Hi fellow Amigans,

X1000 boot time is not much representative, I do remember there was a thread (on AW.net?) on how to shave off boot time - but cant find it.

I do remember most important find out to speed up boot was set pmu=A4 (switch to 1800Mhz), getting gfx card that initialize / change resolutions faster (any champ) and eventually commenting out kickstart file.

On first one, how to save it permanently.
Any more CFE related advices?

Surely, last step was most tricky and NOT advised by Hyperion, but e.g. there are always things that will never be used (Voodo, Sil controller etc.) and surely is adviced to backup original files, but saves both boot time and OS resources.

and last Amigan question, is there something that can be commented out from S:startup-seq,user startup, net startup

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@vox

Surely this type of hackery can only introduce additional variables that will make tracking down the inevitable future bug or hiccup difficult.
Why not keep your system HW configuration and base OS files as stock as possible - this will ultimately be the target platform for newly developed programs and features.

Last edited by Xmas87 on 15-Oct-2013 at 10:10 PM.

@vox

i seem to recall that net startup can cause some delay in case the router doesnt respond immediately or so, i guess net can be started later by hand.

@Xmas87

Quote:

Why not keep your system HW configuration and base OS files as stock as possible - this will ultimately be the target platform for newly developed programs and features.

Surely I keep regular backups at important steps (system I got, system with additional insalls and soon).
But surely there are stuff that can be left alone.

This is agressive Amigan approach:

Quote:

Strip down user-startup to essentials. Delete old prefs file for program you don't have in envarc: Edit the kickstart startup file, and remove drivers you don't use for hardware you don't have. Change bootdelays for the menu.

Setpmu4 and bootmenudelay 1 cant hurt, but with other steps a bit of info
what is what would be needed.

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@vox

On my setup my X1000 is dead first 20 seconds until VGA card shows up. And then seems to waste another 40 seconds checking USB and stuff. Not much happens on screen. Finally after a minute it starts loading off my HD. How does yours compare?

The hardware is faster than my A1 but the boot time a minute behind my A1. IS sometihng wrong with this picture? I think there is. My old VGA card takes a second and UBoot doesn't spend 40 seconds scanning my USB bus. I hope the X2000 has faster firmnware!

@Hypex

Sounds like you need to set the cpu speed to 4, enter CFE, press F at the first menu.

Enter:

setenv -p STARTUP "set pmu -astate=4 ; menu"

Enter printenv to check it's correct

You might already have STARTUP set to "speed ; menu" in which case check the speed variable.

You can check all this in ranger in the hardware / firmware tab.

As for USB, it sounds like you have something weird connected that's taking a long time to initalise, USB only takes a second or so here. Try removing everything except the mouse and keyboard, reboot, add half the others back, reboot, remove them and add the other half etc... or if you don't have much commented just add one at a time.

@vox

There is a stripped down kicklayout file Here. Yes I know it's a lot bigger, it contain 3 kicklayouts instead of the standard 2.

If you have any problems booting enter CFE and type

setenv amigaboot_quiet N

Then

menu

You will see a second menu that lets you choose which kicklayout to use, hit space to stop the countdown then press the number for the 'Emergeny' entry.

This layout assumes you don't have an old radeon card fitted, if you do uncomment ATIRadeon.chip in the top section (never edit the bottom two and you are safe.

Last edited by Severin on 16-Oct-2013 at 02:44 PM.

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@Hypex

Not wrong, different.

CFE probes the hardware on each startup and 'builds' the ROM. So to speak.
So it takes longer. The actual Amiga boot time starts when the progress bar
appears.

To speed things up a bit, I moved the net startup to after bootWB as I do
not have any startup programs that need the network at that time.

I can't advise more at this time since I'm 3k miles away from my miggy.

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@Severin

Great set of advices Severin!

Experience is about the same.

I have got this comment out advices for sure

;MODULE Kickstart/ATIRadeon.chip (if you dont use 9250)
;MODULE Kickstart/3DLabsPermedia2.chip
;MODULE Kickstart/3dfxVoodoo.chip

;MODULE Kickstart/sii3112ide.device.kmod
;MODULE Kickstart/sii3114ide.device.kmod
;MODULE Kickstart/sii3512ide.device.kmod
;MODULE Kickstart/sii0680ide.device.kmod
;MODULE Kickstart/lsi53c8xx.device.kmod
;MODULE Kickstart/it8212ide.device.kmod

@Hypex

On my setup my X1000 is dead first 20 seconds until VGA card shows up. And then seems to waste another 40 seconds checking USB and stuff. Not much happens on screen. Finally after a minute it starts loading off my HD. How does yours compare?

VGA card could initialize faster - I kind of blame AmigaKit that they should seek & find
RadeonHD cards that initialize faster and have fast resolution switching, if any.

Like you have been explained 40 second is long for bootstrap, try removing it down
to keyboard and mouse. I believe it should be about half of that time, even I don`t really measure it.

Last edited by vox on 16-Oct-2013 at 06:51 PM.

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@vox

Quote:

VGA card could initialize faster - I kind of blame AmigaKit that they should seek & find RadeonHD cards that initialize faster and have fast resolution switching, if any.

All cards have fast resolution switching, it's your monitor that is slow to switch resolutions.

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@Severin

Quote:

All cards have fast resolution switching, it's your monitor that is slow to switch resolutions.

Thanks. How can I determine what is fast switching monitor?

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@vox

You can't without trying them on an amiga, macs and pcs don't often mode switch, only for games and then only to a splash screen so the player doesn't miss anything. I expect now with the much faster gfx cards available they don't switch at all and just scale the image to the screen.

Screen switching specs are not included in the monitors specifications and has nothing to do with the usual 2ms - 5ms quoted or refresh rates. screen switching will be slower on LCDs than on CRTs because of the work they have to do, eg. on a CRT just change a few frequencies and you're done, on an LCD, clear the buffer and screen, load entire new screen to buffer, scale then display the data. and of course every frame has to be scaled from say 640x480 to 1920x1050 which makes the monitor toasty warm in the winter

Basically, you get what you pay for but LCDs are not designed to give ultra fast resolution switching.

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@Severin

Actually, "multi-sync" (i.e. SVGA capable and up) CRT monitors are just as slow as LCDs. I cannot believe why they are so rediciously slow. The scaling and stuff in LCDs does not explain anything since it has to be done for each frame anyway and can (oviously) be done in less than one frame time (1/60 s).

Most monitors seem to wait over a second, that is over 60 V-blanks, before they "can be sure" the image is stable or whatever. WTF??! Just display whatever comes in, and do it NOW, like old CRTs.

We Amigans aren't use to waiting for stuff like this

Unfortunately the rather embarrasing boot times of the NG Amigas kind of pushes our patience a bit - the faster the machin, the slower it boots. That makes sense, right? (and I'm not just talking about Amigas here...)

Last edited by Deniil715 on 17-Oct-2013 at 01:23 PM.

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@wawa

Quote:

i seem to recall that net startup can cause some delay

This wsa smoved into another script. Only on old OS installs should it be a problem. The X1000 should have a modern version.

@Severin

Quote:

Sounds like you need to set the cpu speed to 4, enter CFE, press F at the first menu.

Thanks for the tip. I have this set but it doesn't change anything as the speed change can only occur after my large delay has passed.

Quote:

As for USB, it sounds like you have something weird connected that's taking a long time to initalise, USB only takes a second or so here.

\

Unless I'm booting Linux all I have is a keyboard and mouse. But it is an Apple keyboard with mouse attached to it. So perhaps CFE gets delayed by a keyboard with a hub and mouse?

I'll do some testing.

@Signal

Quote:

Not wrong, different.

Like how different my five year old PC is booting Windows after five seconds?

Quote:

CFE probes the hardware on each startup and 'builds' the ROM. So to speak.

Like the device table? Since I like to compare against my A1, so does my A1, but like that PC it does the job in about five seconds.

I always thought it was a bad move using a firmware made for a router, that wasn't designed for a desktop machine and to which there are warnings not to use it on another processor. They broke those rules, who ever used CFE, and CFE is broken. It can crash, freeze and lock the machine in a reboot loop.

Quote:

To speed things up a bit, I moved the net startup to after bootWB as I donot have any startup programs that need the network at that time.

AmigaOS and Kickstart loading speed doesn't worry me as it's on par with my A1. My A1 takes 40 seconds from UBoot to Workbench. My X1000 takes 60 seconds longer, in fact it takes 60 seconds to get to the point where UBoot is resetting. That is what concerns me.

As to the net startrup, this was moved to a seprerate script, so for a modern OS install there should be no delay and no need to modify the startup. And I've always made sure it was run asynchronously in any case. I hate delays!

@Severin

Quote:

All cards have fast resolution switching, it's your monitor that is slow to switch resolutions.

I think all the cards must be bugged or OS4 is doing something wrong. I have switched modes at the same resolution but at different depths and the monitor always switches. What is this? It is the same resolution, depth is just amount colours and over the VGA lines more or less colours makles no difference, the timing is the same. I've always wondered why it always switches?

@All

BTW, is it normal over DVI to completely lose the monitor signal when the cable falls out? This has happened on OS4 and I needed a full machine reboot as the monitor signal was dead when plugged back in. Ridiculous! On Linux it acted nornmal and the monitor came back.

@Hypex

Link keyboard directly, avoid keyboards with hubs and extra USB ports and so on.
Any plain USB keyboard, or soon come CHERRY one Fance Apple and multimedia (YU citaoci:
mlatimudija) can also cause trouble.

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@Hypex

I also have an apple keyboard with hub, DO NOT plug it into the top left (from the back) usb port, plug in any other one, just plug it into the top left one if you need to access CFE.

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@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: I think all the cards must be bugged or OS4 is doing something wrong. I have switched modes at the same resolution but at different depths and the monitor always switches. What is this? It is the same resolution, depth is just amount colours and over the VGA lines more or less colours makles no difference, the timing is the same. I've always wondered why it always switches?

Even though the screen size is the same, because of the depth change it's still a different screen mode so buffers have to be delted, new ones created that are the right size for the new data. I suspect in the windows world where they don't give a monkeys about conserving ram they use a 32bit sized buffer even if it's only got 8 bit data in it, which would of course make things faster and stop the monitor switching as the buffers are rebuilt.

Also consider that P96 was designed to get the best out of cards with 1 to 4 megabytes of ram while still handling upto 32 (iirc) screens of different resolutions and depths.

Feel free to totally re-write P96 from scratch so you can switch depths instanylt

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I also noticed my A1XE being a lot slower to boot since about 4.1 update 3, I did ask on the forums at the time and the reply from Hyperion was something along the lines of "sure we could speed boot time up, but it's not a priority for us right now" and that users were generally not bothered.

I find OS 4 far too slow to launch, my OS 3 Amiga 1200 and my Mac Mini with MorphOS both boot up in around 10 seconds from cold. If MorphOS can boot in 5 seconds warm and 10 seconds cold, why does it take OS4 around a minute or more?
My Windows 8 PC even boots in the same time, or slightly faster than my A1XE now!