In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Daeron
<doug_mentohl@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote
on 3 Mar 2004 07:34:48 -0800
<da46811d.0403030734.63f5c037@posting.google.com>:
10 seconds?
I'm surprised it takes that long. How much of that is POST?
Also, is POST even involved? Or is this a Linux BIOS sort of thing?
Also, it is possible for a read-only "memory chip" to be actually
a RAM drive, at least one model of which is capable of holding up
to 1/2 GB last I looked. (It was, of course, out of stock. Popular
little beasties.) Of course this won't be quite as fast booting,
and it is RAM, not ROM -- but one could envision a specialized
version of a Knoppix "thumb drive" if there's a market for it (which
I suspect there's not unless one can upgrade the software later;
it would have to be quite cheap). A rather nasty variant of this
might be Yet Another Version Of The Dongle, this one now holding
DVD encryption keys or something.
Also, if anyone remembers the C-64, it was "instant on". Even
the Amiga 3000 doens't take that long to boot, although it
depends on what one puts in the startup script.
I'm not impressed although it's nice to hear that someone's
working on this problem for modern computers. But many
of their forebearers, despite being far more primitive,
did not have this problem.
It's even nicer since Win98 or Win95 at one point were thinking
of implementing "instant-on" technology, but somehow never
quite got around to it. :-)
Like IA64, Linux got there first...if one can call this a first, as
proprietary systems such as C-64 had this long ago. But it does
make things a little more convenient. :-)
--
#191, ewill3@earthlink.net
It's still legal to go .sigless.
