The following information is relevant only to Power Macintoshes.
• The Basic Description
Startup Files can significantly affect the performance of the Power Macintosh. We have enhanced Conflict Catcher II's system report to help you determine if your Startup Files are slowing down your Native applications. We have also taken special care to ensure that Conflict Catcher II does not slow down Native applications.
If you suspect that Native applications are slowing down on the Power Macintosh then you can generate a system report which analyzes your startup files. In this report, trap patches which might slow down your machine are marked with an asterisk (*). With this knowledge, you can then put together a set of Startup Files which do not slow down Native applications.
When you click on Conflict Catcher II's "Report…" button, it will create a system report analyzing the currently active Startup Files. To see each Startup File name followed by a listing detailing the various traps patched by that particular Startup File, scroll down in the system report to "System Traps Patched by Startup Files". If you are not fluent in Hexadecimal, just look for any asterisks in the leftmost column. These indicate that PowerPC Native code is being patched by 680x0 code and that this Startup File may be affecting the speed of Native applications. The more asterisks you find in a Startup File's listing, the more likely it is that the Startup File can affect performance. Keep in mind that not all traps marked with asterisks will noticeably affect performance. Therefore, you need to evaluate the performance hit on your Native applications. You can do this by testing the applications for slowdowns both with and without the suspected Startup File. Then, decide whether the value of the Startup File outweighs the loss of performance.
• The Power Users Description
For those who do speak Hexadecimal, here is a more detailed description. In Conflict Catcher II's system report there is a section titled "System Traps Patched by Startup Files." This Section has a detailed list of the traps being patched by each startup file. This list shows the type of code for each trap and patch. If a trap is PowerPC (specific for the Power PC CPU), PPC&68K (specific for both the PowerPC CPU as well as the 680x0 line of CPUs), or PPCDisp (PowerPC Dispatched, a series of traps which can be 680x0 or PowerPC) and the corresponding patch is 680x0, then the performance of Native applications could be adversely effected. We mark system patches of this type with an "*".
Different patches can have differing effects on the performance of Native applications. Therefore, Conflict Catcher II only points out which Native traps have been patched out with non-Native patches. Keep in mind that a single patch of this type may not noticeably affect performance, but the cumulative effect can be large.
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