HELP: Lowering WB Chipmem Usage (this one's tricky!!)

[dillinger]

Hi there

This question is related to WB chipram usage and is a bit tricky I think.

I am trying to force my A1200 to use as LITTLE chip ram as possible. I have been able to save a lot of chipmem thanks to the combination of FBlit & WBCtrl in my startup sequence. Browsing large directories with hundreds of icons now eats very little chip memory, which is great!

Now the problem I'm having is that when I browse a large directory set to "View by Name" it eats *MORE* chip ram (a LOT more) than if I view that same directory set to "View by Icon"!!

For example, I have a SCSI harddrive based directory with MANY files in it. If I open and browse that directory when it's set to View by Icon it only eats a few hundred bytes of chip mem. This is ofcourse mainly thanks to FBlit. Yet if I close the window and then set that directory to View by Name using the Window>View by>Name menu option and then reopen the *SAME* dir my chipmem drops by about 80kb !! :-o

So basically, opening directories in "text mode listing" is a LOT less efficient than opening it with resource hungry graphical Icons!! This can't be right and makes no sense to me. Does anyone know what I can do to make text listed directories as effiecient as Icon listed directories??? I don't think I'm being unreasonable to expect text to eat less chipmem than Icons, am I???  :-?

Any ideas, please???  

[dillinger]

Also, are there any other tricks to lower general chipmem usage?? :-D I already know the common stuff like using FBlit, WBCtrl and reducing screen rez/colours ...

Any less common tricks that help?  :-)

thnx

[dillinger]

@patrik

oooooohh, I've just read some of the FText manual...

"This
    patch causes text to be rendered in fastram instead of chipram for a
    really nice speedup. "

I'll definitely give it a go now!  :-D

[dillinger]

I just tried FText but it didnt help the situation.

[dillinger]

@merc

Well if you are right, it would explain why text listings are eating so much compared to icons.

Although I have just tried setting FBlit to "exclude" mode...which apparently should promote _every_ process to fastmem and that had no affect. But if your "chipmem ONLY flag" idea is correct then I guess it could override even FBlits exclude mode.

hmmm, strange stuff....

[dillinger]

@Chain

The problem is not with icons. FBlit promotes icons to fastmem perfectly, even on my Classic desktop amy without a gfx-card.

@Framiga

thanks for letting me know. if it's possible, someone should program a patch for the situation immediately...'cause it suxx!  :-(