os3.1 - Facelift to look/work like 3.9?

[Cammy]

Jope, is there an AGA compatible picture.datatype in Picasso96? Do you know if it works for sure? 3.9 is just too blasted slow to use on a 030 because of the bloated picture.datatype that it comes with. If you have a lot of images in your Workbench, like all the buttons in YAM, all the icons in a dock/start bar, wallpapers, window patterns, other bitmap GUI elements, they all take twice as long to load (doubling my boot time) with 3.9 compared to 3.1. Can AGA 030 users simply install 3.9, and replace the picture.datatype with the one from Picasso96, and everything will work and load speedily again?

[Cammy]

IconBeFast is a good patch, but it only helps icons load faster. The speed problem with picture.datatype is obvious when you use applications that load in lots of bitmap images, like YAM for example, or dock/start bar programs that need to load several small bitmap images. This isn't something I made up, I've experimented with 3.1, 3.9 and a hybrid 3.1/3.9 system, and in the end the main culprit for the speed problem is picture.datatype. The more images a 3.9 system has to load, the slower it will look compared to a 3.1 system. If your system is pretty default, and you don't use VisualPrefs (with bitmaps), Birdie, MUI with patterns or modern applications that use datatypes to load skins and GUI elements, you probably wouldn't notice the difference. But when you use an A1200 as your main system every day, waiting twice as long for things to load when you know it's capable of loading them much faster with an older datatype can get annoying. It's the reason I switched back to 3.1 from 3.9, 3.1 was just much snappier for the kind of usage I wanted to get from my Amiga.

[Cammy]

I guess I'll add, if it's possible to install 3.9 and use a faster picture.datatype, then 3.9 would definitely be worth using on a 030. So if the one in Picasso96 is AGA compatible and works with palette-mapped screens, and is as fast as the 3.1 picture.datatype then it'd be the perfect solution.

[Cammy]

Okay it seems the solution would be: Use 3.9, but don't actually use any programs with it, because then you start to notice how slow it is. Just boot it up and look at it, maybe play an MP3 to impress yourself, load a WHDLoad game, and then switch it off and use your PC for everything else.

[Cammy]

Gulliver, which parts should be stripped to make it faster? Picture.datatype and Workbench.datatype? Are you confirming that the Picasso96 picture.datatype is a suitable replacement?