[Sugar-devel] Bill Bogstad's floppy disk boot (Soas)

[Art Hunkins]

Caroline,

The solution you are looking for was suggested by Bill a week or so ago to my same question. It (timeout 0) works flawlessly.

I quote (me, then Bill):
> I've one suggestion for Bill: for use by children, I'd make everything as
> automatic as possible. Either delete the display where the user needs to
> make a choice (it's *way* technical and *I* didn't know what to do), or put
> a (10"?) auto-timer on it so that it goes on through (the usual way) without
> user intervention.

It's easy to put a timeout in or even eliminate the delay entirely.
Because a floppy is easily writable (unlike a CD) you
can even do it yourself.  There is a text file called
kexec-loader.conf on the floppy.  You should be able to edit it with
any
text editor and change the line "timeout off" to have a number
instead.   It can be either 0 (boot immediately) or wait the specified
number of seconds.  If you look at the rest of the file you can get
some idea of what is going on.

I've tested CD helper vs. floppy helper on Pentium III generation computer. On these, floppies take *way* longer than CD's: 5 minutes (minimum) to 1 (actually, more like 10:2). Even though boot times are significant, the actual *Activity* executions are satisfactory (though hardly "peppy"). Overall performance is similar to the XO-1.

Art Hunkins
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Caroline Meeks 
  To: Art Hunkins 
  Cc: Walter Bender ; community-news at lists.sugarlabs.org ; iaep ; Sugar-dev Devel 
  Sent: Sunday, September 13, 2009 10:48 AM
  Subject: Re: [Sugar-devel] Bill Bogstad's floppy disk boot (Soas)


  I tested this on the GPA computer lab computers. It takes about 1 more minute (4.5 vs 3.5) to boot.  I think that it will take more then a minute on average to give all the students CDs, have them open the CD drawer, turn off the computer, turn it on again and collect all the CD at the end of class so that the next class boots into Windows.  My plan is the floppies can just live in the machines, not pushed in all the way.


  The current version requires the user to press enter 1 minute into the process. Can we get a version that we just start the boot, then goto the rug for our lesson and 4.5 minutes later the machines are booted?


  Thanks!


  On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 12:00 PM, Art Hunkins <abhunkin at uncg.edu> wrote:

    With regard to Bill Bogstad's floppy boot disk project for SoaS: it works
    flawlessly for me. (I've tried it successfully on both an older Windows
    laptop and desktop - vintages: Pentium II/III.)

    I've one suggestion for Bill: for use by children, I'd make everything as
    automatic as possible. Either delete the display where the user needs to
    make a choice (it's *way* technical and *I* didn't know what to do), or put
    a (10"?) auto-timer on it so that it goes on through (the usual way) without
    user intervention.

    For Windows people: I suggest creating the boot disk with RAWriteWin. It's
    simple, user-friendly and efficient.

    Great job, Bill.

    Art Hunkins

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Walter Bender" <walter.bender at gmail.com>
    To: <community-news at lists.sugarlabs.org>
    Cc: "iaep" <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>; "Sugar-dev Devel"
    <sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org>
    Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 9:55 AM
    Subject: [Sugar-devel] Sugar Digest 2009-09-11


    === Sugar Digest ===

    7. Bill Bogstad has been working on a floppy boot disk for Sugar on a
    Stick. See http://people.sugarlabs.org/~bogstad/floppy/ for more
    details.

    -walter
    --
    Walter Bender
    Sugar Labs
    http://www.sugarlabs.org
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  -- 
  Caroline Meeks
  Solution Grove
  Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

  617-500-3488 - Office
  505-213-3268 - Fax
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