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                         fbl - fASTERblIT 6.2
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                    Copyright (C) 1993 Arthur Hagen
                          All rights reserved
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       FreeWare - no payments or charges may be made whatsoever
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        (This means that PD vendors and pay-boards should keep
       their hands off this product - no compilation disks with
       this program on may be distributed for charge, either.)
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This tiny program will speed up blitter processes just like FastBlit,
for any Amiga running 2.0 or above, but with a few additional bonuses:
Unless otherwise specified, the following routines will also be
replaced with more optimised routines:
	LockLayerRom()		UnlockLayerRom()	WritePixel()
	OwnBlitter()		DisownBlitter()		BltClear()
	InitRastPort()		ClearEOL()		ClearScreen()
	SetDrMd()		SetBPen()		SetAPen()
	TextLength()		RectFill()		WaitTOF()
	SetFont()

Files present in this archive:
	fbl		  The main program.
	fbl_68020	  Same, but for 68020+ running Amigas ONLY.
	fbl.DOC		  This text file.
	dmacon		  Shows the status of the dmaconr register.

	fbl.asc 	  PGP signature for the file "fbl".
	fbl_68020.asc	  PGP signature for the file "fbl_68020".
	fbl.DOC.asc	  The signatures were added because someone
	dmacon.asc	  thought they had found a bogus "fbl".
			  You need the program "PGP" as well as my
			  PGP signature to validate the files.

Should work for all Amiga's with ECS Agnus and AmigaDOS 2.0 or above.
Tested with AmigaDOS 3.0 on a A4000/030; 3.1 on a A4000/040 and 2.1 on
a A2000B.
Among things that should be notacibly faster with fbl installed is
menu browsing, WB updating, text scrolling and benchmark programs that
tests the gfx capabilities (like AIBB).
To use this program, run it from CLI, or just add it to your startup-
sequence or user-startup.

Caveat:  If your system runs on chip-mem and/or slow-mem only, fbl
*can* be dangerous to use, since the blitter then will have full
priority over the CPU, and when showing screens with high resolution
and/or many colors, the CPU can be prevented from memory access for
too long, and interrupts can crash.  If you still want to run fbl, use
the keyword "SLOW", i.e. "fbl SLOW".  This will just install the
graphics.library patches, but not turn on the blitter priority.  If you
use blitter-intensive programs (like FastCache), or programs that MUST
have priority over the blitter (like Comms packages), disable the
blitter-priority, and run fbl in "slow mode" as explained above.
If, for some reason, you want to turn on the blitter priority, but not
the patches, use the keyword "NOPATCH", i.e. "fbl NOPATCH".

Note for users of "CPUClear" by Peter Simons:
Commodore's original code will always use the blitter to clear chip-
memory in its BltClear()-routine.  CPUClear will replace this with a
routine that uses the CPU instead, as this is faster for most accel-
lerated machines.  "fbl" combines the two approaches, and will use the
blitter if available, and if the blitter is in use, it will start
clearing the memory by using the CPU until the blitter is available.
This divides time between CPU and blitter more evenly, and will be of
benefit in a multitasking environment where several resources might
want to use both the blitter and the CPU.  Speed test programs usually
turns off multitasking, so the performance results they provide are
not always applicable for comparisions.  In short:  If you have an
accellerated machine, and run few tasks that are graphics related, you
will probably be better off with the CPUClear-routine than fbl's.  In
that case, run CPUClear *after* fbl to enable CPU clearing.  If your
machine runs several programs that are heavy CPU and/or blitter users,
you will benefit from using fbl instead of CPUClear for this routine.
In that case, don't run CPUClear at all.

FreeWare?  Yes.  fASTERblIT is FreeWare, and I won't accept payments
(and responsibilities) for this program.  If you REALLY like this
patch, just send me your sister as payment.
Since I don't charge anything for this program, you'll have to use
this program at your own risk.  So if this patch causes your Amiga to
explode and kill your cat, I won't even FEEL guilty.

Changes since version 5.0:
Lots of bugfixes.
Now only works on machines with AmigaDOS 2.0 or better.
68020 version added to archive.  Only run this if you have a 68020 or
better CPU.
Template added.
Quite a few speed enhancements.

A tiny program, "dmacon" is included, which will show you the current
state of the DMA control register - including the bit which gives the
blitter priority over the CPU.

Enjoy,
*Art