[comp.sys.amiga.advocacy] What, exactly, does FASTBLIT do?

jkh@MEEPMEEP.PCS.COM (Jordan K. Hubbard) (05/22/91)

I, like many others, got the fastblit program from ab20.larc.nasa.gov
and addedit without thinking to my startup-sequence.  After a couple
of months, I was cleaning up and decided to take it out since I never
actually proved whether it helped one way or another.  This begs the
question, however, as to what exactly this program is supposed to do
and how it goes about doing it.

Q?

				Jordan

jld8755@helios.TAMU.EDU (Jonathan Davis) (05/23/91)

jkh@MEEPMEEP.PCS.COM (Jordan K. Hubbard) writes:

>I, like many others, got the fastblit program from ab20.larc.nasa.gov
>and addedit without thinking to my startup-sequence.  After a couple
>of months, I was cleaning up and decided to take it out since I never
>actually proved whether it helped one way or another.  This begs the
>question, however, as to what exactly this program is supposed to do
>and how it goes about doing it.

>Q?

>				Jordan

  As near as I can tell, all the fastblit program does (aside from turn itself
on and off, and print its text) is set the BLITTER_NASTY bit in bltcon(0 or 1,
can't think of which off the top of my head.)  In other words, it gives the
blitter priority over the processor when they contend for memory access.

  Dunno really how helpful/harmful that'd be.  I don't use it, myself.

  Hope that helped somewhat,

   Jon Davis