Icons to Fast Ram not Chip Ram

[abraXXious]

OKiez, I have two related (small) probs on two different machines. Im hoping someone can shed some light on a solution.

I have an A2000, 2mb chip, 3.1 rom, GVP 040 Combo with 16mb fast, will shortly have a Picasso II card installed. It is running OS 3.9 with BB 1,2,3.

I also have an A1200 running an Apollo 1260 with 32mb fast, 3.1 roms running a heavily modified install of AmigaSys 4 (based on wb 3.1).

Bot hsystems are currently storing icons in Chip Ram, which is just not on! I like nice 256 coloured (or even 24 bit once the Picasso card is installed) icons, so once I open a few Windows Im out of Chip Ram!

With OS 3.9, it is usually as simple as changing the Sysrefs/Workbench settings to store icons in OTHER MEMORY. Unfortunately this corrupts the gfx on the GVP Combo 040... and after opening/closing half a dozen windows the system, crashes. I know - weird.

With the A1200/3.1/AmigaSys 4 install, you dont have Sysrefs/Workbench at all, so there is no simple way of loading icons to fast ram. Now on this system I have replaced the 3.1 Setpatch, icon.library and workbench.library with the ones from OS 3.9, so I have Glowicon etc support. This is running fine.

I need to know how I can map the icons to fast in the A2000, OR will it be a different matter after installing the Picasso II? I already have Picasso96 installed, so perhaps this (without the gfx card) is causing the corruption/eventual crashing?

And on the A1200, how can I map the icons to fast ram? Is there a program/patch (could not find anything on Aminet)? Can Sysrefs/Workbench just be copied across to 3.1 now that I am using the 3.9 version of icon.library, setpatch and workbench.library?

 

[StrontiumDog]

Try what they suggest in Q2 (says it's for OS3.5 but might transfer to OS3.9 too)

http://www.gregdonner.org/os35faq/iconoperation.html#2

 

[SpeedGeek]

@abraxxy
I didn't realize you were using P96 w/o a graphics card installed when I suggested you try the GVPscsictrl hack on the OS3.9 incompatability thread. It's very unlikely that P96 would support icon rendering in fast ram under this circumstance.

There are 3 possible options I know of which might work if you forget about P96. Fblit for older versions of graphics.library or the latest graphics.library which has built in Fblit functionality (thanks Cosmos!). The last option would be CGX with the AGA driver.

So you need to decide which way to go since these are incompatable graphics systems. In the mean time, you can try using "Condense Icon" from OS3.9 to reduce the chip memory usage.

 

[abraXXious]

Hi Speedie!

Well, I installed P96 in preparation to install a Picasso II I have spare.... so I should probably just complete the installation.

With the Picasso II properly set up, do you think that I will be able to use the Workbench prefs to map icons to other memory without the gfx corruption/crashes?

If so, I will just get my bum in gear and install the Picasso II and all will be well.

 

[rkauer]

When a real graphics card is used the chip RAM is not accessed at all, saving all of it for more important things, like playing mods.

 

[abraXXious]

Are you sure? I always thought GFX were rendered to the vram automatically.... but that icons were still mapped to chip ram.