@gonegahgah

Just chiming in to add my welcome/congratulations. I hope you will enjoy your X1000 very much. Boot times have definitely gone up, but other things sure are a lot faster.

_________________

@Fernecho

- 14,7 sec to a-eon splash screen
- 28,1 sec to boot option menu
- 47,2 sec to to Amiga BB logo
- 1:03:2 min to WB

Here with 4670/1GB, 4 SATA drives (2GB SDRAM boot, 250GB SSD, 2x500GB HDD) my timing is:

09" boot logo
21" boot menu
31" kickstart finishes loading (red bar reaches right end)
35" screen goes black, S-S executes
44" workbench is finished loading

I disabled the bootimage and unused kmods to shave a few seconds off and my DVD is unplugged as I needed all 4 SATA ports.

Overall your results aren't too far off, maybe you could shave a few seconds by adding the command to switch the CPU to 1800MHz if you haven't done so already.

_________________
AlexC's free OS4 software collection

AmigaOne XE/X1000/X5000/UAE-PPC OS4 laptop/X-10 Home Automation

@gonegahgah

Hi, GGG, welcome to a banana-bender. Where are you, big place up there?

Acefnq lives in Adelaide, but he doesn't have an X-1000. I don't think there are any NG machines in the West, or at least, I haven't heard from any owners over there for many years.

All the X's are over this side. There are a couple of OS developers over this side, too, Colin W up your way and I'm in Sinny.

_________________
cheers
tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

@gonegahgah

Quote:

Does the X1000 support the HD7xxx ("Southern Island") series?

http://67.18.207.215/projects/amiga-os-4-projects/radeonhd-driver/radeonhd-development-log/full-acceleration-support-for-radeon-hd-7000-series/

http://67.18.207.215/projects/amiga-os-4-projects/radeonhd-driver/radeonhd-driver-hardware-compatibility/

...3D support for R5xxx/R6xxx will come first.

_________________
Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM R9250 128MB SB Live!

@mbrantley

Thanks for the welcome. I look forward to trying my old coding bits and pieces out on it to see how they fare.

@tonyw

I'm half way between Brisbane and the Gold Coast near Beenleigh. Cool to hear we have some OS developers here in Oz...

@mr2

Thanks, I thought I had got it in my head somehow that the HD7xxx cards were supported - well partly 'cept 3D yet - but thought I must have got it wrong.
Maybe I saw those pages you've reminded me of but I can't recall now...

I'll try out the boot up speeds sometime soon then...

Last edited by gonegahgah on 01-Jun-2013 at 12:31 PM.

@sundown

Quote:

sundown wrote: @saimo Quote: it's enough to compare the 26 seconds of the last phase time with the 23 seconds my A1 needs to boot from power-off state (with 5-second HD spinning and all the rest) to see that numbers don't add up... You need to remember that kickstart on the x1000 is not the same as the A1, the dir size is a lot bigger, so longer to load, this is the difference.

Actually not, it's just one of the factors*: there is difference also in other areas (more below).

*And, still, since - I assume - we're not talking of a different order of magnitude here (my Kickstart is some 9-10 MB: how much is an X1000's? 15? 20?), I would expect the X1000 to perform better.

Quote:

You will notice that a soft reboot is about 10 sec on each system, that tells you there is no OS slow down after booting.

10 seconds is still poor performance: as said, my XE reboots in 7 seconds off an SSD and in 9 seconds off an HD. Even if people load more stuff on startup on their X1000s than I do on my XE, still I would expect a faster execution (of course, except if they load mammoth applications).

Let's look at AlexC's figures, which are (among) the best reported:

Quote:

Here with 4670/1GB, 4 SATA drives (2GB SDRAM boot, 250GB SSD, 2x500GB HDD) my timing is: 09" boot logo 21" boot menu 31" kickstart finishes loading (red bar reaches right end) 35" screen goes black, S-S executes 44" workbench is finished loading

So, his X1000, booting off an SDRAM, needs:
* 35-21 = 14 seconds for the Kickstart (my XE needs 8 from an HD);
* 44-35 = 9 seconds to finish (my XE needs 6 from an SSD)

Despite its much inferior specs, my XE beats the X1000 in all areas: to me, it looks like something's not quite right and worth investigating, as the OS as a whole (and not just the bootup) could benefit from it.

Last edited by saimo on 01-Jun-2013 at 01:44 PM.
Last edited by saimo on 01-Jun-2013 at 12:56 PM.

_________________
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

@saimo

Let me throw in my Sam440ep-Flex figures for contrast.
Normal HD
Total Boot time 44 secs.
15 Secs for kickstart
18 Secs to finish

Quote:

saimo wrote: Let's look at AlexC's figures, which are (among) the best reported: Quote: Here with 4670/1GB, 4 SATA drives (2GB SDRAM boot, 250GB SSD, 2x500GB HDD) my timing is: 09" boot logo 21" boot menu 31" kickstart finishes loading (red bar reaches right end) 35" screen goes black, S-S executes 44" workbench is finished loading So, his X1000, booting off an SDRAM, needs: * 35-21 = 14 seconds for the Kickstart (my XE needs 8 from an HD); * 44-35 = 9 seconds to finish (my XE needs 6 from an SSD) Despite its much inferior specs, my XE beats the X1000 in all areas: to me, it looks like something's not quite right and worth investigating, as the OS as a whole (and not just the bootup) could benefit from it.

Last edited by Spectre660 on 01-Jun-2013 at 01:17 PM.

_________________
Sam460ex : Radeon Rx550 Single slot Video Card : SIL3112 SATA card

@Spectre660

Quote:

Spectre660 wrote: @saimo Let me throw in my Sam440ep-Flex figures for contrast. Normal HD Total Boot time 44 secs. 15 Secs for kickstart 18 Secs to finish

The 15 seconds your Sam needs to load the Kickstart from an HD makes the 14 seconds needed by the X1000 from an SDRAM even more "worrisome".
The 18 seconds for the rest are just twice as much as the X1000 with an SSD, which to me looks like another telling sign.

Looking at the overall picture, your Sam needs for a complete boot exactly as much as the much more powerful X1000: 44 seconds, which are almost the double of my XE's 23 seconds (which would have been 17-18 had U-Boot known the Silicon 3512).

Although there are so many variables here (CPU, RAM, drives, cards, applications launched at startup) that a real scientific comparison is not that easy, to me the signs indicate that there is lots of room for improvement and/or that there are bottlenecks somewhere (besides the graphics card initialization, I mean).

_________________
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC

@gonegahgah

Quote:

Thanks, I thought I had got it in my head somehow that the HD7xxx cards were supported - well partly 'cept 3D yet - but thought I must have got it wrong.

You are right, Radeon HD7000 cards are supported by Radeon HD driver (2D). Warp3D support will (hopefully...) come first for HD5000 and HD6000 cards.

@Spectre660

Sam460ex
Sii3512 controller. Normal HD
Total Boot time 1 minute 9 Seconds
18 Secs for kickstart
23 Secs to finish


[quote]
Spectre660 wrote:
@saimo

Let me throw in my Sam440ep-Flex figures for contrast.
Normal HD
Total Boot time 44 secs.
15 Secs for kickstart
18 Secs to finish

[

_________________
Sam460ex : Radeon Rx550 Single slot Video Card : SIL3112 SATA card

After this:

Quote:

Other things I've done to speed up booting, 1. Set the system to boot at 1.8GHz, default is 500MHz. In CFE, type show pmu, look for the set speed, if 500MHz, type setenv -p STARTUP "set pmu -astate=a4;menu". Ttype menu & then F to return to CFE, show pmu should now show 1,8GHz as default, this trims about 10 sec off boot time. 2. In sys:kickstart/kicklayout, I have all unused drivers commented out to save a little loading time, not much. ;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 ;MODULE Kickstart/3DLabsPermedia2.chip ;MODULE Kickstart/3dfxVoodoo.chip

my boot time is between 51 sec and 56 secs now!

_________________
Geomarketing at
www.geobiz.de
www.gebietsplanung.net
www.geomarketing-consultant.de

Why does X1000 take longer to boot?

X1000 does not have a Boot ROM. Instead, the X1000 runs a program.
The program is CFE, Common Firmware Environment.

CFE digs around in the hardware finding devices and physical addresses
for all the various components on the motherboard at switch on. It
is more like a software BIOS than a Boot ROM.

It is very much like booting Linux. First the Kernel gets loaded, then
the Kernel boots from a fixed or assigned address. As the Kernel starts
working it digs around in hardware setting up various features. You can
see what it does in the logs. Then after that is done it boots into a
shell or a display manager. Pretty much the same for CFE. And like the
Linux kernel if new/fixed/updated features are required it only needs
a rebuilt CFE or 'kernel' module.

If the original NG Amigas had CFE instead of a boot ROM they could have
been updated with a software download instead of having to burn a new ROM.
Same for the classics. Also, no ROM 'work arounds' necessary.

So it takes a little longer to boot, but it is worth the wait.

Rather innovative on a Desktop Platform.

_________________
Tinkering with computers.

@Signal

Welcome!

@Signal

So what you are saying is that the X1000 has a load of bloat on the bootung flash chip we don''t really need? Well it seems like it!

This does go deeper than a VGA card. My XE really doesn't take long after it puts the screen up. It reads the drives and then calls the booter.

The questions is, aside from VGA, why does the X1000 take so long doing the same sort of thing? I just need CFE do do what it is supposed to do, setup VGA, the hardware and HDs then start booting.

Given CFE was most likely written to boot Linux why does it act like it? That would explain why DVD recorders and HD STB's take so long to boot up if they are running CFE!

Also, it still concerns me, CFE was written to boot a router, not a desktop computer! It should really be blazing fast! It's doing too much. Did someone forget the -O3 switch?

Last edited by Hypex on 02-Jun-2013 at 05:08 PM.

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: @Signal So what you are saying is that the X1000 has a load of bloat on the bootung flash chip we don''t really need? Well it seems like it! Did someone forget the -O3 switch?

You're asking the wrong person.

I'm not a CFE expert and my intent was to give example why X1000 takes
longer to boot.

Comparing CFE to a boot ROM by boot times is ..... apples & oranges. What is
gained in versatility by CFE simply is paid for in time.

I'm also not sure if CFE was used on X1000 due to future development, SMP etc.,
but it seems it would be more configurable then burning ROMs, and what size
ROM is required for future development?

I'm not defending CFE, it is what it is.

And you will have to ask someone else for the G2 on the -03.

_________________
Tinkering with computers.

@Hypex

Quote:

So what you are saying is that the X1000 has a load of bloat on the bootung flash chip we don''t really need? Well it seems like it!

What the hell are you on today? I though he did a great job of explaining the boot proccess. I'm sorry your boot time is so long, but some gfx cards have proven to take longer then normal to initialize. Others have gone through this & replaced theirs. Put the blame where it belongs,


@Signal

Welcome & thanks for jumping in.

_________________
Hate tends to make you look stupid...

@thread

Chatting with another X1000 owner with a 100 sec boot time, turns out it was because he was using 2 GFX cards. Just wondering if any others with long boot times are doing the same. Going to 1 card got his boot time under a min.

_________________
Hate tends to make you look stupid...

@pavlor
@sundown

Thank You.

As for my boot time, it is 59 sec. to WB. (6850 radeon)

_________________
Tinkering with computers.

@saimo

The current version of CFE on the X1000 is slow but I'd say it's normal as it's not really optimized for speed, the main focus being on reliability.

Some things can be optimized like cranking up the clock to 1800 so that the emulator and basic instructions can run faster, shorten unnecessary delays, possibly skip steps that aren't needed after a reset, but some things can't easily be improved much because of the way they work, like the SB600 which requires many steps to setup, you can't just dump configuration tables into ranges of registers, you have to toggle a bit here, wait, read that bit again to make sure it's set or wait some more, write an address there, write some byte(s) elsewhere, wait again, and sometimes even toggle the bit back, wait and read it yet again. Such convoluted steps only take milliseconds but they prevent you from "uploading" all the values at once so I can't begin to imagine what it takes to initialize modern gfx card. Maybe there are shortcuts, I wouldn't know.

And then there's the question of who is going to spend his time applying all these tweaks? Working on that particular source code doesn't exactly look like fun.

_________________
AlexC's free OS4 software collection

AmigaOne XE/X1000/X5000/UAE-PPC OS4 laptop/X-10 Home Automation

@Signal

Quote:

You're asking the wrong person.

I wasn't seriously asking.

Quote:

What is gained in versatility by CFE simply is paid for in time.

But what is the gain? All the end user needs is for it to initialise the hardware and boot off the HD. With an easy boot selector if needed.

CFE might give extra features on the CLI. But it isn't easy to setup. It has no menu GUI like UBoot does for setting up varables and settings. Booting and menus must be setup by programming the CLI by hand.

I acually thought the X1000 was getting EFI in the beginning but sadly I was mistaken. Sounded similar.

Quote:

..it seems it would be more configurable then burning ROMs, and what size ROM is required for future development?

CFE sits in a flash ROM anyway. And gets updated when neccessary. The CFE image is ~1MB. But what sort of ROM are you talking about? For OS4 the Kickstart is always loaded off disk for every machine.