TEA - Test Gear Olympics – Slowest Boot Time

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

I’m proposing a competition for the slowest booting test gear in the workshop shop. Oven controlled oscillator and Rubidium standards are out of bounds. Floppy systems are just about in and all other forms of cheating are actively encouraged. I’m entering my much loved if tediously booting Agilent scope in very much the amateur category and I know there must be some profession timewaster out there that can do considerably better. Remember It’s all about taking part that counts!

Warning. All competitors will be subject to random drugs testing. Drugs provided free for anyone found to be under the proscribed  limits

 

Regards Chris


https://youtu.be/36ExBsu4DQg?t=18m39s

[Rerouter]

Well not slowest booting, but close to slowest to a usable state, we have a bit of automotive OEM test gear that makes you scroll through 3 pages of legalese with a down button (1 second per button register) and then press enter to accept before it lets you use it. takes about 1 and a half minutes.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

Well not slowest booting, but close to slowest to a usable state, we have a bit of automotive OEM test gear that makes you scroll through 3 pages of legalese with a down button (1 second per button register) and then press enter to accept before it lets you use it. takes about 1 and a half minutes.

Well that's a good start. I'm awarding you extra points for style the legalese, sound like a right pain in the arse. Well done.

[SaabFAN]

Philips PM3585 Logic Analyzer.
Needs to load everything from a Floppy and takes about 30 seconds to boot.

And the old PM3320A - Software boots instantly Picture takes 5 seconds, but having reliable measurements takes about 10 to 15 minutes of warmup-time with drifts of up to 10%. Does that count too?

[philpem]

HP 16700A logic analyser.

A good ten minutes on the stock hard drive -- it cold-boots HP-UX from a remarkably slow Quantum Fireball SCSI drive.

Swap that for a Seagate Cheetah and the noise goes down and it boots a few minutes quicker.

To be fair, it's only a 150MHz PA-RISC processor with the VRAM option...

It makes up for its slowness by being utterly unparalleled (at least without going all-in for a 16900) for reverse-engineering 68K system software.

[bd139]

I f**king hate HPUX. Had the misfortune of using them, albeit slightly newer and Oracle. Kill me.

I worked for a defence company many years ago as a button pushing test monkey. They had a rig that consisted of a full 42U rack of crap that tested transponders. Most of it was HPIB kit driven from a rack mounted PC. The entire rack took so long to reset state after the test run that we just disconnected the fixture and hit the molly switch on the wall and powered it all up again after. To boot it and load the test cases and set up the kit from the software took 20 minutes. This was loaded from four floppy disks as due to internal regulations and classification anything that was software had to be locked away over night. Half the time you had to start again because of disk errors.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

Philips PM3585 Logic Analyzer.
Needs to load everything from a Floppy and takes about 30 seconds to boot.

And the old PM3320A - Software boots instantly Picture takes 5 seconds, but having reliable measurements takes about 10 to 15 minutes of warmup-time with drifts of up to 10%. Does that count too?

A talented amateur entry here  A Good try thanks for competing.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

I f**king hate HPUX. Had the misfortune of using them, albeit slightly newer and Oracle. Kill me.

I worked for a defence company many years ago as a button pushing test monkey. They had a rig that consisted of a full 42U rack of crap that tested transponders. Most of it was HPIB kit driven from a rack mounted PC. The entire rack took so long to reset state after the test run that we just disconnected the fixture and hit the molly switch on the wall and powered it all up again after. To boot it and load the test cases and set up the kit from the software took 20 minutes. This was loaded from four floppy disks as due to internal regulations and classification anything that was software had to be locked away over night. Half the time you had to start again because of disk errors.

Well I'm not sure we can count multiple bits of test gear. I think there's going to be a officials enquiry here. But extra points for bending the rules.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

I think we really need some video clips ! Get filming all you time wasters

Chris

[GreyWoolfe]

My Tektronix 2465, Leader LG-1301 and Leader LDC-823A boot right up but I let a 1/2 hour go by to stabilize.  The absolute slowest boot is the loose nut between the seat and workbench.  There are some days a full boot never happens.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

My Tektronix 2465, Leader LG-1301 and Leader LDC-823A boot right up but I let a 1/2 hour go by to stabilize.  The absolute slowest boot is the loose nut between the seat and workbench.  There are some days a full boot never happens.

I like your style   

Regards Chris

[texaspyro]

You all are posers...   I once had the pleasure of working with a Dynatest (?) circuit board tester.  It used custom bed-of-nails text fixtures to test circuit boards.  It cost over $100K.   Bootup required reading over two dozen 720 KB floppies... took about an hour. You also had to toggle in a boot loader using toggle switches on the front panel (until I built a board that did that from  bipolar proms).  Any read error and you had to start over again. Same for changing the test program. 

I think the previous version read in a few thousand feet of paper/mylar tape faster...

Young'uns these days...  get off my lawn!

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

You all are posers...   I once had the pleasure of working with a Dynatest (?) circuit board tester.  It used custom bed-of-nails text fixtures to test circuit boards.  It cost over $100K.   Bootup required reading over two dozen 720 KB floppies... took about an hour. You also had to toggle in a boot loader using toggle switches on the front panel (until I built a board that did that from  bipolar proms).  Any read error and you had to start over again. Same for changing the test program. 

I think the previous version read in a few thousand feet of paper/mylar tape faster...

Young'uns these days...  get off my lawn!

You have done unexpected well beating everyone. After several complaints from the Americans the judges have launched an inquiry. They need to do blood test and Take pictures of your private parts!

[tggzzz]

Can you include test gear that should never be powered off, or which should be run for at least a day to ensure its temperature has stabilised. Voltnuts and timenuts will be happy to supply examples

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

Can you include test gear that should never be powered off, or which should be run for at least a day to ensure its temperature has stabilised. Voltnuts and timenuts will be happy to supply examples

Sorry no has to be actively doing something other than reaching thermal equilibrium. Still good try!

Chris

[gslick]

HP 16700A logic analyser.

A good ten minutes on the stock hard drive -- it cold-boots HP-UX from a remarkably slow Quantum Fireball SCSI drive.

It makes up for its slowness by being utterly unparalleled (at least without going all-in for a 16900) for reverse-engineering 68K system software.

Is that 10 minute figure accurate, or just a ballpark figure off the top of your head? I have never bothered timing it myself yet on a 16700 series.

I recently timed power-on to logic analyzer application fully up and running on a 16900A at 2 minutes, 10 seconds. That is a 1GHz PIII, 512MB running XP SP3 on the stock 80GB ATA drive with version 5.90 of the logic analyzer application. I haven't timed it on the 16901A or 16902B with the E8400, 4GB motherboard running W7 yet to see how that compares.

EDIT: I just timed a 16901A logic analyzer from power-on to logic analyzer application version 5.80 fully up and running at 1 minute 20 seconds. That is with the M890 motherboard version with a 3GHz Intel® Core™2 Duo E8400, 4GB running 64-bit Windows Embedded Standard 7 SP1 on the standard WD5000BPKX 500GB SATA hard drive. The M890 motherboard versions of the 16901A and 16902B were the final versions of Agilent / Keysight modular mainframes in the traditional form factor before they switched to AXIe modules.

[MarkL]

I don't think I can beat 10 minutes, but I timed an Agilent 16702B logic analyzer at 2 min 54 secs from power switch to the "System Window", which is the first moment you can interact with the system.  Truly painful.

Maybe it can win honorable mention.

[AllTheGearNoIdea]

I don't think I can beat 10 minutes, but I timed an Agilent 16702B logic analyzer at 2 min 54 secs from power switch to the "System Window", which is the first moment you can interact with the system.  Truly painful.

Maybe it can win honorable mention.

I have to admit to being devoted fan of everything with a HP or Agilent badge.  But when it comes to slow boot up times they really set the pace.   I think the Agilent team could be unbeatable with the most golds at this years Slow Boot Olympics