Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > alt.os.development > #9160

Re: Oh for the days of fast boot

Show all headers | View raw

James Harris wrote:

>>>> OS booting these days can be very slow. By contrast
>>>> here is a reminder of how quickly computers used to boot:
>>>>  [link]
 
> That Commodore Pet boot was just as I remember it: it was a toss-up as 
> to whether the ready prompt or the display would be there first. If the 
> CRT was warm it would win. If cold, the prompt would be there first. 
> Either way, the time-to-ready was no more than about 3 or 4 seconds. 
> Halcyon days in comparison to modern machines.

My olde 'Zilog PC' run at 4MHz and booted in much less than one second 
from a ROM-chip (and this was wayback in 1978).
And right, we had a 'brown-out recovery' (not more than ~50mS hw-delay).

> ...
>> Here is what I measure on my machines (in seconds):
>>
>> BIOS      8..12 vary with version (with quick memory test)
>> DOS 6.00      8 +1   per HD [120K](w/o EMM,XMS,CD,mouse)
>> KESYS004      4 +0.5 per HD [512K](with XMM,CD,mouse,etc..)
>> KESYS015      2 +0.3 per HD (as above and more)
 
> I presume you don't need DOS to start first in order to get KESYS up and 
> running. If not, your KESYS figures are very impressive indeed.

Yes, KESYS is a bootable standalone sysyem.

> Assuming that KESYS015 is a later development of KESYS004 can you say 
> what you did to make it so much faster?

beside that I learned more tricks to speed up code in general meanwhile,
the main speed gain came from lesser BIOS calls at start and KESYS015 
seem to use BIOS supported UDMA features to load the starting OS-image 
by INT13/42 instead of INT13/02. [saved alot of load time]
btw: I checked BIOS UDMA actions and found the PRDs at 09fd20 (EDBA)
__
wolfgang 

Back to alt.os.development | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Oh for the days of fast boot James Harris <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2016-01-28 14:36 +0000
  Re: Oh for the days of fast boot JJ <jj4public@vfemail.net> - 2016-01-29 06:45 +0700
  Re: Oh for the days of fast boot Rod Pemberton <NoHaveNotOne@bcczxcfre.cmm> - 2016-01-28 19:31 -0500
    Re: Oh for the days of fast boot "wolfgang kern" <nowhere@never.at> - 2016-01-29 11:06 +0100
      Re: Oh for the days of fast boot James Harris <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2016-01-29 15:47 +0000
        Re: Oh for the days of fast boot "wolfgang kern" <nowhere@never.at> - 2016-01-29 20:53 +0100
          Re: Oh for the days of fast boot James Harris <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2016-01-30 10:57 +0000
            Re: Oh for the days of fast boot "wolfgang kern" <nowhere@never.at> - 2016-01-30 21:49 +0100
              Re: Oh for the days of fast boot James Harris <james.harris.1@gmail.com> - 2016-01-30 23:46 +0000
                Re: Oh for the days of fast boot "wolfgang kern" <nowhere@never.at> - 2016-01-31 10:48 +0100

csiph-web