[syslinux] boot speed

[Jim Murphy]

On Sun, May 26, 2002 at 11:55:20AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Jim Murphy wrote:
> > On Sun, May 26, 2002 at 08:48:48AM +1000, websol1 wrote:
> 
> Most BIOSes are highly cantankerous booting off extended-format 
> floppies.  They may not be able to read more than a single sector at a 
> time, and then have to wait for the floppy to rotate a full turn to read 
> the next sector.  SYSLINUX will fall back on this mode of operation if 
> it has to.  Note that *many* BIOSes can't boot extended-format floppies 
> at all.
> 
> > BTW, I had an earlier posting on serial output as a console with no
> > video card installed.  The message file only prints 15 characters on
> > each line then wraps to the next line.  Everything after the message
> > file prints ok.  Any ideas?
> > 
> 
> Yes, the problem is that SYSLINUX gets the size of each line from the 
> BIOS.  Apparently your BIOS leaves those variables containing garbage; 
> in particular, the line width is set to 15.
> 
> Not much to do about, I'm afraid.  I might keep it in mind if I end up 
> messing with that code, to handle wraparound differently for the serial 
> port.

Would be appreaciated.

>

On the speed issues: It speeds up greatly by using the -s option when
installing syslinux on the floppy.  If I have time I'll try to create
and boot a 1.44MB floppy to compare speeds.

Sorry - need to get a little more experience using syslinux.

Thanks,

Jim

-- 
|      Jim Murphy       |
|   friartek at xnet.com   |
| Debian/RedHat/FloppyFW|