[MiNT] Memory protection and speed

[Mario Becroft <mb@gem.win.co.nz>]

As I think I mentioned before on this mailing list, I found that on the TT
memory protection causes the system to run excessively slowly. In
particular programs take a very long time to load.

The time between typing a command and when the command starts running in
the usual way seems to be just under 1 second, whereas without memory
protection there is no delay. This makes shell scripts, for example,
execute extremely slowly.

I notice that programs configured to load in ST RAM instead of TT RAM
exhibit a slightly shorter (but still very noticable) delay.

I tried reducing the INITIALMEM variable in mint.cnf to 2 megabytes but it
did not make any difference. I have a total of 66 megabytes of RAM in my
machine (64 megabytes TT RAM and 2 megabytes ST RAM).

Is this a limitation inherent in memory protection in MiNT (which, as it
seems to me, renders it marginally useful), is it a bug or am I just doing
something wrong? Do other people notice this problem?

-- 
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| Mario Becroft           * Tariland, New Zealand Atari User Group      |
| mb@gem.win.co.nz        * Atari Hardware Developments:                |
| http://gem.win.co.nz/   * NEW: QWERTYX - PC AT Keyboard Interface     |
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