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FBlit v3.79

FBlit replaces various OS routines, which would normally use the blitter, with equivalent functions that use the CPU instead, thereby allowing the OS routines to operate outside the 'chip' memory range.

Not much has changed since v3.73. Most of the changes there have been are related to use with FScreen.

The most significant change is that QBSBlitPatch has a new operating mode. It can operate either 'Inline', in which case BOBs are rendered immediately, or 'Beam Synchronized', where BOBs are rendered in the traditional fashion, from a beam synchronized interrupt.

In normal use it probably doesn't matter which you choose, although there may be some difference in terms of visual disturbance / artefacts. For use with FScreen in MMU mode, you should choose 'Inline' operation, or dragged icons will be (mostly) invisible.

This archive contains English, Polish and Greek documentation. The English docs are hopefully up to date, the others are from the v3.73 release.

FScreen v0.21

This programme (and archive) isn't really in a fit state for public consumption, hence I never uploaded it to Aminet, but here it is anyway.

FScreen is a sort of CPU driven refreshed screen driver for native displays. It was an experimental hack, created to see what would be involved in moving Amiga screens into fast RAM, how well it might work in performance, cosmetic and compatibility terms, and whether it would be worth the effort. The results are a bit marginal. The performance gains are significant (given a fast CPU), but not that great, and making it 100% compatible / cosmetically acceptable would be a considerable job.

FScreen evil hack development has ceased. A 'proper' version would require a total rewrite, and probably some major changes to FBlit. Unfortunately, this isn't at all likely to happen.

In it's current form, FScreen is still potentially useful, but really only for standard OS type applications. It doesn't take kindly to any sort of funny behaviour eg. from games, demos etc. and also doesn't like double buffering (including OS double buffering).

WBTunnel is a little demo programme written to get a rough idea of the performance advantage provided by fast RAM bitmaps, when FBlit was in early development, and to test a planar rasterizer I was playing with at the time.