We just didn't have the room we needed in the magazine for the second part of these excellent tips from Nick, so we've had to put them on the CD. Enjoy. Ben CHAPTER II GETTING THE MOST SPEED FROM PCx This only really applies to faster machine owners. By this I mean 33MHz 68040+, preferably 40MHz 68040 or faster users. If you own a lesser '040 (25/28MHz) or, heaven forbid, a 68030, then this document will only provide a little to help you squeeze the most out of PCx emulation. Even though emulation is fluid and usable on a 68040 33/40 PC (I'm not quite sure on the 33MHz '040 as I haven't got one Ð mine's a 40MHz 68040 unit) and excellent on a 68060 CPU, you may want to squeeze more out of it for the best possible Windows, and DOS, performance. It's quite amazing just how much you can do for nothing whatsoever, and what's more, not that many people use these methods. Firstly, do you use a hardfile like I do? It's really slow, isn't it? Well, it is if you only use 30 buffers on the partition your hardfile is on. Say, for example, that your hardfile MSHardFile0 is on the HD1: partition in HD1:TOOLS/PCx/HARDFILES, enter the command: ADDBUFFERS HD1: 1000 This is on the Amiga side of things, by the way. So if MSHardFile is on MOG1: enter ADDBUFFERS MOG1: 1000. If you have spare hard disk space un-partitioned or unused, use it as the PC's hard disk. Are all your CPU caches on? This can release that little more Ôenergy' from your CPU, so if you have an '020, '030 or '040, enter the command: CPU CACHE on the Amiga side. On an Apollo 1260, enter in CPU060 B. Likewise, on other boards use the CPU command for it and turn on all caches. Do you have an FPU ('881/'882)? If so, use PCx, not PCsx. Also, use TRANSCRIPTION and have a 1Mb cache if you can afford it, so if you have 34Mb of RAM, you can have a 16Mb PC with a 1Mb transcription cache and an 8Mb Amiga on the other end. Improving Windows If you want better Windows performance, set the turbo slider to level 4. This can give a 30% boost to '060 CPUs and about 25% on '040s. Also, inserting the following into your ÔPC's' CONFIG.SYS in the boot drive, or C: drive, can give a little speed increase in disk access times: BUFFERS=90 And here's the best speed-up tip of them all: get a faster CPU. Something like a 40MHz 68040 should do the trick nicely. Of course, you could get a 68060 rated at 50MHz, 66MHz or 75MHz. Which reminds me, Apollo have brought out a new 68060 card for the A1200. It uses the 680LC60 CPU, which has been around for quite sometime, but no Amiga card used it until recently. Anyway, the LC060 has the full '060 instruction set and a MMU, but no FPU unit. This is the reason why the card is so cheap. It runs at 75MHz, or about 60MIPS, and this will make Windows very fast indeed. Unfortunately, you'll only be able to use the PCsx version of PCx, because of the missing FPU. The cost is a mere £239 though, and it's available from Power Computing (call 01234 851500 for details). Besides, even the 50MHz (39MIPS) 68060 card for the A1200 is still £270, so get one if you're serious about emulation. The last tip if you want faster MS-DOS displays is to use the native ANSI driver provided with PCx in the PC_UTILS directory of your PCx installation. The driver is called PCxANSI.SYS and there's a readme file detailing how to install it, and unlike the shoddy AmigaGuide manual, these docs are actually very good. CHAPTER III 31KHz PCx Screens One of the main weaknesses of PCx is being unable to configure any screenmodes other than PC Mode 13, 320x20 x8. If you want Windows in a flicker-free display, NTSC HiRes-Laced doesn't work Ð it flickers. Here's a little trick you can do though (Workbench must be running in a 31kHz mode for this to work). If you have two screens open, Workbench and PCx, then this makes the process easier. Anyway, what you need to do is get the Workbench screen in front of the PCx display. Switch from PCx to another screen using the Left Amiga and M shortcut. Drag the Workbench screen down to reveal the PCx screen behind. Now drag the Workbench screen right down to the bottom, and your display will be completely flicker-free When you run a DOS application in full screen or quit Windows back to DOS, the screen will return to 15KHz. To get the lovely 31KHz back, simply press L Amiga and M again. The other tip is to buy a scandoubler with a flicker fixer, or a Picasso IV which works as an internal scandoubler and flicker fixer.