Minimize Boot time - what is best OS to use?

[rchadd]

I am planning on building a new cocktail cab and want to keep boot time to absolute minimum so figure should use DOS to play mame.

I also want ability to play other windows based emulators (Gens, VirtualBoy,epsxe and maybe others)

I have both win98 and win2000 cd's - which should I use? I figure win98 as less bloatware.

I plan to have dos menu to choose dos mame frontend (any suggestions which one?) or choose boot to a windows and auto start frontend which support multiple emulators.

does this sound like a good idea?

any tips on how to get boot time of win98 to absolute minimum?

i will be running windows in 640x480 as will be using ArcadeVGA (not sure if that is relevant!)

any suggestions are welcome!

i have heard it is possible to setup DOS system using CompactFlash - how does boot time compare to using disk? Is it possible to use CF to boot Windows as well?

has anyone used 98lite (http://www.litepc.com/)  to reduce boot time? is it good?

[Howard_Casto]

Neither.... the fastest boot time can only be achieved with xp and a modern motherboard capable of it's fancy schmancy calls.  

98 lite is crap... don't use it


If your system is fairly modern you shouldn't be using dos.... dos(and dos programs) can't handle big amounts of memory or large harddrives well.

98 is very unstable imo... i only use xp now.  Why not 2000?  2000 isn't optimized for gaming and backwards compatability, xp is.  


hope that helps....

 

[rchadd]

i wasn't planning on buying a copy of XP

[Acids]

i wasn't planning on buying a copy of XP

Dos as far as i know is the fastest.
Use fat32 filesystem for the harddrive.
just make sure the hardware is dos compatible  ( your biggest problem will be your soundcard )
Im Using Advance Menu and Mame.    (Loads Very fast.) and using novcpi will allow access to large amounts of ram.  

[Minwah]

I plan to have dos menu to choose dos mame frontend (any suggestions which one?) or choose boot to a windows and auto start frontend which support multiple emulators.

does this sound like a good idea?

Good idea, as long as your PC spec is low enough...I mean for MAME's performance in DOS to be greater than in Windows.  If MAME works better in Windows then I would just run Win98 and put up with the slower boot time.

After DOS, XP is quickest but you don't have XP anyway...I wouldn't recommend 2k, apart from what Howard said it always seemed pretty slow to boot for me...

[nipsmg]

Yeah, unfortuantely I know XP is expensive, but it's insanely fast on boot times, especially if you turn off any unneeded services and system tray programs at boot.  Dos is fast, but .. if you run DOS, you're stuck with.. well.. DOS!! which sucks. :-/

You could always run 95osr2 which is still heavily Dos7.0 based and just don't boot into windows.. That way if you need to update your system / update emulators / etc it's easily doable from the cabinet.

--NipsMG

[rchadd]

just got my new value motherboard (Syntax SV266A) it has VT8235 southbridge chipset for on-board audio. But it looks like there are no DOS sound drivers from this chipset.

so its beginning to look like i'll have to go to windows direction. playing games without sound sucks!

so maybe i'll have to "obtain" XP

[Lilwolf]

XP added a bunch of boot speed optimizations.  VERY cool stuff.  Caching configuration and other stuff...

But this was a HUGE feature because windows users have been required to get used to rebooting their OS often  

I would like to see the ability to remove auto-detect hardware, and a few other features you don't really use on day to day..

but my trouble.. my work machine has XP... my arcade machine has 98se... and am NOT going to spend 100+ bucks to have a faster boot disk.  And XP hacking isn't something I want to deal....

So I am hoping to optimize the 98 boot time at some point..  but not my #1 consern right now... but if someone had a good site for optimizations I would LOVE to see it.

[Serpent]

Use Windows 2000. It's perfect for MAME. Maybe it doesn't boot faster than XP but its as fast once it's loaded and needs less RAM. It's not true that it's not good for gaming.

[Edgedamage]

I use win2kpro on all my machines. It's not the fastest loading but once loaded there is not one game or emu that it can't play.

[Lilwolf]

The main trouble with 2000 (other the boot time) is that it has horrid dos support.  

So it won't be an issue, until its an issue.  So if you plan on loading old dos emulators... 98 will be better (most will work with XP also... but you might need some config time).

btw... most of the memory hog items in XP can be disabled.  And since its now considered 'consumer' instead of development systems.  You find a bunch of GREAT applications for configuring it / ripping out unneeded options.

[rchadd]

98 lite is crap... don't use it

Please can you provide some more info? on what basis do you make this assertion?

It seems on their webpage that it should optimize the OS by removing unneccessary stuff. I assumed this would also improve the boot time.

[Lilwolf]

I believe that the complaint is that you loose directX support... and you can't really just install it later.  But I don't use it, just heard that you loose a lot of software compatibility because of packages removed... and it doesn't readd them when needed...

but for boot time specific... XP is way faster then 98lite anyway...