Re: [hatari-devel] OS X performance problem

[Bob Carpenter <hatari@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Eero,

I am sure you are running Frantick without its 640K Yamaha sound file. It is possible to run the game without the enhanced sound file. This came on disk 2. I created an HD floppy to be able to fit everything on one disk. I purposely picked Frantick with the 640K frantrak.dat file because I wanted something that would take a long time to load with the floppy disk.

Here is the Dropbox link to the HD floppy that I created for Frantick:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/16276054/Frantick.st

Unfortunately, Frantick does not allow you to put the frantrak.dat file on a separate floppy. Because of this, I do not know if HD floppies are slower to load than DD floppies. I would have preferred to leave the HD floppy out of the equation.


Bob C

On Jun 2, 2014, at 4:01 PM, Eero Tamminen <oak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On sunnuntai 01 kesäkuu 2014, Bob Carpenter wrote:
>> I am sorry for not doing the tests with the status bar off. Here are the
>> numbers:
>> 
>> 1.7 devel
>> Fast forward - 25 sec
>> Normal - 4 minutes 54 seconds
>> 
>> 1.8 devel
>> Fast forward - 8 seconds
>> Normal - 4 minutes 57 seconds
> 
> For me, it loads in ~7 secs with fast forward even with statusbar enabled.
> 
> And without fast forward, the loading from (HD) floppy image takes:
> ~10 secs from clicking the program icon until FRANTRAK data loading starts
> ~20 secs to load FRANTRAK
> ~30 secs of different info screens until game gets to start screen
> = 1 minute in total.
> 
> This is under 4MB STE emulation, with:
> *   Frantick (c) 1994-95 Dave Munsie  *
> *   V 1.1 - Release date 01/03/1995   *
> 
> (Above is game's output with "-conout 2".)
> 
> 
> Which version of Frantick takes 5 minutes to load?
> 
> 
> 	- Eero
> 
>> Since I was using the stopwatch on my mobile phone, I would not worry
>> about a few seconds. It does appear that the status bar has an effect in
>> fast forward mode. However, when the system is running normally, it does
>> not appear to have an effect.
>> 
>> 
>> Bob C
>> 
>> On Jun 1, 2014, at 3:01 AM, Eero Tamminen <oak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> 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
> 
> 
>