Optimizing the OS/WB

[smace]

Hello there!

I am interested in hearing about the sort of stuff that could slow down how workbench response to my actions. What makes it boot up slower, what makes windows pop up/draw slower? All in all, how can I optimize the OS' or WB's performance? Never been a 'techie', so any comments should be helpful
I've been thinking that the Amiga is an effective OS and all that and bla bla you know, but as more and more 'extras' like AHI and is it CyberGraphics library have become necessary I feel that even the good old A1200/060 have become too slow

Upgrading librarys, is that all there is too it?
I'm curious..

Yours, Per Arne

[Doobrey]

jahbaloo wrote:
Upgrading librarys, is that all there is too it?

Nope.
 Basically, the more the Amiga has to do, the slower it gets.
 Upgraded libraries and device drivers **might** speed things up a little..they`ll probably fix bugs found in earlier versions too.

 The main things that slows down the speed of WB are the colour depth of the wb screen, icon color depth and all the visual patches that make WB look pretty.
 The first two only really apply if your`re not using a gfx card. Using 256 colour icons on a 256 colour AGA WB screen looks better than a 32 or 16 colour one, but it`s a hell of a lot slower
 :-(

[blobrana]

Hum,
all very true...
And i suppose that the less background tasks that you have running will make for a more stable system...

My tip is to mess around with the EXEC , and alter the priorities background tasks...
(You need a program called commander (?) i forget...or task-pie? ANYONE REMEMBER!)
 Anyway you can change Task priority with the CHANGETASKPRI command.


 an check out `Scout` on aminet to see whats happening under the bonnet...

Its all a question of balance, me thinks.

(Good-looks/speed, usability/stability etc...)

[Doobrey]

@Blobrana,
 Did you mean Executive ?

Just remembered  something else to help speed up WB,
Get rid of FFS and install PFS3 or SFS.
 Since they`re a lot faster than the original filesystem, icons and directory listings will come up quicker.

[Cass]

Must be Executive and its utility TaskPie (requires executive to run).

A 060 system is fast enough, but real speed increases independently from the CPU, you will see with a GFX card. For AGA speed-hacks, check out fblit, SystemPatch and others ...
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LIST OF MOTORCYCLES

[blobrana]

Chreers...
I went suddenly (even-more) brain-dead there...
Yea, i well recommend executive if you`ve got a 040-060 ,
 (of curse it hogs a bit of the cpu cycles when it runs though...) but i have it on my system...

[Framiga]

hi,

for a heavy speed boot time, i suggest Env-Handler.

I've installed it from a couple of weeks and it is very useful, even if you have not much RAM (you can save 1-1.5 MB of RAM)

Obviously, a CSPPC-060 can help a lot as well . . . .YES i got it :-)

Ciao

[boing]

I don't recall anything about Env-Handler.

It's been awhile since I tweaked the startup-sequence or user-startup, but:

By supressing output you can leave the video output off till it's done booting.  By this I mean you don't want any text output because this would require the chipset to start DMA and that can make the 680X0 compete for access to custom-chip ram.  IIRC there are somethings I like output with so I leave them for last items in user-startup.

Just add a > Nil:  to the end of any line whose output you want supressed.

If my memory is wrong I'm sure somebody will refresh it.  Also I don't think my AGA WB screen was ever more than 8 colors.  Did  that to save chipram, but it can also help make things faster than a 128 color WB screen.  Especially if you're running at 1440x486.

I also still use many of the ARP commands because they're smaller, load faster, and since they're 100% assem, they're much faster.

PFS and SFS are faster filesystems but I think they really use a lot of DMA in a more hoglike fashion?  Somebody else can comment on that.  This can be good or depend depending.  Overall, PFS and SFS are good things.  Real good.

You can also make use of the recoverable ramdisks out there and adjust your startup files to check to see if they're in use, and if so, boot from there.  This makes the 1st boot a tad slower, but later reboots much faster.

[smace]

Thanks for all the response so far, people!

ARP commands, I have no idea what those are. I've never known what the addition of '> nil' to a command line does either  :-? Could you point me to a good documentation?
Is this AREXX or just basic system commands?

[Cass]

NIL: is an AmigaDOS device. You use the ">" to output/redirect all data to the "NIL:" device. NIL: is sort of a trashcan, all the console/cli output is trashed (not shown on screen).
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WINNING INTERN