After running OS3.9 on my A1200 with its default 020 @ 14 MHz and 8Mb RAM, I was expecting a big things with my new Blizzard 030 @ 50 MHz + FPU and 64Mb RAM. Unfortunately I found that my faster processor and extra memory didn’t make that much difference to WB performance.
Most people will say if you want a fast WB with AGA then the best thing to do is run OS3.1 in about 16 colours whereas I wanted to run the latest Classic OS and I wanted it to look as modern as possible on my hardware.
This is a screen grab of my current desktop as an example.
The first thing to do is settle on a screen-mode, I went for Multisync + VGA only @ 640x480 because this gives a progressive 4x3 display with a decent refresh rate and looks lovely on my flatscreen 19” CRT
Making it FastObviously you need to install BB1, BB2 and
BB3These are the patches that I’ve found create a nice stable 3.9 setup which is still usable in the full 256 colour mode (obviously it will always run faster with less colours). The basic idea is to offload as much of the work as possible from AGA to your accelerator’s CPU and also to keep data transfer to a minimum across the slow interface. Generally speaking, the more patches you apply the less stable your system could become so I try to keep them to a minimum.
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BlizKick – This awesome utility not only allows you to move the OS from your ROM to your RAM, it also includes some handy speed-up modules.
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FBlit &
FText – These not only free-up some much needed chipram, they also offload blitting to your accelerator.
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BlazeWCP – Very fast CP2 OS replacement functions.
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IconBeFast – Greatly speeds up ICON drawing in esp. in 256 colour modes.
• WBCtrl - Allows you to copy your icons to FASTRAM (used in conjunction with WorkBench Perfs,
Icons to FASTRAM setting).
Also remove the AmiDock from your WBStartup draw and stick it somewhere else (eg the recycle bin).
And finally, I’d recommend a move to SFS/PFS from the standard FFS which smells bad and has been known to talk to itself on occasion.
Making it look PrettyThe default GlowIcons are nice and a big step up from OS3.1 but they are still using a limited colour palette, I decided to upgrade mine to something a bit more modern. It’s very easy to replace your Icons in 3.9; it’s a simple drag and drop while viewing the Icon’s information window.
The default WB color remapping logic can result in your icons rendered in some odd colours and your background image will often change each time you open a new window….not pretty. To fix this, we use
FullPalette to create a palette matched to our main icon set and then use it to lock a subset of these colours for use by WB. We also map our background image to the same palette to avoid any colour cycling; I’ve found the best thing to do is limit the background image to as few colours as possible.
VisualPrefs is an amazing utility which allows you to greatly customise WB and generally tart it up; we also use it to remap WB colours to our fixed palette entries.
MagicMenu is another great WB utility which is not only very handy but also makes the OS feel more modern to use. You should also map the colours used by your Menus to your fixed palette entries to prevent any bizarre colour remapping….pink menus, no thanks!
BarClock although LimpidClock is more popular, I prefer the less intrusive BarClock for my setup.
I’ve uploaded a
MOVIE to YouTube so you can see it in action, obviously if you’re lucky enough to have a 040/060 it will be even faster.
I will also add my setup resources to AmiNet when I get the chance (palette, Icon set, VisualPrefs settings, background images etc).
UPDATE: I've since changed to an IndivisionAGA powered HighGFX
1024x768 in 64 colours, very nice
NovaCoder
