Gustav Duarte has written a three part article about the computer boot up process. The series starts with the Motherboard Chipsets and the Memory Map of an Intel computer and then he covers the processes that take place from the BIOS initialization to the boot loader. The final part is the coverage of the Kernel Boot Process.
Excellent article. We need more articles like these that clearly and succinctly explain the boot loader and early kernel processes. There’s a lot of information out there, but almost none of it explains it as clearly – most just give a high-level overview and are nearly useless.
Flip, beep. That’s how my Apple II sounded. Hardware is, today, about a zillion times faster than it was in back in 1977. But now it’s “flip… go make breakfast… beep… log in…”
Where is “flip, beep” today? Resume from suspend takes about 20 seconds on my mid-tower.
I don’t know what hardware you’re running, but ArchLinux takes less than 20 seconds for a full boot on my laptop and XP boots even quicker.
And my laptop – though new 9 months ago – is only a mid-range spec.
Maybe rename it to “How (Intel, Bios based) Computer Boot”
I read all three parts and found them very interesting. Finally I have some understanding of all those specs on motherboards!
Also, read the other things the author has written, from what I saw, they are all interesting.
Adding my voice to the praise for these articles. Very nice.
I’m still dreaming of the day when I’ll be able to boot my PC OS as fast as my old Commodore 64.
Edit: I guess the only way to do that would be to burn the core OS into ROM? I did have an ancient Libretto with Win 95 in ROM and bootup was near instantanious.
Edited 2008-07-17 02:19 UTC
Great article! I subscribed his blog.
Edited 2008-07-17 03:27 UTC