36 replies to this topic

[Icecube]

Thu 21/Apr/2011

Plop Boot Manager 5.0.12 released

The licence has been changed for 5.0.12. The boot manager is still free for personal and non-commercial use, but not free for commercial use! Maybe I give 5.0.12 free for commercial use in the future, but not now.

New:

* Hotkey ALT-u: Select/skip usb device before its fully identified.
* Ignore USB devices: Use USB Mass Storage device has been replaced with this new feature to ignore any usb device. This should avoid hangs on builtin webcams.
* Booting from 2nd, 3rd or 4th hard disk activates now an int13 driver that swaps the hard disk drive number.

Updates:

* Boot manager init routine updated.
* Some USB driver updates.
* Better MAC support.
* Bugfix: The hang when using CTRL-u to boot another usb drive than the first one is fixed.
* plpcfgbt updated for "ignore usb devices".
* plpcfgbtGUI updated.

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmngrusblog.html

[davlak]

thanks, it's absolutely needed to make a variety of usb devices bootable in any condition.

[MedEvil]

Boot speed for USB-Sticks, unfortunately still abysmal. Just 1.3 MB/sec for USB 2.0 and ~0.2 MB/sec for USB 1.1.

Can anyone report a decent boot bpeed?

[BiTByte]

Boot speed for USB-Sticks, unfortunately still abysmal. Just 1.3 MB/sec for USB 2.0 and ~0.2 MB/sec for USB 1.1.

Can anyone report a decent boot bpeed?

the 5.0.x series will never have the full usb speed. it was never my plan to write it as full bios replacement. on some machines its faster on some its slower. on some machines its faster than the bios and on some slower. btw. i have better (but not the full possible) speed rates.

when you have no bios with usb, then i am sure that you are happy to boot even when its slow. when you have a bios with usb, then its not needed to use the boot manager usb option. you can still use the usb drive from the boot manager main menu when the bios provides the usb drive as internal hard disk. so when you have a fast usb bios, then there is no need to use the (maybe slow) boot manager usb option.

the boot manager 5.1.0 will be written from scratch and not limited to many things like the 5.0.x series. 5.1.x will have the full usb speed.

elmar

Edited by BiTByte, 23 April 2011 - 07:48 AM.

[MedEvil]

Thanks for the reply elmar.
Can't wait to test the 5.1 series.

[Wonko the Sane]

Just for the record, if we are talking of NT/PE, there is still for the moment (and in the case of motherboards that do have USB 2.0 chips BUT which BIOS uses at 1.1 speed) the "fake signature method" or "XP Kansas City Shuffle" that allows full use of the USB 2.0 speed to load most of the OS.

The announce of the future development of PLoP with "direct" USB 2.0 (and hopefully later USB 3.0) speed are anyway very GOOD news. (and since newish PLoP versions can also be used as DOS drivers, it may help in keeping good ol' DOS in use )

Thanks Elmar.


Wonko

[MedEvil]

Just for the record, if we are talking of NT/PE, there is still for the moment (and in the case of motherboards that do have USB 2.0 chips BUT which BIOS uses at 1.1 speed) the "fake signature method" or "XP Kansas City Shuffle" that allows full use of the USB 2.0 speed to load most of the OS.

I think you're talking about running the PE straight from the USB-??? or will this methode also improve booting speeds for ram loaded images?

[Wonko the Sane]

I think you're talking about running the PE straight from the USB-??? or will this methode also improve booting speeds for ram loaded images?

Should be useful for BOTH approaches.
Basically you load (at the "painfully slow" USB 1.1 speed the BIOS provides) a smallish image, that boots and then thanks to the "Kansas City Shuffle", the booting continues at 2.0 speed (IF the motherboard has the 2.0 chips, of course).
This has traditionally been used on "direct booting" only, but now that we have Firadisk and/or WinVblock it should be applicable to ram loaded images too. (it would be IMHO an interesting topic to experiment with this approach)
Of course the improvement won't be that much for "small" builds, but it should be very noticeable for "biggish" ones, I presume that for anything below and up to 200 Mb there should be very little improvement, but for bigger builds it should be relevant.
The "temporary image" you have to load from BIOS (or PLoP) is - if I recall correctly - around 40/50 Mb, there is an actual project that is currently in "suspended state":
http://reboot.pro/6672/
For a quick test of a PE using this approach, you can have a go with either Fuwi's app:
http://www.911cd.net...topic=21702&hl=
or with PCuser's tool for BartPE/UBCD4WIN:
http://ubcd4win.com/...opic=11375&st=0

@Elmar, sorry for the OT .


Wonko

[MedEvil]

Too bad. My PE1 images are clearly below 200MB. And for the bigger Win7PE imges will go a higher threshold, i presume.

[Wonko the Sane]

Too bad. My PE1 images are clearly below 200MB. And for the bigger Win7PE imges will go a higher threshold, i presume.

Yes and no.

Let's say you have a 100 Mb image.
Right now it should take you around 100/1.3=77 secs.
With a "Kansas City Shuffle" it should be something like 50/1.3=38 secs, then you'll have to load again the whole 100 Mb at "full USB 2.0 speed", that actually should turn out to be more likely around 12 Mb/s so 100/12=9 secs, plus possibly a few secs for the actual "shuffle", let's say 1 or 2 seconds.
38+9+2=49 secs, it's up to you if it is worth the trouble or if it is better to try other approaches like compressing the image or using a NTFS compressed filesystem or a "dual image" boot (unless you are not already using any of these approaches).
The only way to know for sure if the above theoretical speeds is to try any of the previously linked tools (comparing a "direct boot"), if the results are "inviting" THEN it may be the case to take the challenge and experiment with the "shuffle" with the image, for which I don't recall any report/experiment/method.


Wonko

[MedEvil]

at "full USB 2.0 speed", that actually should turn out to be more likely around 12 Mb/s

Do you know, why it turns out to be around 12MB/s? I noticed recently, that various computers don't boot from sticks any faster than around 12MB/s.

[Wonko the Sane]

Do you know, why it turns out to be around 12MB/s? I noticed recently, that various computers don't boot from sticks any faster than around 12MB/s.

I presume it's the actual stick's "fault", just cited an average speed from experience, but as you might remember I tend to be cheap and also use cheap USB sticks and never had any of the "top notch" ones.
Here is a nice "orientative" resource:
http://usbspeed.nirsoft.net/


Wonko

[MedEvil]

That's not what i've meant. I tested a bunch of different USB-Stocks on a bunch of computers. All Stick have way higher read speeds in windows, but turn out to load the boot image equaly fast. Differences are less than +-0.5 seconds, while the hardware ranged from GamerPC to OfficePC, from brand new to a couple of years old.

[Wonko the Sane]

That's not what i've meant. I tested a bunch of different USB-Stocks on a bunch of computers. All Stick have way higher read speeds in windows, but turn out to load the boot image equaly fast. Differences are less than +-0.5 seconds, while the hardware ranged from GamerPC to OfficePC, from brand new to a couple of years old.

If they are "way faster" in a booted windows they should be "as fast" in the second part of the "XP Kansas City Shuffle", in practice what the shuffle does is almost (but not quite ) to "insert" windows drivers in the middle of the booting.
BTW, remember that there are also filesystem issues:
http://www.msfn.org/...d-on-usb-stick/
http://www.irongeek....ntfs-filesystem
if you are using FAT32 the filesystem could become the bottleneck even with a "shuffle"


Wonko

[maanu]

thank you Elmar for the news.

the ONLY reason i cant use PLOP is , on most computers i work on , they have usb keyboards,
once PLOP loaded , i cant use keyboard , coz usb becomes read-only

[MedEvil]

I have USB keyboards on two of the computers, i tested plop on. No problem.

[maanu]

I have USB keyboards on two of the computers, i tested plop on. No problem.

so you mean , even after loading PLOP (while having usb keyboard) you could use grub4dos menu by moving keyboard uper and down arrow ?

[MedEvil]

I don't know, i have to grub4dos menu. I run PE directly from plop bootmanager and in plop bootmanager, i can use the up and down keys to select an option.

[maanu]

can you plzz try with grub4dos menu ?

[BiTByte]

usb keyboards are working as long as you do not use the boot manager usb option.

why?

the keyboard is handled by the bios usb driver before you use the boot manager usb option. when you use the boot manager usb option, then the usb controller is not longer controlled by the bios -> no usb keyboard support by the bios. the boot manager has no usb keyboard driver -> no usb keyboard is working. when windows/linux is booted, then their usb drivers are taking control -> they have usb keyboard drivers -> the usb keyboard works again.

the usb drivers of 5.1.0 will have usb keyboard support. the usb drivers of 5.0.x will never support usb keyboards.

[MedEvil]

Interesting.

Thanks for sharing.

[maanu]

how can we avoid this boot manager usb option ? i just want to use acceleration

[MedEvil]

Simply loose grub4DOS and use the default windows bootloader.

[maanu]

ooh . i thought he was talking about the option in PLOP

[MedEvil]

It works like that.
Once Plop takes over there is only support for USB-Massstorage but not anymore for USB-Mice or keyboard until Windows boots up and starts using own drivers.

So you can not have any menu between plop and windows start.