Icons taking forever to load in Windows running Amiga OS 3.5

[bradhansen1]

Hi All, I am running Amiga OS 3.5 on an Amiga with 030 processor at 40mhz. Using Ken's icons and
Iconlib.46.4. And it takes just forever for these icons to populate in their window. I have 2gig chip ram and
64gig fast ram. Any idea why this is so slow? How do I just copy Workbench to ram or something like that to
get them to display quicker? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Brad Hansen

[goldfish]

What kind of drive are you using Compact flash or 2.5" standard ide drive?

[Pat the Cat]

Erm... why? I never could fathom why anybody would want WB3.5. More bug, less resources.

What version of Kickstart are you trying to do this with?

I did find this on actually making the things more usable (upgraded icons in WB3.5). Have no idea how relevant this is;-

http://www.gregdonner.org/os35faq/iconoperation.html

[QuikSanz]

LOL, Very funny, That would be 2 and 64 Meg not gig, dream mode off. Try FBlit, should be on Aminet. If they are more than 4 color it will take longer.

[bradhansen1]

Hey, thank you all for replying here.  First I am using a 8gig CF card.  Second, the instructions say to
put FBlit in your startup sequence like "C:FBlit" but when I do that all it does is hang my startup sequence!
So if someone could clue me in on how to make it work, that would be great.
Thanks anyway for chipping in!

Brad Hansen

[Pat the Cat]

Yes, when instructions say "install from aminet" that means download the thing. Then your startup-sequence might find it, assuming you unextracted the download and put FBlit program in your c drawer. And always assuming that you didn't replace the entire startup-sequence, but added the line to it.

http://aminet.net

Go there, you will find FBlit.

You will also need WBCtrl, although you should have that in your Distribution drawer as per the instructions. You could try reading them, I don't just post links for my own entertainment.

EDIT: You didn't actually get back to me to tell you which Kickstart ROM you are trying to do this with. Consequently, it's very tricky for me to help you any further.

[NinjaCyborg]

Probably you need to do

Run >NIL: <NIL: C:FBlit

Read the instructions that come with it

?

[TribbleSmasher]

@BradHansen1
The speed and quality of icon rendering depend on the settings in Workbench prefs, your amount of colours selected in screenmode prefs and your wallpaper, which may take over all free colour pens making it more difficult for icon.library to find proper colours that normaly would not be in your wallpaper, possibly.

[kolla]

Let me just add to the confusion here by saying that  I just put FBlit in DEVS:Monitors, but I also remembered to copy the appropriate FBlit.cfg file to envarc: and perhaps most importantly- copy fblit.library to LIBS:

[D00kie]

Did WB 3.5 have a Workbench prefs editor in the Preferences folder? You may want to have a look there. There are some options about how to render icons. Maybe moving the icons to fast memory will help. Generally speaking, my 3.9 system is dog-slow without EXEC being in fast memory as well. If you have an MMU or certain makes of accelerator, you can relocate exec into fast. The default is chip memory which is really slow memory because it's shared with all custom chips.

Hope this helps!

[bradhansen1]

@D00kie Thanks, this wonderful advice, only I don't know how to do any of those things you
said.  How do you put anything in fast ram? Please instruct.
Much appreciated,
Brad Hansen

[QuikSanz]

If you were successful with FBlit you should see more chip ram available, it puts Icons and some other stuff in Fast ram.

[giZmo350]

You're going to have to do one of these two procedures first to get your icons loaded to fastmem.

1. When using PK’s icon library, you need to use LoadModule or use the “IconsToFastRAM” tool from PeterK's IconLib archive to load icons into fastmem. Because OS3.5 has no ability to set icons to use fastmem in WB Prefs (OS3.9 does). You might be able to avoid using LoadModule all together by using WBCtrl described below. See 2.

LoadModule actually comes with the IconLib_46.4 in the ThirdParty drawer

To install LoadModule, simply copy it to your C directory on your boot partition

At the top of your Startup-Sequence you want to put something like

LoadModule icon.library REVERSE NOREBOOT

Do the above and you’re done.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. I've never tried this but WBCtrl may be a simple alternative to using LoadModule (as described above) to use icons in fastmem.

WB 3.5 Workbench prefs editor does not allow setting icons to fastmem. However, as an alternative, you can download and use WBCtrl  http://aminet.net/package/util/sys/WBCtrl 

Copy the WBCtrl binary to C: and then edit your S:startup-sequence
add the C:LoadWB command at the very end as follows:

C:WBCtrl IMT=ICONFAST
C:LoadWB

The IMT=ICONFAST parameter enables processing icons in Fast RAM.

An alternative to WBCtrl is WBAllocFast that claims to redirect more allocation calls than the former to fast RAM.   

http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/WBAllocFast

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To additionally use FBlit........

Copy:

    FBlit and FBlitGUI to C:
    Fblit.library to LIBS:
    FBlit.cfg to ENVARC

Add C:FBlit and C:LoadWB SIMPLEGELS in your S:Startup-Sequence

If you get icon artifacts after installing FBlit, in the QBSBlitPatch section, set the synchronization option to INLINE.


@Brad  EXACTLY what accelerator do you have?

[D00kie]

Good stuff! I always thought 3.9 was just 3.5 with more third-party additions. I thought suggesting about SIMPLEGELS but when I looked that up it said it changed how icons behaved when clicked or dragged around. I got the improved Peter K icon.library in 3.9 Boing Bag 2, so I'm happy to see that you can use it in 3.5 as a stand-alone enhancement.

[kolla]

I always thought 3.9 was just 3.5 with more third-party additions.

It makes more sense to look at 3.5 as a "beta" or "preview" of what became OS 3.9 - I really don't see any good reasons to prefer 3.5 over 3.9.