Re: [hatari-devel] Fastload from GEMDOS drive emulation

[Vincent Rivière <vincent.riviere@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/06/2019 at 08:59, Christian Zietz wrote:
> When you load and relocate a program yourself, like Hatari has to do
> for GEMDOS emulation, it's up to you (=Hatari) to clear the memory.

And for best compatibility, Hatari should clear the memory *slowly* :-)
Ideally, using the emulated CPU to clear the whole block.

For example, if you run any program without Fastload bit with Hatari 
from floppy or hard disk partition, you can humanly notice the delay at 
startup (between the end of loading and actual startup). This delay is 
about 1 second with 4 MB of RAM, and about 3 seconds with the boosted 14 
MB configuration. This completely makes sense.
On the other hand, when using GEMDOS drive emulation, if the memory 
clear is performed by the host, it will be instantaneous.

Of course such slowness would be more accurate, but probably overkill. 
As the GEMDOS drive has virtually infinite speed, it may also make sense 
to also boost the heap zeroing.

Of course, personally I prefer fast loadings!
But seeing a speed difference (in addition to disk speed) between disk 
images and GEMDOS drive emulation is a bit puzzling.

--
Vincent Rivière