Basilisk II Atari

[shoggoth77]

You do TTLOW and STLOW. That really made me salivate. Amazing.

[stephen_usher]

The new version is significantly slower, though I can't quantify it as Speedometer corrupted its machine database when it hung when saving.

256 colour/grey modes are very slow on the TT.

[agranlund]

The new version is significantly slower, though I can't quantify it as Speedometer corrupted its machine database when it hung when saving.

256 colour/grey modes are very slow on the TT.

Interesting, would you mind sharing the log file?
Are both acceleration options enabled in the video options menu?
If they are enabled, is it as slow as if you disable them? (Which would be very slow indeed)

[shoggoth77]

I'd say performance is a lot better than I had expected in 16- and 256 color modes, given the horrific process needed to convert the screen contents.

I doubt it can be done much faster than this, but please prove me wrong :)

[agranlund]

If it's significantly slower than the previous test build then I think something is going wrong, perhaps I introduced a bug.
I'd expect it to be about the same as the last one in TT 16 color.

If any of the acceleration buffers are ending up in ST-RAM then it's going to be crazy slow. Likewise, if MMU setup is failing for whatever reason then that too would make it very very slow. The log output should be able to say if any of this is happening.

@stephen_usher, you could also check the monitor control panel in MacOS and pick 16 colour mode if the Atari is in 16 colour mode.
That will be faster than 256 -> 16 colour emulation.

I'm terrible at explaining so I was actually thinking of getting rid this to avoid confusion.. but I'm quite fond of having the option.
But basically. You will have the option of 256 colours in the MacOS control panel even if the Atari is in 4, 8 or 16 bit mode.
These 256 colour modes are not equal - they are completely different translation paths from Mac 256 colours to whatever bitdepth the Atari is in.
The fastest will be when the bit depth is the same.
Anything that change palette often (Prince of Persia) will turn into a slideshow unless the Atari is also in 256 colour mode. It's there so that you can pop into 256 colour in a pinch for some game where it makes sense even if you're using TT-Medium.

[shoggoth77]

As long as the reason for the performance drop is documented, I think people will be fine with it.

[stephen_usher]

I'll do a set of benchmarks again with previous versions, hopefully this evening, rebuilding the database.

I've noticed that hard disk access has been slowing with every release, even in native ST-High resolution.

With a large MacOS disk cache I was getting 9.xx times a Mac Classic, now it's down to about 5.

Oh, and all accelerations are turned on, that's MMU and FPU. When Speedometer is doing the display tests it seems reasonably fast, but very bursty, especially when drawing the diagonal lines. Civ-II in 256 grey mode looks lovely, but runs like tar.

[Badwolf]

... aaaaand then came this one:
http://www.happydaze.se/wp-content/uplo ... 220504.zip

Hi Anders,

Just getting a white screen when trying to start this up on my Falcon. Various resolutions, Mint, no mint, acceleration/fastram, stock, different disks (not tried raw access). Tried the safe IRQ option without effect.

I'm choosing native graphics where possible, but starting it up in 256 mode was the same.

Something to do with Videl?

Here's the log.

Ta,

BW

[agranlund]

Oh, and all accelerations are turned on, that's MMU and FPU. When Speedometer is doing the display tests it seems reasonably fast, but very bursty, especially when drawing the diagonal lines. Civ-II in 256 grey mode looks lovely, but runs like tar.

Yeah I have no idea how well graphics emulation runs on real machines.
If the desktop and general applications works well enough to be considered usable on a TT then I'll consider it a massive success.

Some games seem ok(*) on my ST with graphics emulation but then again I can only test ST-Low.
(*) ok, as in, better than expected and I suppose you can play some games that don't have very much movement. in a pinch.

How far off from this is what you're seeing on your machine?


If it's super far off, could you check in the log file if emulation buffers are in tt or st ram?

Screenshot 2022-05-07 at 21.59.09.png

If you run something that use palette animations then you are going to get a slideshow in TT Medium, and you would have a much better time if your Atari is also in 256 color mode. That's not to say it'll be playable for sure in TT-Low either, you really do want a graphics card for most types of games.

Prince of Persia in TT-Low (256 -> 256 color emulation)



Prince of Persia, TT Medium (256 -> 16 color emulation)

[stephen_usher]

Here's a full demonstration. (As I type this YouTube is still processing the high definition version. There's no sound as the video capture device refused to capture it until it was unplugged and plugged in again afterward, and I couldn't be bothered to redo the video.)