If you owned or worked on a computer in the late 1990’s chances are you played one of Microsoft’s pre-installed games: Freecell, Hearts, Minesweeper or Solitaire. Solitaire was developed by intern Wes Cherry in 1989 and renowned for its ‘solitaire effect’ of cascading cards that appeared at the end of the game.

When Cherry was asked if there was a way to change the speed of the card trail he replied, “Yes, upgrade to an IBM 286 running at 16mHz, that should slow it down right good. Or install Norton Antivirus.” Cherry jumped a few hoops to get the final cascade to go as fast as possible and at one point, a computer magazine proposed a Solmark computer speed test.

Mr Smooth
Scott Grieff was an Assistant Facilities Manager for a pharmaceutical company where he was responsible for building automation computing and maintaining his department’s PC’s. He also played Solitaire. It was Grieff who deduced that the speed and smoothness with which the computer played the winning cascade was representative of a real-world, qualitative measure of a PC’s performance. He also realised it was the ultimate benchmark programme. The key, was in knowing how long it would take for all the cards to bounce off the stacks. In that instance, he proposed calling what was essentially a rating system, the Solmark Index. He conducted tests under ‘unscientific’ conditions in his home office, on is eldest child’s PC and on his friend’s computers.

The Methadology
Grieff’s methadology was simple, close all applications except Solitaire. Max. the screen, then play the game until it’s nearly finished. When he was about to drop the last King onto the stack, he’d look at his watch and start timing. He stopped timing when the dialogue box popped up asking if he wanted the computer to deal again. Once Grieff got the raw scores he added or subtracted up to 5 percent for smoothness or lack of it. He then used MS Excel to make up a comparison chart. Image Credit: Microsoft.

OFF the WALL

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