Hi everyone. So this seemed worthy of a new thread. I'm hoping I can get some advice to insure I'm getting the best performance. It was a good tech day (been having a lot of these lately)

- WB 3.1 Roms installed successfully
- ACA 1233 installed successfully

I ran Sysinfo and everything looks right with the CPU speed, but I can't help but feel a little underwhelmed still. Granted I might just be spoiled by modern computer speeds so I'm not unhappy with it, but wonder if there might be things I could do to optimize. Here are some questions:

- I now have WB 3.1 roms.. but i'm pretty sure the software in my workbench are 3.0 disks. I have ADF's of the 3.1 floppies. Should I upgrade these disks? I'm not sure how to do this if it is recommended.. this isn't like installing windows.. i figure i could ruin my workbench folder if i'm not careful..

- MMU. I see the 1233 has some nifty MMU features, but I'm not sure if this is automatically done by the hardware or if I need to do anything? I know that when I first installed it with 3.0 roms.. the 128mb ram didn't show up which is normal.. putting the 3.1 roms fixed this.. but that's the extent of what I did.. I got the ACA tune disk from AmigaKit and i clicked the "install" icon but virtually nothing happened that i could see (no wizard / popup) so I don't if that software is installed or even what it was suppose to do.

- Any other suggestions would be welcome to make sure i'm getting the best performance possible..

I'm using programs like Bars and Pipes (well, still learning, wouldn't say "using it" yet, heh) but moving windows don't feel as snappy as I would like. Maybe I was wrong, but I know this unit doesn't have a FPU, but I was thinking that FPU isn't helpful for OS operations just things like rendering and such, which is why I thought the 1233 would be good for my musical needs. I'm not doing any 3d rendering here! :)

Thanks,
Caleb

@227,

Install OS3.1. It's worth it, Many improvements.

Chris

@QuikSanz

Do i just pop in the disks starting with the first and it just overwrites stuff safely? Do I boot from the install 3.1 disk? or can I boot up and install it that way?

@227,

Save your config, startup and all, warm boot from install disk.

And Remap ROM to Fast RAM if possible.

_________________
Using: One Commodore C64 - One Commodore Amiga 500 - One Commodore Amiga 1200 with BVision and Blizzard 68060 with PPC coprocessor running Amiga DOS - One Hellbillylitre Amigatwox86x64x6000x running Windows7

@227

Add these lines to your Startup-sequence just after Setpatch:

--------------------

C:ACATune >NIL: maprom *
C:ACATune >NIL: vbrmove burst on

-------------------

ACATune (v1.7) should be in your C directory. Maprom * (star) will copy your A1200's ROM Kickstart to the ACA's onboard 32-bit fastram makimg the OS run much faster. vbrmove and burst will speed things up a bit as well. The "on" switch for the burst command is case sensitive, so make sure you use lowercase for all arguments.

I use two ACATune entries in my Startup-sequence since I seem to have issues trying to put all of them on one line when using the maprom option.

Drewlio77

Last edited by Drewlio77 on 29-May-2015 at 06:18 AM.

@Drewlio77

Ok awesome, WB 3.1 software is fully installed now and no explosions. :)

I can see (thanks to Sysinfo) MMU isn't being used and no Rom mapping is going on. I know where my S folder is and startup stuff.. but..

How do i edit a file? I opened up a cli shell and got to the S: but i'm not sure how to open / edit the startup sequence to put the files in there.

I clicked the "install" on the ACATune program so that part of the process should be in place.

@227

From the shell "ed s:startup-sequence" or "ed s:user-startup" to edit the startup sequences.

You should be able to save some chipram aand also speed up graphics functions by using Fblit. http://aminet.net/package.php?package=util/boot/fblit.lha

@227

Sysinfo doesn't show Rom mapping with ACA cards for some reason. One cool thing about the ACA cards is you can map any Amiga Rom, such as 1.3 using the maprom command. The online documenation for ACAtune can be found here:

ACATune Doc

Drewlio77

Last edited by Drewlio77 on 29-May-2015 at 04:09 PM.

@Drewlio77

Good to know about the Sysinfo / MMU stuff. How do I know if it is working?

and thanks for the cli command stuff! i'll try this out when I get home this afternoon.

Thanks,
Caleb

@227

The system will run a bit faster, plus in a shell window if you type "ACATune status" it will tell you what has been enabled or disabled.

Drewlio77

@Drewlio77

awesome great to know! I can't wait to squeeze some extra performance out of this upgrade!

@227

SysSpeed shows the differences but it requires you install MUI as well.

http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/sspeed26
http://aminet.net/package/util/libs/mui38usr

If you click on "Low" test and then "Memory" test and see if the ReadRom is about the same as ReadFast it's in the right place, but as Drewlio77 says you will notice things run a bit faster too, or use the ACATune status.

It's also nice to use for testing other small improvements.

_________________
Using: One Commodore C64 - One Commodore Amiga 500 - One Commodore Amiga 1200 with BVision and Blizzard 68060 with PPC coprocessor running Amiga DOS - One Hellbillylitre Amigatwox86x64x6000x running Windows7

@Hillbillylitre

good to know ! i used to have MUI back in the day.. might consider getting it again, but really don't want to add anything that would take away any performance. I don't mind 4 colors for workbench :)

@227

I don't think MUI take away any performance on Amiga computers, it's only used when you run software that requires it and it uses only 8 colors like MagicWB but think it works well enough in 4 colors as well.

Last edited by Hillbillylitre on 29-May-2015 at 07:00 PM.

_________________
Using: One Commodore C64 - One Commodore Amiga 500 - One Commodore Amiga 1200 with BVision and Blizzard 68060 with PPC coprocessor running Amiga DOS - One Hellbillylitre Amigatwox86x64x6000x running Windows7

@Hillbillylitre

ok that's good to know. i may give it a whirl again. I remember not having any trouble with it in the past..

I also know there is a midi patch editor program that required MUI so this gives me a reason to install it.

@227

MUI works OK on 4 coulour WB. However, your A1200/68030 is able of better resolution. Eg. I use 32 coulours in 640x400, fast and nice:



Note: I use mix of NewIcons, GlowIcons and MWB images (all converted to NewIcons).

If you like MWB style, 8 colours will be fine. Icons, backdrops - choice is yours.

@pavlor

very nice! currently I run my amiga at i think it's called productivity 72.. 1280x400 on a 26" LCD monitor which looks nice.. although sometimes i get a little artifacting but my understanding is this is unavoidable at the higher resolutions.

Getting a lower rez that looks good (not squashed) that is full screen on a 16:9 monitor has been tough to find..

I also like the added resolution because Bars and Pipes seems to be well designed to take advantage of the added screen space. Some apps, like Tiger Cub just appear much larger.

@227

Quote:

1280x400

You have scandoubler?

@pavlor

I have the AGA Mark 2. The red card in the picture. http://s294.photobucket.com/user/fitzsteve/media/IMAG0362.jpg.html

it gives me a DVI output so I can connect to monitors in any resolution. It automatically handles the various khz modes.. but there are still some strange resolutions for the 1200 it can't do (at least with my samsung 26" monitor) like 1024x1024..

So yea my concern is that I recall that more colors generally degraded the A1200's performance.. like it's "256" color mode that would bring my machine to a crawl back in the day.