Help optimizing an A500.

[Britelite]

No, FBlit on an A3000/A1200/A4000 is faster than the blitter for some chipmem to chipmem copies. The blitter can't saturate the chipram bandwidth, while a really fast CPU can. I don't know what CPU it maxes out at. It also has the added benefit that icons etc can be stored in fast ram, which makes it even quicker. However things like full window dragging are sped up with FBlit and that doesn't touch fastram.

Of course, but the best speedups come when some of the data can be handled in fastram. As you said, chipmem maxes out at some point, but you can still benefit from the tasks that can be done elsewhere.

[Tenacious]

I have an ECS Amiga 500 with the following:

- MegaChip (1MB in A500 and 1MB on MegaChip gives 2MB Chip RAM)
- PowerXL internally mounted High-Density Floppy Drive
- Kickstart Switcher 1.3/3.1
- Supra 500XP Sidecar with 2GB Hard drive and 2MB Fast RAM installed (expandable to 8MB but I can't find 1M x 4 chips for sale).
- DCTV for full colour graphics work with supported software

So in total I have 2MB CHIP and 2MB FAST.

I love modest machines like this!  Unfortunately, mine is not setup at this time.

I think the 68010 is worth it.  I've run them for years and never noticed a compatibility problem attributable to it, Kickstart versions are far more of a barrier.  Your 500XP is also compatible with Supra's 25Mhz Turbo accelerator (a 68000 clocked at 25 Mhz, no FPU).

There are math libraries on Aminet that have speed improvements over Commodore's originals.  Try search for math library.  The ones I found 20 years ago were for non-FPU machines and sped up stuff like Distant Suns and VistaPro.

Software:  Have you tried BetterWorkBench?  It goes on top of a fresh and clean 3.1 installation.  I can't remember if it includes those math libs or not.  It includes dozens of optimizations and extras and is designed for modest systems.

I ran AmiFileSafe (first prototype of PFS) on 68000 machines, and it made a HUGE difference in HD access and speed.  It really is like having an accelerator when you don't.  If PFS is available for 68000, I highly recommend it!

Ordering is a dir utility like Dopus, and others.  Ordering is greatly optimized and noticeably faster than the others.  It's also Aminet.

I think VoiceOfAmiga is very cool if you have plenty of fast ram (shameless plug, ).  Again, it's on Aminet.