Faster directory listing possible?

[ChaosLord]

Yep, I tried TLSFmem a couple of years ago, and I have a newish version on my hard drive which I downloaded earlier this year. I did try it, but I couldn't tell whether it was any better than PoolMem or not. But if everyone on here says it is, then I'll have to take your word for it. The whole world can't be wrong. I may install it for good yet... LOL.

Thanks Chaos...

I still have my PoolMem in my startup-sequence too.  But it is commented out.  I have not uncommented it in years.

I am a software developer and there is some sort of hardcore debugging tool that I sometimes have to run (I can't remember which one... its been years since I did something silly like code a bug .  Anyway this debugging tool hacks into the AmigaOS memory list system.  Only TLSFmem doesn't USE that system which is why it is so much faster and less fraggly.  So when running that hardcore debug tool I hafta switch back to PoolMem temporarily.

So like I say, ur not getting married to TLSFmem, or if u r then u can still cheat on the side with PoolMem when u get the urge.

[ChaosLord]

How?

  http://aminet.net/package/disk/cache/fcache11

FastCache Free Software + instructions are there.  I think it might actually default to FASTram nowadays so that u don't hafta actually configure anything.

[smerf]

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.

HMMM!!!

My directory listing is plenty fast enough on Amiga Forever running on a Windows PC utilizing an AMD 6 core processor. That listing just zips on by running at 3.2 ghz.

[freqmax]

Yes, 3.2 GHz is a lot more than say 50 MHz 68030..

[djkoelkast]

How do I increase the cache on that partition? AddBuffers?

[nicholas]

How do I increase the cache on that partition? AddBuffers?

I've got AddBuffers DH2: 600 on my PFS3 partition. That's on MorphOS with 1GB RAM though.

[ChaosLord]

I have addbuffers Work: 1000 on my 32MB FFS A1200

1000 buffers = 512k

Addbuffers does speed things up noticeably.

But it is not as dramatic as FastCache or PowerCache or etc.

[djkoelkast]

Should I use like only FastCache or FastCache and AddBuffers together?

[olsen]

I have addbuffers Work: 1000 on my 32MB FFS A1200

1000 buffers = 512k

Addbuffers does speed things up noticeably.

But it is not as dramatic as FastCache or PowerCache or etc.

The type of buffer which the file system manages through "AddBuffers" is only used for file system data structures. The contents of the files are not buffered in this manner.

It's possible that you can obtain the same performance with a lot less buffers thrown at the file system to manage. The old FFS has to walk through the entire list of buffers before it can find the one it is looking for.

As such, the more buffers you throw at the file system, the more time it will spend on managing the buffers, rather than making good use of what is in the buffer.

[olsen]

Should I use like only FastCache or FastCache and AddBuffers together?

Because the file system is very limited in what it can do with the buffers assigned to it, you might be best served with a block caching solution (FastCache) doing the hard work, and the file system using only the bare minimum of buffers it needs (10-15 buffers).

[JimDrew]

I use addbuffers 200 with FastCache.  Anything higher was just wasting memory.     I remember PowerCache, but I didn't use it for some reason... I don't think it worked as well with hardfiles as FastCache.

FastCache is a night and day difference with the 8GB CF drive.

[djkoelkast]

I use addbuffers 200 with FastCache.  Anything higher was just wasting memory.     I remember PowerCache, but I didn't use it for some reason... I don't think it worked as well with hardfiles as FastCache.

FastCache is a night and day difference with the 8GB CF drive.

Are you able to use more than one CF drive (I use MicroDrives, essentially the same, but it's really a hard drive in stead of flash memory)? I can only use one at a time, I really need both of them to work together.

[Linde]

I always list my huge directories from the cli. It makes finding stuff a lot easier, too.

[Thorham]

Workbench sucks Use Dopus 4 or Dopus Magellen (free and open source now). Especially Magellen is pretty fast (but do yourself a favor and don't use it as a Workbench replacement, instead set it up to resemble Dopus 4, but that's just my opinion ).

[JimDrew]

Are you able to use more than one CF drive (I use MicroDrives, essentially the same, but it's really a hard drive in stead of flash memory)? I can only use one at a time, I really need both of them to work together.

I have not tried using more than one CF drive.  I only have one currently.

[paul1981]

So like I say, ur not getting married to TLSFmem, or if u r then u can still cheat on the side with PoolMem when u get the urge.

And the best part is... neither TLSFmem or PoolMem will remember a damn thing!
WIN WIN!! :laugh1: