2.04 Problem
21 messages in this thread
HELP….I am going crazy trying to figure this one out. I updated my OS to
2.04 about a month ago, every sense I have noticed about a 33% slow down in
my system performance.
I have an AMIGA 2000 with a 68000, motherboards at REV 6.2, 2- 3.5 FD's,
48MB Seagate HD w/ an IVS Trumpcard upgraded to REV 4.9,IVS Meta-Man with a
MEG of memory, and a SUPRARAM Board with 2MB or RAM.
I have completly stripped my system of all the boards, including the HD,
and left only the two FD's installed, I then made a demo disk containing 4
640×400 pictures and a slide show program. In the startup sequence I
copied all the information to CHIPRAM and ran the slide show. Under V1.3
it took 45 seconds to complete an entire cycle. I timed this 10 times.
Under 2.04 it took 60 seconds to complete. I timed this 10 times.
My first thought was a software problem….no go, I tried running other
programs, such as diskmaster and some other utils. I noticed a slow down
in all of them.
I called commodore and spoke to RON in tech support (no easy task), and
even went and saw a dealer (Century Computers in Calf) they comfirmed my
findings but were lost as to how to fix it. I have a program called
CPU/Memory Benchmark V2.01 that shows your system performance. Under V 1.3
it shows 1.00% , under 2.0 it shows .92%. Can anyone help???
James,
This is no help but I too have noticed some slowdown, I upgraded to a
68030 a the same time I went to 2.04, so program speed I cannot compare but
I have a US Robitics HST Modem that under 1.3 I would usually ge around
1600-1700 cps with but now only get 1400-1500 cps, I made no changes to my
NRam settings or terminal software so the slowdown has to be 2.0 related
(don't think it would be from going to a 68030). I'll be wathcing this
thread to see wha kind of answers you get.
I have no clue to an answer, but wanted to ask if you have check your
system time?
I too upgrade to v2.04 with new ROM just a little befor Xmas and ever
since I have noticed that my system clock is running slow. I have had to
set it a couple of times already. I generally leave my machine on at all
times and have picked up a new WB clock program for 2.0 and the sucker is
running slow.
Never really bothered to check other system functions and to put a
stopwatch to various task comparisons, but now that I have read your
message I'm beginning to think that maybe my system is running alittle like
yours.
I'll be keeping my eyes on this thread to see what some of our experts
think.
I've got the same problem, and I'm really *&(%% at C= for doing this
to us. It's my understanding that 2.0 switches tasks twice as often as 1.4
did. Each time a switch takes place, all of the stuff in the CPU has to be
stashed im memory somewhere, and the stuff from the next task reloaded.
This eats up time. There's a hack that lets you put a 16Mhz 68000 in the
machine and run it at that speed, I'm going to try it. If it fails, 2.0
comes out until I can afford an accelerator.
Personally, I think this slowdown could be the end of the Amiga.
Consider that most of C= sales are A500s in Europe, where they run very
demanding games. Any game that doesn't turn multitasking off is going to
look bad. I've noticed Red Storm Rising running sluggishly in the strategic
map mode, and the Anti-Lemmings demo runs slow enough to be embarrassing.
The other bastion of Amigadom is video, and from now on, any video software
is going to have to determine if the machine is accelerated or not. If not,
multitasking will have to be turned off to ensure reasonably smooth motion.
Since multitasking is one of our few remaining advantages, I feel that
things look really bleak, unless…
SOMEONE PLEASE WRITE A PATCH TO RESET THE QUANTUM BACK TO 1.4 RATES!!!
The end of the Amiga? Because a few games may run slower?
Really.
Ron
Games are what keeps the Amiga running in Europe, which is what keeps C=
profitable. US sales certainly can't be doing much for their bottom line.
Futher, games are just the most demanding application. Animations suffer
quite a bit as well. The Eric Schwartz anim Anti-Lemmin runs almost
embarrassingly slow under 2.0; isn't the ability to show anims smoothly
even on a low-end A500 supposed to be one of our strong points? Not any
more, I'm afraid.
I have installed 2.04 in 2 different a2000 machines and saw a small speedup
in general operations, so maybe you need to investigate your system in more
detail and look for a possible older program that is not working as well as
you might think (i.e. slowing everything else down.)
Fred
I have found that with RESELECTION ON, my systems performance degrades…
when set to OFF, everything is crisp & clean.
– Whapp!ng from the North Coast Michael
Michael –
I have an A2000HD with an A2091 and a Quantum 40MB SCSI drive. How do I
toggle RESELECTION? I have a 3m MDC SCSI tape drive that causes the A2091
to hang periodically. Probably about 50% of the time. I have heard that
RESELECTION will cause the problem I am seeing. However, I have not been
able to figure out how I check/change it. Any clues?
– Nelson …
– via Whap!
Nelson:
From HDToolbox, select the drive, choose CHANGE DRIVE TYPE, read the config
from disk, select ok, select drive from requester, choose EDIT OLD DRIVE
TYPE, toggle reselection to NO, select OK. According to an earlier message
I saw here, you're supposed to be consistent and set all drives for either
O supporting or not supporting reselection, so if you change it on one
drive, be sure to change it on all drives.
– Whapp!ng from the North Coast Michael
Michael –
Thanks! I'll give it a try and let you know if it helps. I hope it
does.
– Nelson …
– via Whap!
Nelson,
Unfortunately, you cannot disable reselection of the tape drive, and that
may or may not be a problem, depending on the particular disk drives
attached.
I was never able to get the 2091 working perfectly with tape, and I
suspect the main problem was in the area of reselection.
-larry
Yeah. I suspect that you are right. I have an A2000HD. The A2091 now
has a Quantum 40S hard drive and a 3M MCD tape drive. I changed
reselection last evening and putz around with the tape drive for several
hours. My original problem was that often, not always, the backup would
hang with the SCSI light (aka HARD DISK light) on the front panel lit
continuously.
After changing reselection the backups still fail, at least as
frequently. Now, however, the process hangs with the light ON or OFF.
Darn. I am quite irritated with the problem. But I got the tape drive for
$50 so I'm not out too much.
What role does addressing and termination play in the SCSI scheme. The
Quantum is at address 6 and the tape at 3. Originally, months ago, the
tape was on the cable before the Quantum and unterinated as I understand it
should be. I switched the cable and terminations around so that now the
Quantum is in the middle, i.e. between the A2091 and the tape drive. I
have not noticed any degradation in hard drive performance nor have I had
any problems that would tilt me towards doubting the hard disk. But the
problem persists.
Gack! It's probably some really simple idiocy in the scsi.device
driver; but, I haven't the accumen to know what or how to go about fixing
it.
I don't know as it's so much a problem in the driver as it is in the
hardware itself, either in the tape or disk drive, or in the SCSI host
adapter itself, or even an interaction between all three. As Andy pointed
out, some drives handle reselection, and some don't. Of the ones that
don't, some handle it gracefully, but not all. Unfortunately, the tape
drive is likely to be doing reselection in spite of what you want, and the
drive and/or host adapter just may not be handling it properly.
Hmmm … on my disk, there are two icons, RESELECTION ON and RESELECTION
OFF. When I select one or the other it toggles reslection for ALL scsi
device mounted on the Amiga. It then tells me to reboot to make it
effective. There appears to be no way, and no option, to do this operation
to individual scsi devices.
Paul:
>"…there are two icons, RESELECTION ON and RESELECTION OFF. When I select
one or the other it toggles reslection for ALL scsi device mounted on the
Amiga."<
Yeah… I believe that reselection is either is either on or off for all
scsi devices on the bus… you might want to check with Andy Finkel; he
explained this all to me but, but I've forgotten the details.
– Whapp!ng from the North Coast Michael
I'm just about as vanilla as can be. XOper sees nothing taking up
substantial CPU time except for the input.device at around 40%. My
startup-sequence under 1.3 took two hires pages to list and around 40secs
to finish, and with all of that running, animations still looked good.
Perhaps general operations are faster due to FFS, it's processor intensive
stuff like Eric Schwartz stuff I'm talking about. Try a comparason
yourself.
Actually, 2.04 fixes a bug in the task switching area that has been around
since day 1. You don't want the OS to be held back from proper development,
just because a few games act a little slow, do you? -Greg
It's not just games, but ANIMATIONS WITH SOUND that really suffer.
Considering the progress PCs are making in sound and animation, if a stock
Amiga can no longer show such multimedia pieces adequately, what leg have
we to stand on??
I can't help you specifically with your problem, but I seem to remember a
previous thread that discussed performance problems under V2.04 that had to
do with HD reselect. I am not sure which Amiga forum this thread was in,
but maybe one of the amazing SYSOPS can locate it for you.
– via Whap! (from Southern Illinois)