General Tech Question

[m0e]

OK, I put together a computer for the express purpose of running Winamp. But I need some suggestions to cut down the boot time to around 10-20 seconds.
System specs=
Abit VH6 II (BIOS ver 7F)
PIII 300 mhz
64mb pc100 ram (2 matching 32mb sticks)
WD Caviar 34300 (UDMA-2)
WD Caviar WD400 (mounted in removable HD bay) (UDMA-5)
Hercules 3D Prophet II MX (Standard VGA driver, no monitor used)
Onboard Realtek AC97 sound (driver ver 3.45)
17 Key Keypad connected to the PS/2 Keyboard port (Standard 102 key Keyboard driver)
Most recent BIOS and motherboard drivers from Abit
Windows 98SE (no updates installed, custom installation, Wordpad is the only optional component installed)
Winamp 2.91 full install with a Parallel port to LCD output plugin (do not remember the name)
DirectX6.?

I changed the line in the system.ini file from
Shell=Explorer.exe to Shell=C:Progra~1\Winamp\Winamp.exe
and I disabled the FDD control in the BIOS (no floppy installed). There are no optical drives, network interfaces, or any PCI cards installed.
Right now my boot time from pushing the power button to Winamp playing is 64-65 seconds. Is there anything else I can change in the BIOS/Registry/Startup files? I have done google searches for info on this but haven’t found much useful info. Also I haven’t been able to get it to boot without a video card, is there some way to do that? Basically the only thing I care about is it boots to Winamp, and the onboard sound chip, parallel ports and PS/2 port function. I am not necessarily looking for detailed instructions, just general info on some things I can change/delete and where to look for them.

[Atmo]

You probably wont be able to get it to boot without a video card, so just use a cheap 1-2mb pci card.

As for speeding up the boot time, you've done just about everything that can be done. Adding an extra 64mb of ram, and switching to a faster hard drive may cut it down by a few seconds (not really worthwhile for the application though). 10-20 seconds just isnt going to happen...Most older pc's take at least that long to post, test the memory and initialise the drive/s.

[m0e]

Thanks Atmo, I have a 64mb pc100 stick in a machine that will be retired/replaced by this machine, although I seem to remember it having conflicts with the ram I am using now, maybe there won’t be a problem in this motherboard. From pushing the power button to the “Starting Windows 98” line after the POST function is about 16 seconds now, the rest of the time is spent loading Windows and then Winamp. I was hoping I could get rid of more unnecessary junk in Windows, but it might be as minimal as it can be now?

[Timzone8]

Make sure you've got the hd's already set, so they're not searching for them all the time, it can make it faster. But my computer only takes about that to boot, n its a 233mhz P2mmx

[mark]

reccomendation: use a shell manager such aslitespawn (http://www.hellbent.com/digitaloxide/litespawn/readme.html).

its designed for litestep, but supports any program as shell. I suggest it because, if winamp crashes, litspawn sees its gone and brings up a dialog asking if you waqnt to relaod it.

it shouldnt slow up the boot time, and will prevent many headaches.