Ok, here's the deal.
The VCACHE is the Windows9x disk cache (remember smartdrive on DOS anyone?). What it does is to use a hunk of memory to cache, for instance, frequently-used applications and data. When you load up Microsoft Word for the first time after starting your computer, it takes a few seconds to fire up. If you then close Word, and re-open it, it pops right up like it was ready and waiting for you! Likewise, you open a file and then close it, and the next time you open the file it just screams up super fast! That's the VCACHE in action.
The larger the VCACHE, the less physical memory that will be available to programs, and the sooner swapping will occur. Typically, Windows dynamically manages the VCACHE for you. When you add more memory to windows, even though you're not "technically" using it, you can see some performance benefits in that the VCACHE will be larger, AND each program you run will have access to more physical memory before having to swap out. This does not mean that adding more and more memory will increase *real* performance. You can 1GB of memory to your system and n-Track still isn't going to run any better because you're so far from your minimum requirement.
Now the VCACHE can cause some problems. For one thing, we're talking about Win9x, which wasn't made for anything too heavy duty. While the VCACHE is supposed to resize itself to give memory back to applications that need it, sometimes it won't, resulting the machine slowing down considerably. There is also a serious bug that when more than 512MB of memory is installed in a computer, the VCACHE can grow until it consumes the entire system arena leaving no virtual memory for other applications. Also, AGP is mapped to the system arena and some pretty serious looking problems can occur if the VCACHE grows too large. The trick, then, is to limit the VCACHE maximum size.
Now this is something that I haven't recommended in the past, because it's one of those goofy tweeks that people often get carried away with. *Usually* you don't have to worry about any of this. Anyhow, the trick is balancing the size of the VCACHE such that you get adequate windows performance (files, data, and network) and still have enough memory left over such that each application you run has enough memory available to avoid swapping as much as possible. In your system.ini file, there is a section called [vcache] under which you can enter the following lines:
MaxFileCache=X
MinFileCache=X
Where "X" is some whole number multiple of 1024K. From the information I've seen, an acceptable number for the maximum if you have over 256MB or so is 32MB which would be 1024*32 = 32768. The minimum size can be whatever...but it's probably not a bad idea to set it to the same size as the maximum.
How do you juggle the VCACHE for optimum performance for recording? That I don't know. There are articles on the net about this. It's really a very complex thing to determine, though, and you can only experiment properly *if there is a problem.* If you don't have any problems, then you have nothing to measure. If you're getting swapping while recording, and it's limiting the number of tracks that you can get, then decreasing the size of the VCACHE might just be the ticket. Decrease it too much and overall windows performance suffers. That's why I usually recommend NOT optimizing unless you have a reason to optimize.
At any rate, limiting the VCACHE isn't a difficult task, so even the 512MB+ bug isn't such a big deal. Some people freak out and say that "oh crap windows won't use over 512MB" which isn't really true. (Note: microsoft recommends keeping physical memory below 1GB just in general for win9x.)
At any rate again, windows9x memory management isn't fantastic. Leaks both in applications and windows will bring your system to its kness, requiring frequent reboots. Performance is goofy and difficult to predict. The less you do on your Win9x machine, the better. Windows 2000 is most certainly a recommended platform if all of your hardware and software is compatible. Limiting your machine function to one specific task like recording isn't really necessary, for instance (this is more involved than just memory management, however).
Again I'll just say that people should try to get a good feel for their systems. You can feel when the CPU is cooking and when memory is being taxed. Never optimize unless you know for sure that you need to do so. Never add memory to a system that doesn't require additional memory. Etc.
Slackmaster 2000
