Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
SpeedUp from Bong to Loading OS Screen
- Thread starter vddrnnr
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It takes that long.Hi all,
This is one thing that's been bothering me since I started using Powerbooks
Am I doing something wrong or does really need to take so long?
Best regards,
voidRunner
First off, mechanical hard drives. They only spin so fast. If you want a quicker boot time invest in a 7200rpm (or higher) drive.
If you want even faster, add an SSD.
My 17" PowerBook boots pretty fast on an mSATA SSD.
However, I usually short-circuit boot times by leaving my Macs on - 24/7. Not everyone does that though so getting a faster drive will improve things.
I think a significant chunk of that time is Open Firmware doing it's stuff and that's fixed no matter what drive you use.
Hi eyoungren,
Do you mean the black screen after the bong until the gray screen
with the apple sign?
Best regards,
voidRunner
[automerge]1582914819[/automerge]
Hi Drone,
But why?
It seems it's looking for wich partition to boot from but thats already
set in the Open Firmware RAM.
It's a shame because even with an SSD drive you get a black screen and
sometimes I'm not sure if something is wrong or not ;-)
Best regards,
voidRunner
Do you mean the black screen after the bong until the gray screen
with the apple sign?
Best regards,
voidRunner
[automerge]1582914819[/automerge]
Hi Drone,
But why?
It seems it's looking for wich partition to boot from but thats already
set in the Open Firmware RAM.
It's a shame because even with an SSD drive you get a black screen and
sometimes I'm not sure if something is wrong or not ;-)
Best regards,
voidRunner
I mean the time from the bong to the login screen. An SSD will improve that. It won't make it instant (like it almost is on my daughter's Thinkpad) but it will make it faster.
I'm guessing it's doing a whole set of diagnostics before it decides to load up the OS?
I've never given it much thought as I've never been disappointed by Mac boot up times
Personally I have always been bothered by this too, but not to login. If you watch one of the many Intel Mac vs PPC mac bootup videos, regardless of how long it takes the OS to start up, the Intel mac always has an unfair advantage IMO. The Intel macs firmware initializes way faster than PPC macs do. Not only do they chime (bong) quicker, but from the chime to the OS even starts booting up is faster. If you take a G5 quad vs a Core Solo Mini, the mini will boot up faster just because the Open Firmware on the powermac takes so long in comparison. For it to be fair, you'd have to turn the PowerMac on, wait couple seconds and then turn on the Mini.
I'm a firm believer that not all Intel macs actually get to the desktop or login screen faster than PPC ones do; it just seems like it because the OF takes so damn long vs the EFI.
I'm a firm believer that not all Intel macs actually get to the desktop or login screen faster than PPC ones do; it just seems like it because the OF takes so damn long vs the EFI.
If your Mac has a failed PRAM battery it will take extra time post-chime to scan the volume(s) before starting the boot process. A quick fix to speed this up is to explicitly select the startup disk in system preferences and close. (Of course this setting will be lost when the power is pulled or the main battery goes flat)
You can check to see if a specific volume is defined with:
My output for this on my PBG4 17" is
If nothing is defined it will scan all volumes and possibly the network too.
You might also want to try disabling the netboot scan via OF, which will probably speed things up as it won't try scanning the network - even a non-existent network seems to take a long time to scan, especially at the option-key multi-boot selector screen.
YMMV but worth a try
You can check to see if a specific volume is defined with:
Code:
nvram boot-device
Code:
boot-device pci2/ata-6@D/@0:3,\\:tbxiIf nothing is defined it will scan all volumes and possibly the network too.
You might also want to try disabling the netboot scan via OF, which will probably speed things up as it won't try scanning the network - even a non-existent network seems to take a long time to scan, especially at the option-key multi-boot selector screen.
Code:
sudo nvram skip-netboot?=trueYMMV but worth a try
I believe it will just scan the partition map of the primary hard drive (master device on bus 0). You could potentially speed things up by a few ticks by supplying the boot partition in the format of;
Code:
hd:@0:3,\\:tbxiYou can get an accurate reading of partition numbers of your primary hd using pdisk;
Code:
sudo pdisk /dev/disk0It seems the BootROM runs the power on self-tests during the time of post-chime and pre-display init, so unless there is a way to disable this then I don't think there is much that can be done to speed it up. According to some googling, there is a "run-self-test?" OF parameter which can be set to false, but I couldn't get this to work.