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???  

[patrik]

@dillinger:

Try FText and see if it makes any difference.


/Patrik

[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.

[Merc]

I think the problem is that when displaying as text, WB 3.5 and up print the contents of the directory on one big bitmap and display it inside the window.  That's why the scrolling of text mode windows is so smooth compared to WB 3.1 for example.

When you're in icon mode, the icons get drawn out as you scroll I think..  then again, I could be wrong about that, maybe they used one large bitmap for the icon mode as well.

You would think this bitmap would be relocatable to fast RAM by FBlit though, unless there's some kind of a "chip mem only" flag for memory that they've set for those bitmaps.

I guess that doesn't help much, but that's my take on your question anyway

[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....

[Framiga]

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"!!

its a well known issue. There's nothing you can do to fix it.

[Chain]

i think gfx cards have some tool/feature for rendering newicons into fastram. Anyone know about it?

[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!  :-(

[ChaosLord]

@dillinger

If u want to view dirs with text listings then u simply MUST
use Directory Opus, or Scalos or any of the million other excellent dir utilities for the Amiga Megacomputer.

Workbench is crap coded.  Sad but true.

Patching bad code is just not the answer to ur troubles my friend.

Use a DirUtil.  You'll thank me later. :-)

[RWO]

@ChaosLord

Patching bad code is just not the answer to ur troubles my friend.

You got somthing wrong there, you don't fix a problem by patching working code.

If someone wants to fix this annoying chipmem problem he has to patch the problem (proberly in wb library)

RWO

[kzin]

try using Diskmaster its way better than WB, you dont even have to have WB runing.

[Chain]

btw its the same situation as with "Windows explorer"
99.9% people using alternative file manager aka wincmd, totalcmd etc

[Animagic]

Chain wrote:
btw its the same situation as with "Windows explorer"
99.9% people using alternative file manager aka wincmd, totalcmd etc

Indeed. I use Directory Opus for PC on my WinXP  :lol: