HiFinance
4
SECTION 000
- SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
You will require the following minimum configuration
to use HiFinance under MS-DOS: -
HiFinance can be run in pure DOS mode but unless
your computer is a genuine IBM, the memory management program will be difficult
to setup. This is a limitation on DOS and PC BIOS’s. Help can be sort form
Microfocus (the manufacturers of the language used in HiFinance). Horizon
Information Systems recommends, though, that you bypass the issue completely
and always run HiFinance in a DOS window within Windows 3.11 or above.
Microsoft has done a far better job of memory management with Windows than they
have done with MS-DOS.
Apart from the above restriction, HiFinance requires
the following to run successfully.
A) I.B.M. 386 (or above) style Personal Computer - or
compatible, with at least one floppy disk drive and a hard disk.
B) At least 520KB RAM (Random Access Memory) free in
conventional memory space and a total of at least 4MB of extended memory
available. This generally means that the computer needs 8MB of RAM total when
using Windows 3.11 and 16MB of RAM when using Win95 or above. Insufficient
memory might allow most functions to proceed correctly, but might terminate
unpredictably when certain large programs are loaded. Care should be taken when
loading, so-called, RAM resident programs (TSR’s) and/or network drivers. These
use conventional memory and may not leave enough space to HiFinance to function
correctly. Win98 requires at least 32MB to run reliably and WinNT and its
derivatives (eg Win2000, XP, etc) require 128MB just to function.
C) You must be using PC-DOS or MS-DOS operating system
version 2.00 or greater. Multi-terminal installations require DOS version 3.20
or greater.
D) At least one printer (parallel or serial interface)
is required for printing. A narrow carriage printer (8”) is all that is
required. Laser printer support is available but it should be noted that only
A4 stationary will function properly in these printers and that Laser printers
do not print edge-to-edge so very wide reports might loose a character or two
on the extreme right-hand-side, although most reports have been adapted to
allow for this. Postscript printing is
not supported.
E) You may use a monochrome, composite or RGB monitor
with CGA, EGA or VGA colour, if desired. HiFinance normally senses the monitor
you are using and adjusts the screens appropriately. You can also choose the
screen colours if the default colours do not match your screen.
F) Your CONFIG.SYS
must contain the following lines:
FILES=99
BUFFERS=40
Under no circumstances should HiFinance be run with
less than 40 files specified. The result of this action will be unpredictable.
If you use the minimum RAM it will be necessary to
reduce the number of file buffers in your CONFIG.SYS
to 10. If you are installing DOS-5's SMARTDRV.SYS,
the buffers may also be safely reduced to 10. However, lowering the number of
buffers below 10 will degrade the performance of HiFinance greatly. This is not
as crucial in WIN95 and above, as Windows maintains the file handling and
buffering itself. However, NT4 still needs some manual control. NT5, including
Win2000, XP, etc usually maintain files and buffers without manual intervention.
This is also true of most derivatives of Windows NT, including 2003 server.
These must be told manually to extend the number of files. The default is often
(but not always) 40 and should be extended to 99. To achieve this, you can edit
the file C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG.NT
or, on some implementations, entering a CONFIG.SYS
(see above) will cause windows to automatically update the CONFIG.NT file for you.
The device driver ANSI.SYS may be installed but is not necessary to the running of
HiFinance. It can be left out if your computer has limited free RAM remaining
after other drivers have been installed. Where possible, run such TSR’s in
upper memory. This is less of a problem with later versions of Windows.
As Windows 95 and above, dynamically allocate memory
and other resources so CONFIG.SYS is not generally necessary except for
the cases described above.
