Metermaid (Was Re: Another experience with FIXDISK2.0 for UNIXpc)

Mon Nov 19 15:32:40 AEST 1990

In article <1990Nov14.125622.10784 at dms3b1.uucp> dave at dms3b1.UUCP (Dave Hanna) 
writes:
[...]
|>Speaking of the Metermaid display, I've been intending to ask about
|>it for awhile.  I installed the fixdisk about 2 months ago, and
|>like it, although it doesn't seem like a big deal.  I like the screen
|>unblanking on any key (e.g., Shift or Control alone).
|>
|>Lenny's post about the features (see Frequently Asked Questions) 
|>says that the triple key sequence F6 is supposed to "Toggle" the
[...]
|>(display status of the triple key function keys) never goes away,
|>i.e., once you hit triplekey-F1, that display stays there, too.
|>Is this normal behavior, or have I screwed something up, and
|>if so, any idea what?

Since metermaid writes directly to screen memory practically on the 60th/sec, 
bypassing all the other video controls, the screen blanking will not affect
the blanking.  You can toggle it off doing a Left-Cntrl-Shift-F6 and then
typing "windy" (if you have that) or just press "Shift-Suspd" like I do,
and that will clear out that area.

|>Also, can someone give me the file name of the metermaid info 
|>file at osu?  I can't find it in my [admittedly old] listing
[...]
Well the file is call... FD2.info.Z (FIXDISK 2 info -- a shar file containing 
the metermaid description I posted -- which is short enough for
me to repost here...)  

Metermaid(tm) of the Pond wanderer from AT&T.

What is it?
-----------

Well it's a real-time graph of system resources and CPU states (from
struct sysinfo ...)   

How did it get there, and why?
------------------------------

It got there from the twisted mind of a kernel hacker at AT&T (no offense...)
Basically it was put there to satify some problems when us "beta" testers
were trying to figure out where the "clists" were disappearing to.  It
was basically a quick-instant reference to the availability of system resources,
among those the # clist buffers available.

History?!
---------

metermaid in it's earliest form, appeared in one of the beta kernels (3.51dA,
maybe earlier?)  It moved from it's first home, where the smgr displays 
the time, to the last lines (SLK lines) in subsequent beta-kernel releases, 
to it's current home, the least obtrusive -- to the left of the [working] icon.

metermaid was basically a one 3 bar meter, until it grew, and grew, and
grew.  And now there exists the 3 bar representation of the metermaid in
3.51m (also in 3.51dG1 beta)

Note:  metermaid activity lines will not blank with the normal blanking 
process of the window driver since it is writing directly to video RAM.

What are these "cutsy" lines telling me?
----------------------------------------

Left Column                  Center Column           Right Column
=============================================================================

Miscellaneous info           CPU usage          /--- WAIT states/Parallel Port
                                               /
% of serial buffers avail.   % CPU_IDLE       /       % W_IO (BIO)
% of clists buffers avail.   % CPU_USER      /        % W_SWAP
% of RAM pages avail.        % CPU_KERNEL   /         % W_PIO (Physical I/O)
                             % CPU_WAIT ---/ Busy : Selcted : Ppr Out : NoError

Legend:
	Center column sums to 100%
	Last line in the 3 column is the parallel port information.
          (BOLD line = ON   DIM line = OFF)
	  If Paper Out (Ppr Out) and NoError is ON, printer is disconnected.

	Center and Right Columns are system standard data [per <sys/sysinfo.h>]

-- 
| Lenny Tropiano           ICUS Software Systems        lenny at icus.ICUS.COM |
| ...!{ames,cs.utexas.edu,pacbell}!icus!lenny           attmail!icus!lenny  |
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