Faster directory listing possible?

[djkoelkast]

I've got my old 3.9 bb2 installation running again. It's on a 8GB microdrive that has multiple partitions.
One of the partitions contains a LOT of folders with WHDLoad games, each folder has a game in it. When I open this partition in workbench it takes a few minutes before the listing shows. In the meantime I can't do anything else.
This partition is either in FFS of SFS, I don't quite remember, but it takes so long. Is there a way to speed up the directory listing?
I remember from older installations there was a .fastdir file that contained the listing? Never seen that on 3.9 though.

[Tenacious]

I think everything depends on what progran you're using to read the directory.

WB is slow.  Dopus is probably faster.  Ordering is (written in assembler?) much faster than Dopus.  

[ChaosLord]

Using Directory Opus is an excellent idea!

The other thing you should do is use PFS3 as it is very much faster than SFS at reading dirs and at the same time it uses less CPU power which means there is more cpu power available to poll that silly gawdawful IDE HD interface.

Another thing you can do to speed things up is switch to a quality SCSI DMA HD interface.

Another thing you can do is to buy a faster accelerator.


But really if you just switch to PFS3 + Directory Opus your dirs will be lightning fast.

Workbench is simply not coded for speed.   The underlying AmigaOS is fast but the Workbench.exe is sloooow.

[paul1981]

I've got my old 3.9 bb2 installation running again. It's on a 8GB microdrive that has multiple partitions.
One of the partitions contains a LOT of folders with WHDLoad games, each folder has a game in it. When I open this partition in workbench it takes a few minutes before the listing shows. In the meantime I can't do anything else.
This partition is either in FFS of SFS, I don't quite remember, but it takes so long. Is there a way to speed up the directory listing?
I remember from older installations there was a .fastdir file that contained the listing? Never seen that on 3.9 though.

Peter K's icon.library helps here: http://m68k.aminet.net/package/util/libs/IconLib_46.4

If you're not bothered about keeping the drawer icons for each game (2500 for example all in one drawer), you could always delete all the .info files for the game drawers which will make directory listings in file managers much quicker. Of course though, you will loose the ability to snapshot the drawer icon positions from within Workbench. This is okay for most people as they use a game launcher.

Check your disk buffers as well on your games partition...100 minimum, I use 300.

Even FBlit & FText helps though. The truth is, even after all the drawers have been read and the disk access has finished, it can still take AGES to sort and display the icons...so a SCSI setup won't make much of a difference...it's Workbench that's slow in sorting and displaying the drawer contents (does it still use chip ram or something? as I don't see much of a difference in fast machines compared to slower ones).

[djkoelkast]

I do have a CyberSCSI MKII, but SCSI drives are noisy and expensive, that's why I'm using a microdrive currently.

[matthey]

I do have a CyberSCSI MKII, but SCSI drives are noisy and expensive, that's why I'm using a microdrive currently.

You are showing a CyberVision 64 so check that your sys:prefs/Workbench prefs have the gadget "Images in: Other Memory" selected. That with PeterK's icon.library will greatly accelerate icons. The 68060 version of PFS is much faster than alternative file systems for listing as mentioned.

[freqmax]

How reliable is PFS btw? (and which version?)

Anyway.. is listing entries in CLI slow too?
GUIs tend to love resources of all kinds..

[ChaosLord]

PFS3AIO version from Aminet is recommended by Toni Wilen, coder of WinUAE.

Everyone in Team Chaos (except me) has been using PFS3 for many many years and they all swear by it.  Most of them tried SFS vs PFS3 and only then did they choose PFS, that was many years ago.

I have read the results of many timing tests performed by many different ppl over the years.  PFS3 FTW!

[ChaosLord]

You are showing a CyberVision 64 so check that your sys:prefs/Workbench prefs have the gadget "Images in: Other Memory" selected.

+1

That will speed things up a lot.  Workbench is coded the slowest way possible so it always stores gfx in the slowest memory possible, which is just the wrong way to do things on AGA or on accelerated Amigas.

That with PeterK's icon.library will greatly accelerate icons. The 68060 version of PFS is much faster than alternative file systems for listing as mentioned.

There is a special version of PFS3 for 060?  Awesome!

060 FTW!

[matthey]

That will speed things up a lot.  Workbench is coded the slowest way possible so it always stores gfx in the slowest memory possible, which is just the wrong way to do things on AGA or on accelerated Amigas.

Workbench is coded in the most compatible way possible with settings and utilities to speed up and enhance the appearance.

There is a special version of PFS3 for 060?  Awesome!

The original PFS3 package uploaded to Aminet has CPU specific versions. Toni's version does not but his version has a few minor bug fixes. The last regular version of PFS3 has been very stable for me though.

[ChaosLord]

Workbench is coded in the most compatible way possible with settings and utilities to speed up and enhance the appearance.

I don't entirely agree with this.

If he opens his window with thousands of icons then Workbench will completely thrash the memory list and there will be thousands of memory fragments and the Amiga will be permanently slower from that point on.  If he opens and closes that window multiple times and then runs random software he is in for a crash.  Its like Workbench doesn't use memory pools at all and just bashes the OS with zillionz of malloc()/free().

I very strongly suggest that djkoelkast download TLSFmem from Aminet and install it near the top of the startup-sequence.  This will dramatically reduce the memory fragmentation and dramatically increase the speed of the Amiga and dramatically lengthen the uptime.

TLSFmem is the best utility for Amiga ever.  It greatly improves the speed of any program that performs a lot of memory allocations.

[djkoelkast]

I'll try all posibilities asap, my Multisync monitor is suffering from a broken cable, the cable is directly attached to the monitor so it's not possible to just take another cable

[freqmax]

What does TLSFmem that reduces the load?

[ChaosLord]

What does TLSFmem that reduces the load?

TLSFmem helps to prevent memory fragmentation.

Once your memory becomes fragmented then any time a program allocates memory or frees memory it then takes 100x longer or 1000x longer or 10000x longer or memory allocations FAIL completely.

It happens to everyone's computer on every OS.  That is why after running certain programs your 3Ghz computer starts running at the speed of a 50Mhz Amiga.  It has happened to me countless times.  It can be triggered by a certain flash ad or by opening a certain PDF.  PDF viewers were quite notorious for fraggling your memory on Windoze for many years.

I have had the same problem as the original poster many times.  I accidentally open a dir with Workbench that has a zillion icons and my Amiga becomes functionally unusable after that because my memory is so badly fragmented that it is totally impossible to allocate any large chunks of memory even though my memory is nearly empty.  It doesn't matter how empty your memory is.  If it is all fragmented it is completely useless.

If you are like me and you leave your computer running 24/7/365 then TLSFmem greatly speeds up your Amiga after a few days of use and greatly lengthens the uptime.

[Lurch]

Windows XP is bad for doing this. Doesn't happen that often on Windows 7 unless a program has crashed. Programs that do that tend to be 3rd party badly written programs.

Most cases that I see is either the above, a badly written driver or 7 is just not setup correctly.

Have two server boxes here one with Windows 7 which has been up and running a few months now without needing a restart.

The other is Server 2008 R2 which is solid a rock (can even disable the gui if you wish)

Windows 8 doesn't seem to suffer from it, I've been running it for over year now. The only thing I dislike is the new task manager (But wont get into that).

Linux, now here's an OS that I can't kill. Had one server running for years without needing to reboot it and that's using x windows not just the shell.