UNIXcoffee928

flashjazzcat, on Sun Mar 18, 2012 4:01 PM, said:

Worth a try: If you draw the white background only for the foremost, selected window, it should make the redraw of all of the displayed objects much less noticeable.

Presumably, if a deselected (background window) window's whole border, and the window's contents are "ghosted", the bitmap for the window border will likely consume 50% less data, and you should see a speed boost (since you are only drawing every other pixel, then shifting over by one for the next line, in a checkerboard-like fashion).

Historically, redraw-performance was probably the inspiration for inventing ghosting, in the first place, on the earliest GUIs.

Have you experimented with translucent window backgrounds? (ones that take on the desktop's background).

Also, your text (under the icons on the left) will look a bit more natural if you use white for the text foreground, and a gray that matches the desktop's background, for the text's background.

To really speed things up & keep everything tidy, icons with no text would be ideal. Just set them up so that when you mouse over the icon it displays a "Tool-Tip" exactly the way you are currently displaying your text, with the white background. You will have much less to have to keep redrawing, every time something covers something else.

All together, you should see a big speed up, all around, and much less noticeable screen redraw.

As I said, worth a try, even if it's just for experimentation.

Looking forward to seeing a Right Click Pop-Up Menu that has the blinding speed of the top main menu text!

It's really coming along great! Thanks for all of your hard work!

boisy, on Thu Mar 1, 2012 6:26 AM, said:

You're welcome. Ha, you're just being modest, maybe one day you'll have some time, and can look into it.

sloopy, on Thu Mar 1, 2012 2:44 AM, said:

With /VMA & /VPA ? How would you do it?

I've been actively following this project, and I think that what you are doing is extraordinary!

Would you consider a MC68008 project, once this project is fully functional?

A MC68008 would really be the missing link for the Atari 8-bit; since 68000 assembly code for the ST, Amiga, Mac, etc. could be used. No rush, of course, I'm just interested in hearing your perspective on such an endeavor, as an engineer.

*(For those of you who are unaware of the MC68008, there is a very good MC68008 small computer primer here.)

Thanks for your dedicated work; I am truly amazed at what you've accomplished so far!

Here's an idea about the board...

Since we now have a whole lot of cubic inches of space left under the hood, how about designing the board so that it can be added to, by using PCB Stantions? This would give you a lot of room to work with, to add on whatever additional features that you choose to implement, in the future.

Since you say that a PBI header is on the board already, it would be easy enough to expand the board, sandwich-style, by putting vertical-mount stantions on the corners of the boards.

With a design like this you would not necessarily have to have the daughter-boards inline with female card-edge connectors, and you could fit many boards in the space left after the removal of the original RAM cards. With modern SMT you could fit a whole lot of electronics into such a space.

Additionally, as an option, the flat-area of the plastic casing hood could have a replacement skin. It would be easy enough to fabricate, and if it was of the proper dimensions, the original pop-up cover could be mated to it without destroying any of the original case. The new plastic planar area could have ports or connectors, to allow for easy external expansion. Some of the case modders here would probably enjoy the challenge of designing such a thing for this important upgrade.

The main thing is, that because this is such an important upgrade, a good deal of consideration should be given to how it can be expanded in the future, so that it doesn't end up be a closed, final upgrade to the 800, but rather becomes an Open Expansion System for the 800.

Thanks for all of your hard work!

Bryan, on Wed Feb 29, 2012 6:40 PM, said:

That's about 80 proof, right? So, from now on, it'll have to be JB-80... sounds more like Rocket Fuel like that, so it's got to be right, lol.