Prism2 Netgear MA401 performance

[patrik]

1. Use AmiTCP/Genesis.
2. Make sure the kickstart is mapped into fastmem - this is a hardware feature on Blizzard boards, for Apollo and the likes check RemApollo.
3. Make sure exec.library is in fastmem. This can be verified by for example checking the library list in SysInfo. If it is in chipmem, fix it with BlizKick or RemApollo, depending on what board you have.
4. Make sure you have properly recent 68060.library from the manufacturer of your board.

Point 2, 3 and 4, especially 2 and 3 are to make sure the OS performance of your machine is good, as the TCP/IP stacks are very sensitive to that.

Other than that the performance of file transfer clients varies a lot. Many can also need some tweaking of buffer settings etc.

Regarding wget I have a memory of it performing like a turd on storage with substantial seektimes, like harddrives and is only usable storage with minimal seektime like the ram-drive, which unfortunately consumes quite a lot of cpu time.

This simple HTTP GET client is the fastest I know of. It's biggest limitation is that it doesn't support redirects, but it is good for checking how fast you should be able to download files to your harddrive from a particular site.

Btw, when doing speedtests, make sure you try transferring something on your local network, as speed can detoriate pretty much when the latency grows, especially with older TCP/IP stacks.


/Patrik

[patrik]

There are some patches for AmigaOS which changes the interpretation of the * character in shells. Try and see if you get the same result if you boot without startup-sequence.

If not, there is a utility shipped with BlizKick which can rip your rom - rip it and use it as the first argument to BlizKick. It won't cost any memory or anything as you already have the motherboard kickstart in fastmem, it is just a bit ugly to reload it from file .

Btw, to use the LocalFast module you probably have to put BlizKick at the top of your S:Startup-Sequence, before the C:SetPatch line. Don't forget the QUIET argument, or else it will output text and open the shell, making stuff troublesome for iprefs.


/Patrik

[patrik]

Uhm, I don't know how you have configured your system, but if you use BlizKick, you do not need a patched ROM-file, just use the stock 3.1 rom as a file and then add modules to the BlizKick command line. Anyhow, just start small with the stock 3.1 kickstart and the LocalFast modules, when that is working, add more.

LocalFast is supplied with the BlizKick archive. Just copy the Modules drawer from the archive to DEVS:. There is a button to install everything in the Amigaguide manual for BlizKick actually, that the simplest way to install it.

If you are running 3.9, there is a tool to extract the 3.9-upgrade stuff from the the "DEVS:AmigaOS ROM Update" file. Then put these in DEVS:Modules/ and load them as regular BlizKick modules. You must enter the LocalFast module last of all modules btw, or else it will not have any effect. Also, dont forget to add more EXTRESBUF, or else there will not be enough room. All of this is described in the BlizKick manual.

If you load the 3.9 upgrades with BlizKick, you also need to supply the NOROMUPDATE argument to SetPatch in the Startup-Sequence, to stop it from trying to load them.

You only need one of the CardPatch modules, the dos one if I recall is most system friendly and works fine.

Make sure to verify with sysinfo that exec.library really ends up in fastmem.


/Patrik

[patrik]

Ok, now I understand.

From where are you downloading with AmFTP? If you are downloading from the internet somewhere, try to download from another machine on your local network.

Also, give AsyncHTTPGet a try and download a larger file with it, it is guaranteed _much_ faster than AmFTP.


/Patrik