Re: [hatari-devel] OS X performance problem

[Eero Tamminen <oak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On sunnuntai 01 kesäkuu 2014, Bob Carpenter wrote:
> I decided to load the PD game Frantick with its 640K music track into
> memory from floppy disk. I thought that would be a good bench test since
> it has to read the floppy disk for a long time before the startup screen
> appears. Back in 1995, the author recommended loading it on a hard disk
> if you were going to use the music track.
> 
> Anyway, here are the numbers:
> 
> In fast forward mode:
> 1.7 devel version (no track information) - 21 seconds
> 1.8 devel version (track information) - 58 seconds

Do you see same difference also with statusbar disabled
(--statusbar off)?

* If you still see the difference, it's not because of statusbar,
  but something else, most likely Nicolas' FDC emulation improvements.

* If difference disappears with statusbar, then the slowdown is
  due to statusbar and needs to be looked into.


	- Eero

> In real time mode:
> Both 1.7 devel and 1.8 devel finished in 4 minutes 57 seconds
> 
> I do not know of many ST programs that accessed the disk during gameplay.
> Back when I had my 1040 with only a floppy drive, I would have thrown
> the disk across the room if it was accessing the disk while I was trying
> to play the game. Obviously, some games access the disk between levels
> (Zany Golf comes to my mind). If a game or demo was accessing the disk
> while running, I could see how the track information could slow things
> down. I just do not have examples of programs that are running and
> accessing the disk at the same time.
> 
> If you are only updating the information when it actually changes, I do
> not see how you can really improve this. The only other option would be
> to make the track information display optional. That way, OS X users
> that had problems with it could turn it off and they would be no worse
> than if they ran 1.7.
> 
> 
> Bob C
> 
> On May 31, 2014, at 5:11 PM, Eero Tamminen <oak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On lauantai 31 toukokuu 2014, Bob Carpenter wrote:
> >> I have only started using the devel version with the changes you made.
> >> It is running fine. I did not see any improved performance, but the
> >> performance was fine on Hatari with the previous version. Your
> >> changes may very well help users with older Macs though.
> > 
> > It's not related to how slow machine you have, but what you're
> > testing.
> > 
> > First fix I did was to do statusbar updates only when something
> > changes.  Now I fixed the case where statusbar actually changes.
> > 
> > I.e. you need a test case that causes constant updates to
> > statusbar state, something that does constant disk accesses.
> > 
> > 	- Eero