how to make os/2 boot up faster?

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papperboy3498
Posts: 11
Joined: 29. Sep 2018, 23:27
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
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Guest OSses: macOS Sierra, tails, debian, theShell, Win95, ReactOS, OS/2 Warp 4

how to make os/2 boot up faster?

Post by papperboy3498 »

when I start up os/2, I have to wait for an obnoxious amount of time looking at the splash screen's wallpaper. how do I make os/2 boot up faster?
michaln
Oracle Corporation
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Re: how to make os/2 boot up faster?

Post by michaln »

You use some other OS.

Some of the IBM drivers have really long timeouts, like IDE. Hit Alt-F2 as soon as the boot blob shows up to see which drivers take extra long to load.
Yeti13
Posts: 5
Joined: 6. Sep 2019, 12:38

Re: how to make os/2 boot up faster?

Post by Yeti13 »

Some additions to make the bootprocess faster.

When OS/2 is running, place a dummy file ALTF2ON.$$$ in the root of the C-drive.
Then, when you reboot with Ctrl-Alt-Del (or Host-Del), you will see the same drivers being
loaded as if you had pressed ALT-F2 during boot. Very handy.

Unnecessary drivers for obsolete devices, like IBM2FLPY.ADD, XDFLOPPY.FLT,
I2OXPORT.SYS and I2OSOSM.ADD, and possibly even IBM1FLPY.ADD (if you don't
use the Floppy-drive), can be REM'd out in CONFIG.SYS.
Of course, there could be others you don't need as well.

!!! The largest gain in speed can be get by replacing the IDE-driver IBM1S506.ADD with
Daniela Engert's excellent and free enhanced driver DANIS506.ADD, which can be downloaded
from several sources. Note: during boot it will later still show up as IBM1S506, which is intended.

The same can be said from replacing IBMATAPI.FLT and IBMIDECD.FLT by the single
file DANIATAPI.FLT, also by Daniela.
The files DANIS506.ADD and DANIATAPI.FLT must be copied to C:\OS2\BOOT.

Make a safety backup first of your original CONFIG.SYS file, say to CONFIG.ORG.

Then REM out all the unnecessary device drivers in CONFIG.SYS and add the
lines BASEDEV=DANIS506.ADD /V and BASEDEV=DANIATAPI.FLT.
REM out the existing lines for IBM1S506.ADD, IBMIDECD.FLT and IBMATAPI.FLT.

Then reboot your VM.


Note: if something went wrong somewhere in the process, you can reboot the machine
and when the upper-left white rectangle with text OS/2 is shown, you can press ALT-F1.

After that you will get the opportunity to select an option (F2) to go to the command line.
There you can copy your original CONFIG.ORG to CONFIG.SYS again.
If you rather would like to make a small adaptation without starting the PM Shell, you can
use the simple tedit -editor at this point.

(As modern PC hardware, even if simulated as in VirtualBox, is much faster then the
usual PC-hardware in the 90's, it can be a bit tricky to be fast enough to catch the
ALT F1 combination in time ...)
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