Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!husc6!m2c!ulowell!page
From: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Fast non-autoboot
Message-ID: <9832@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 25 Oct 88 02:48:54 GMT
Article-I.D.: swan.9832
References: <5730@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 119

[distribution opened to world, everyone can benefit, although this
information is not for the weak at heart, and should not be attempted
at home unless you know what you're doing.  CBM tells you to do things
for good reasons, and you can only break the rules if you know how it
affects you.  'nuf said.]

Steve, you're way too slow.

slc@hoptoad.UUCP (Steve Costa) wrote:
>I don't use RAD: because it won't autoboot with FFS (even if I had
>the new ROMs).

There's some confusion among new 1.3 owners - RAD will autboot unless
RAD is running FFS.  That is, you can have FFS running on every other
device in your system (except RAD) and RAD will still autoboot.

Of course you need the new ROMS ...

>I want to minimize the time required to boot by getting off of DF0: as
>quickly as possible.

>Here's my startup-sequence on DF0:s
>
>BindDrivers
>DH0:Start/CD DH0:Start
>Mount HD0: from DH0:Start/MountList
>Assign Devs: HD0:devs
>Assign L: HD0:L
>Resident CLI L:Shell-Seg SYSTEM pure add
>Mount NewCon:
>Mount VD0:
>Assign T: VD0:
>CD VD0:
>DH0:Start/Execute >nil: HD0:Set/Startup-Sequence ; customized startup

Here's mine:

Mount WB:
DefDisk WB:
Assign T: RAM:
Execute S:Startup-Sequence

I don't bother with BindDrivers, I only have the one drive, and it's
not the 2090 controller.  If you only have one device that BindDrivers
is going to find, forget BindDrivers and do a Mount yourself if you
can (maybe some people can't, I don't know all the possible
configurations out there).  BindDrivers seeks all over the place and
slows you down terribly.  It's nice for folks who don't want to be
bothered with adding .info files to devs: and hacking startups, but
speedsters don't need it.

DefDisk is a PD utility to do all the common Assigns at once - much
faster than six or seven Assigns.

All the other magic (like SetPatch, mounting the other HD partitions,
etc) comes from s:startup-sequence.  The official CBM line is "we
can't be responsible for the stability of your system if you don't
make SetPatch the **FIRST** thing in your startup" but SetPatch
doesn't FIX any of the things we do here (in the first 4 lines of the
startup-sequence) so make it the first thing you do in your harddisk
startup.

You can throw away the CD VD0: since you touch VD0: when you Assign to
it, you can also auto-start it by setting Mount = 1 in the Mountlist
(I think - something tells me I tried this once and it didn't work).

You can defer making Shell-Seg resident and mounting NewCon (and VD0:)
and do it from the hard disk - no need to have them done from floppy.

Assuming you had to have BindDrivers, and your non-FFS partition is
called SLOW: your new startup sequence could be:

BindDrivers
DefDisk SLOW:
Assign T: RAM:
Execute S:Startup-Sequence		; customized startup

[remember - After DefDisk, C: is on your hard disk!)

Where SLOW:s/Startup-Sequence says:
Mount DH0:
DefDisk DH0:
Execute S:Startup-Sequence

[now C: is your FFS partition]

If you don't need BindDrivers, you can format your small partition
(the one I called SLOW: above) with the FFS and use the startup I use
but that might be a *little* slower because Mount has to read the
mountlist, driver and FastFileSystem from your floppy.  On the other
hand, you'll have all FFS partitions on your hard disk.  You can speed
things up just a little by mounting an old filesystem, so the
FastFileSystem image won't have to be read in from floppy, but you
have to keep an OFS partition.  Your choice.  I have a 2MB WB: FFS
partition where I keep the CBM WB and Extras stuff as distributed (nix
demos and printer devices, natch) and loads of fonts.  So I take the
startup hit to load FFS from floppy.

>I've been able to eliminate activity on DF0: after "binddrivers" except for
>line three. The mount still seems to cause access to DF0: even though the
>mountlist and "FastFileSystem" are both in DH0:start.
>
>What does "mount" need that is still on DF0: ?

Some have said the device driver, that isn't right, as BindDrivers
loads it.  Mount doesn't need anything.  The reason you keep getting
floppy accesses is that you haven't redefined C: so your Assign,
Mount, Resident and CD commands are being fetched from your floppy.

One last speedup - Execute accesses T: -- you want to reassign it to
RAM: (you don't need T: on VD0: since it's temp storage that you don't
need to keep - besides, RAM: is faster than VD0:).

..Bob (been speeding a long time)

PS I'll post DefDisk to comp.binaries.amiga for all you budding speedsters.
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.  page@swan.ulowell.edu  ulowell!page
Have five nice days.