
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SLOWDOWN is a DOS program that temporarily Slows Down your computer, so
that it runs like one of the older, slower computers. Of course,
nowadays people are willing to spend a lot of money to make sure their
computer is as fast as it can possibly be -- why would anyone in their
right mind ever want to slow a computer down? Believe it or not, there
are a some really good reasons.
The first reason is that there are many very good, useful (old) programs
that were designed to run on the old, slow computers, and they do not
run correctly on a new, fast computer. The old programs either don't
run at all (they "blow up" -- the computer totally locks up, or you get
a "Run-time Error" or "Divide by Zero" of some sort), or they run in
such a way that you can't use them. When I first wrote SLOWDOWN (many
years ago), about the only kinds of programs that really seemed to have
problems were ones that required lots of "real-time" interaction with
the user (like arcade-type games). In my opinion, any program that
requires such "real-time" interaction should be designed to run on any
computer, no matter how fast (or how slow) it is. Unfortunately, very
few programs are actually designed that way.
Nowadays, especially with the really fast computers, there are lots of
different types of programs that have problems with fast computers (not
just games). I've personally seen or heard of different typing tutors,
communications, network, database, and copy-protection programs that
have problems on new computers. I'm sure there is at least one program
in just about any software category you could name that would either
blow up or be unusable on one of the latest computers. You can't even
buy the old, slow computers anymore, but with SLOWDOWN you may still be
able to use the programs.
The second reason you may want to temporarily slow down your computer is
when you are trying troubleshoot something that is going wrong with
another program. Sometimes, you know something is wrong, but things
happen so fast you can't tell exactly what or even where the problem is
(error messages or status messages flash by on the screen so fast you
can't read them). With SLOWDOWN, you may actually be able to see what's
on the screen before it disappears again.
This new version 3 of SLOWDOWN has several different "methods" or
"modes" it can use to slow the computer down. Some of the methods work
better with certain computers or programs than other methods do.
Exactly what the different methods are, and when you may and may not
want to use them, are described in the various sections below. For now,
suffice it to say that every reasonable method I know of to Slow Down
computers is built into SLOWDOWN. If SLOWDOWN is unable to Slow the
computer Down appropriately, it probably can't be done at all.
While SLOWDOWN is installed in memory, you are usually able to change
the Speed of the computer with the keyboard using Hot-Keys, even while
other programs are running. The Hot-Keys are discussed in detail in the
"HOT-KEYS" section below (page 42). This lets you control exactly when
and how fast your computer runs, and you can change the computer speed
in "real time." There are also several different ways of telling
SLOWDOWN how fast you want your computer to run from the command-line
(the different ways are discussed in the "OPTIONS" section below,
starting on page 6).
There are dozens of other "slowdown" programs already out there, so what
makes SLOWDOWN different enough from the others that I even bothered to
write it? The main thing is flexibility -- SLOWDOWN includes in one
program features that you may find sporadically in other "slowdown"
programs, but never all together in one place. SLOWDOWN also contains
some features that I've NEVER seen in any other "slowdown" program.
SLOWDOWN is also very small (it only uses about 3000 bytes of memory),
and, perhaps most importantly, is free.
