@beezle

Right. I should study a way (and, first of all, remember about this).

Perhaps you could just have a specific requestor for it when configuring after using Icaros for 1st time after install. Maybe with a brief text on pros and cons of both methods. Doesnt really have to be much, just something to make the user have to make a conscious decision rather than mindlessly pressing "next" (or equivalnet).

Hi beezle and thanks for the accurate answer.

My question arose because, even if I try to be as much agnostic as possible while choosing defaults behavior for Icaros, I sometimes tend to forget that OTHERS will use it, and basically take che same choices I'd use in most occasions. Which may be not the best option instead.

Today I fixed a bug I hadn't discovered before, just because (see above) I NEVER use it: AmiBridge wouldn't run at all automatically at boot if required. Why? Because I forgot a (damn) RUN >NIL: instead of replacing it with RUN QUIET in S:icaros-sequence. This was responsible of running the startup script for AmiBridge. But, once started, I also figured that running this at startup would have 'overlapped' x86 AROS with m68K one, bringing confusion to users.

So, I agree with you and with others in this forum that suggested me, in the past, to use fullscreen Janus by default, because it's faster. But, in this very specific case, it would create issues.

So another question might be: should I default to integration mode when AROS M68K is run at x86 startup, but keeping user's choices for all the other cases?

It's a difficult question to answer in my opinion and I think answers might be dictated a little by peoples AROS hardware and software use.

From a practical perspective I think the way you've got things at the moment might be the way to go. It is a better experience on lower spec gear (coherency is a bit sluggish on my athlon64 x2 laptop for example), and having software launch from x86 desktop in a 68k "clone" of the x86 environment still gives a bit of a coherent feel in my opinion anyway.

A quick thought or two though:

1. You may be aware of this already, but the "stop when idle" setting in janus is pretty cpu sensitive. It seems different spec gear behaves better with different values. I may be mistaken, but from my experiments optimal values tend to float around 3 numbers, 1 or 2 for higher spec gear (in aros terms at least, for conversations sake, say 3ghz c2d or equivalent and above), about 13 or 14 for my a64 laptop (a64@2ghz/gf7300), and about 22 for my old 1.6ghz atom/intel gfx based asus ee pc (if memory serves me correctly at least). Theyre the only machines Ive done much testing with, but it appears the best value lowers as the specs rise. If this is the case then perhaps you could add some sort of very basic cpu benchmark and then have the "stop on idle" value generated on that. Could probably do it completely in scripting if there's a cli based cpu benchmark tool around.

2. I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall the rtg video memory was only set to 2 meg for the emulated amiga under Janus? Am I remembering incorrectty, or is it actually set to just 2 meg? If so, was there a reason for that?

3. If you're interested I can help you set up an os3.x based install that looks pretty well identical to aros. While Id prefer it not to be the case os3.x is still somewhat faster than 68k aros, and this shows up under the emulated environment. Having used amithlon/os3.9 for years Im pretty well versed in what can and cant be done, as well the software to do it.


I wont hijack the thread with it, but Ive actually started putting together a distro of sorts (distro in this case meaning, "I couldnt be bothered re-installing and reconfiguring aros every time I install, Im gonna make a setup that does it all for me, back it up to disc and if turns out ok I'll offer to share it with people :) ) that focuses on 68k plus other retro stuff, but hosted on x86 aros, so I'll be happy to share any work that overlaps.


Damn, this ended up being much longer than I expected :)

Anyway, good work regardless of which route you decide to focus on going forwards.

<p>Hello</p><p>In Icaros 1.4/1.5, when starting Amibridge, default preset was Integration (coherency) mode: albeit a little slower, it gave the feeling that emulated applications ran along native ones in the same environment.</p><p>In Icaros 2.0, I chose to start AmiBridge in fullscreen mode: less integration sensation, but more speed and reliability.</p>