From: Geoff Collyer <geoff@collyer.net>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] EPIA CPU node success
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 01:18:42 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <4fd83591be5e3ac756d8da2b4e44263d@collyer.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <b68ed19aeffe96bb173ddab38be91c97@hamnavoe.com>
It depends a lot on how much (usually pointless and wasted) work your
BIOSes do. Memory sizing/ecc-bit-setting/wasted-time can take minutes
on older machines with 512MB or more of RAM (e.g., choline). SCSI
BIOSes, at least the Mylex ones, can take a while to probe the bus(es)
and wait to see if anybody responds after quite a few seconds. It's
mostly a lot of several-second delays that together can make getting
to the point of starting your bootstrap, never mind your kernel, take
an annoyingly long time. Ron and jmk can probably correct me if I'm
wrong, but I suspect that almost none of the time-consuming stuff that
the various PC BIOSes do is necessary when running a competent OS;
they may have been a help to DOS twenty years ago.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2003-11-07 9:18 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 11+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2003-11-06 3:15 ron minnich
2003-11-06 5:17 ` Russ Cox
2003-11-07 9:01 ` Richard Miller
2003-11-07 9:18 ` Geoff Collyer [this message]
2003-11-07 14:46 ` ron minnich
2003-11-07 14:44 ` ron minnich
2003-11-07 21:38 ` Vester Thacker
2003-11-07 22:30 ` Charles Forsyth
2003-11-07 22:42 ` jmk
2003-11-06 5:24 Scott Schwartz
2003-11-06 14:08 ` ron minnich
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