Hi Bill,

I have tried turning off both comets and asteroids individually and
it seems to be a toss up as to which makes Guide8 run slower. With
both turned off Guide8 is very responsive, like it used to be.

I did update both sets of elements from the Harvard site and updated
the MPCORB file as well. The latter was done by copying the
appropirate NEAtod.dat twice, once with a rename to MPCORB.dat and
placing them in the Guide8 folder. Prior to this experience having
Guide8 use MCPORB did not cause this kind of slow down even though
this particular machine is an antique by today's standards as that is
about all I use it for.

As for Guide8 updated files I believe I have all the latest unless
something has changed from last May's update posting.

Would it hurt, other than taking the time, to reinstall Guide8 from
the original CDs and then getting the updates again, or would than be
an exercise in time consumption?

Thanks for the help!

Dave

--- In guide-user@yahoogroups.com, Bill J Gray <pluto@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> First thing I'd try would be to shut off comets, then
asteroids,
> to determine which is the problem. Odds are that the asteroids are
the
> real culprit. There just aren't as many comets as there are
asteroids,
> by a factor of a thousand or so, and Guide has some good tricks
in it
> to avoid having to waste much time on most of the comets.
>
> But asteroids are another matter. The current MPCORB contains
about
> 325 000 of them. On a 900 MHz machine, when you turn on MPCORB,
> there's about a seven-second pause before the asteroids turn on.
During
> that time, Guide computes some information about where the
asteroids
> will be over a one-day span. It can then show asteroids with
blazing
> speed, as long as the date/time remains within that span. But if
you
> change the time by more than twelve hours in either direction, you
get
> that seven-second pause again. I have some ideas for handling this
> problem, but none of them seem very good: they wouldn't provide
much
> speedup, and/or would be horribly complicated or consume most of a
hard
> drive.
>
> (If you find that Guide is _always_ sluggish, even when you
don't
> change the date/time, then you should get the current software
from the
> Web site. Older versions didn't do this "compute data for a 24-
hour
> span" routine, and had to do all the math from scratch each time
the
> screen was drawn or an object was clicked on.)
>
> -- Bill
>