New and Updated Preferences Notes on New and Updated Preferences Devices Dial-Up Networking Dial-On Demand Adding Custom Modem Initialization Strings From Location Media Real-Time Audio Real-Time Video Mouse Printers Screen Saver Notes on New and Updated Preferences BeOS R4.5 supports more hardware, makes it easier to get online, and offers more choices for power users. Many of these changes manifest themselves in the collection of Preferences panels preinstalled on your system. Devices As before, the Devices preferences panel can be used to reserve hardware resources for devices that, for one reason or another, can't be automatically configured by the operating system at boot time (see The BeOS Bible for full details). The most common use of the Devices panel is to allocate an IRQ for certain modems; in fact, you'll find a new menu entry devoted just to modems which lets you easily establish resources on serial port 3 or 4. After using this panel, jump down to the entry you've just created and take a look at the bottom of the panel. If you see a warning about IRQ conflicts, check to make sure the IRQ referenced is the same as the IRQ to which you've jumpered your modem. Remember: You may have to disable a COM port on your motherboard to make sure it isn't stealing the resources you need for the modem! Detailed instructions on modem configuration can be found in The BeOS Bible. You may also want to see this Web page devoted to the topic. In R4.5, the Devices panel is much more functional than in R4. For starters, you can now view a list of all resources in use by pulling down Devices | Resource Usage. And whereas you were able to change resources only for a few select devices in R4, in R4.5 you can alter IRQs, DMAs, I/O ranges, and memory ranges for virtually any device in your system. The Devices preferences panel in R4.5 is much more functional than in R4. Specifically, it lets you alter resources for any installed hardware, and lets you see at a glance the list of all resources currently in use. Click thumbnail for full-size view. Warning: The same warning applies as before: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Use the Devices preferences panel only if you have supported hardware with an installed driver that still isn't working for some reason. Tweaking resources for working hardware "just to see what happens" can get you into a jam quickly. Dial-Up Networking Dial-up services in R4.5 gain a couple of new goodies. Dial-on-Demand Perhaps most importantly, dial-on-demand services have returned, which means you don't have to initiate a connection manually before attempting to check your mail or a Web page. To enable dial-on-demand, look for the Autodial checkbox in the DUN preferences panel. If this is not checked, you'll still have to initiate connections manually. If you have more than one POP entered and choose among them from the DUN Replicant in the Deskbar, the POP you've selected as the default will be the one the system dials when you click a URL, send out a ping, or check your mail. Check the Autodial checkbox in the DUN preferences panel to enable auto-dial features for your modem. Adding Custom Modem Initialization Strings In BeOS R4 and prior, adding a custom initialization string entailed editing /boot/beos/etc/modems.ppp. Since this is a system-level file, having to do so was technically a bug in the operating system, since users should never have to touch system-level files. In R4.5, this situation is rectified with the addition of a new dialog to the DUN panel. If your modem doesn't appear in the DUN modems picklist, click the Custom button and give your modem a name (the manufacturer and model would be a good choice). From here, there are two ways to proceed. If you already know your modem's initialization string (e.g., you've got the modem's documentation or you've found the manufacturer's Web site), you can simply type or paste it into the dialog and click OK. You may want to search through the massive database of init strings at http://www.modemhelp.org/. R4.5 includes a new Custom Modem panel that will let you add a modem init string to your system without editing modems.ppp. If you can't find the init string for you modem, you can try and build a string from scratch. Some of the most basic modem commands are accessible from the new AT commands picklist, and Be provides advanced documentation that you can access by clicking the AT Commands... button. Note: New modems are not added to the modems.ppp file, but are stored in configuration files living in the ~/config/settings/DUN hierarchy. From Location Finally, R4.5 adds a "location" selector similar to that found in other popular operating systems. This addition is primarily to support laptop users, who may find themselves dialing out from multiple locations (such as work, home, and from wireless modems). The Location picklist functions just like the Connect to picklist, and lets you select from among built-in options or build custom connectors. For each location selected, you can enable call waiting and dial-out prefixes, and you can select dial prefixes for each independently. Tip: If you later migrate from PPP to a cable, DSL, or other fixed network connectivity solution, you may want to remove the DUN Replicant from the Deskbar. To do this, just remove all listed connections from the DUN panel and restart the Deskbar (or restart your machine). Media In R4.5, the Audio and Video preferences panels have vanished and are replaced by the new, unified Media preferences panel. All audio and video preferences are now configured through a unified Media preferences panel, rather than through separate audio and video panels. Click thumbnail for full-size view. In essence, not much has changed here functionally; you've just got a nicer, more logically integrated control point. There are, however, a few noteworthy differences. Real-Time Video When you select the main Video or Audio Settings option in the left side of the panel, you'll find a box from which you can select "Enable real-time video." Check this box and click the Restart Media Services button to get the absolute maximum video performance, with the absolute lowest possible latencies. This is achieved by buffering larger amounts of video data into system RAM. As you might expect, this is RAM that might otherwise be used for other tasks, so this option is really only for hardcore video fans (errr.... that didn't come out quite right, but you know what I mean). Real-Time Audio It's exactly the same as the real-time setting for video, decribed above. Again, use this option only if your audio needs are very intense and you don't need to use your machine for general computing tasks at the same time. For example, you may want to devote a BeOS machine to 64-track mixing of real-time incoming audio signal as your band lays down tracks for its next album. You should probably not check this box if you just want to hear the sound effects in Quake better. It won't make any difference, and you'll probably get worse overall Quake performance, because game programmers will have already optimised their games; you'll be second-guessing something they've already improved via intensive testing. Tech note: When real-time audio or video is enabled, any media add-on that deals with audio processing has its buffers "locked" and thus guaranteed not to be swapped out to disk. Audio buffer size is also reduced, depending on the speed of the hardware. For example, with a PCI sound card on a 500-MHz PIII, the buffer size will be around 3 milliseconds. For slower machines or ISA cards, it will be higher. Without this option enabled, audio buffer sizes (and therefore latency) will be fixed at around 24 milliseconds. BeOS also locks the libmedia binary into memory when real-time media is enabled. Note that latency will be larger than buffer size by a specific factor because of the way audio is processed (i.e., it's double-buffered). In any case, thanks to the real-time options, audio and video signals can flow freely through the system even if the machine is heavily taxed, and even if it's currently thrashing virtual memory. You should enable real-time audio or video services if you have a limited amount of memory in your system and are noticing less-than-perfect playback or recording. Users of low-grade sound and video cards may also benefit by enabling these options, as will audio and video professionals in almost all situations. Remember that enabling real-time audio and video will take away from the total amount of memory available to your other applications, possibly causing them to page memory out to disk sooner than they otherwise might. If you're not experiencing any audio or video glitching, there's no need to select this option. Tip: If you select the "Show volume control in Deskbar" option, a Media Replicant will appear in the Deskbar shelf alongside your other Replicants. You can use this in several ways. Left-click, and a volume slider will appear, letting you control the master volume for the line-out jack on your sound card, without having to launch the Media preferences panel first (and a damn handsome slider it is, too). Right-click the Replicant, and you'll get a context menu which lets launch MediaPlayer or the Media or Sounds preferences panels. Mouse The Mouse preferences panel has grown a couple of new options under the "Focus follows mouse" picklist. "Focus follows mouse" is described in The BeOS Bible, but "Warping" and "Instant Warping" are new. Enable either of the warping options, and you probably won't notice a difference right off the bat. But open a bunch of applications and use the Twitcher (described in The BeOS Bible) to toggle among them, and you'll see what warping is all about. When you switch to a new application from the keyboard, the mouse cursor will move itself into position over the newly selected app or window. With normal warping selected, the cursor will "glide" into position. With Instant Warping selected, the cursor will snap into position. Another great way to see the effect of warping is to minimize a window and then restore it from the Deskbar. The mouse cursor will glide from the Deskbar to the restored window. Printers While the Printer preferences panel itself has not changed in R4.5, some of the capabilities in the print layer have. The entire class of Epson Stylus printers is now supported, and you can print to printers attached to serial and USB ports. You'll find these options in the Add Local Printer and Add Network Printer panels. In addition, you can now print to network printers via Windows networking (CIFS/SMB). CIFS is described in detail in the Experimental section of this site. Screen Saver Screen Saver is basically identical to the version described in The BeOS Bible, but now it has two new options on the Fade tab: "Turn off screen" and "Password lock." These should be pretty self-explanatory, and they function just as they do in other operating systems. Note, however, that certain of the BeOS video drivers (specifically, the Riva128 driver) do not support DPMS, and thus cannot power down your monitor as they should. Be is looking into the hardware issues surrounding this. According to one of Be's graphics engineers, "activating a DPMS power saving mode can cause the video memory refresh to stop, causing the display image to slowly fade away as the video RAM loses its contents." If this option does not work with your video card, you might want to simply choose the "Blackness" saver module instead and look for an update in a future version of the operating system. Return to Table of Contents