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Re: screen refresh



>>>>> "Rich" == Richard Steiner <rsteiner@skypoint.com> writes:
In article <1iqHxoHpvahK089yn@skypoint.com> rsteiner@skypoint.com (Richard Steiner) writes:


    Rich> Here in comp.emulators.mac.executor, Steve Duhaime
    Rich> <smd3@ix.netcom.com> spake unto us, saying:

    >> With the help of a kind person I figured out how to change
    >> screen resolution, can I change the refresh rate?

    Rich> Typing "executor -help" at the DOS prompt will give you a
    Rich> whole list of command-line options.  You can use "executor
    Rich> -help > help.txt" to redirect the output to a text file
    Rich> (it's more than one screen long).

    Rich> One of those options (-refresh) allows you to change the
    Rich> refresh rate.  Also, you can use Control-Apple-5 when inside
    Rich> a program to change a number of different things for that
    Rich> program.

There may be some confusion here.

There are two different refresh rates and I suspect Steve and Rich are
talking about two different ones.

One rate is the rate at which the image on the monitor is drawn by the
electron beam.  That rate can't be adjusted by Executor.

The other rate only comes into play when some programs write directly
to screen memory and expect the results to immediately be displayed on
the screen.  Under many Operating Systems, Executor isn't able to map
the screen into memory in such a way for this to work.  In that case
Executor needs to periodically copy from the pretend screen to the
real screen.  That is what "-refresh n" does, where "n" is the number
of sixtieths of a second to wait in between repainting.  These days
Executor will automatically detect programs that require refresh and
set refresh to 10 (i.e. 6 updates a second), which is a compromise
number (if your CPU can handle it, setting refresh to 3 makes games
much more smooth).

Sorry for the confusion.

--Cliff
ctm@ardi.com


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