Re: Ada 0Y plans for garbage collection?

["Maxim S. Shatskih" <maxim@storagecraft.com>]

> Each device driver, having at least once gone through a complete hardware
> configuration procedure, would record the hardware configuration upon
> shutdown. Upon the next reboot, the device driver would reinstate this
> configuration, and would perform a quick check that the configuration still
> accords with the detectable hardware (if this check failed, the full
> configuration procedure would be activated).

Windows does nearly the same for non-PnP obsolete devices, though without the
last step.
PnP devices do not need this.

> I don't know why operating systems (Windows, SunOS, and Linux in my direct
> experience) are so slow at booting up,

XP is rather fast. The main time spent is to start the service/daemon
executables.

>but I suspect it has a lot to do with
> device drivers intialising themselves and their hardware.

Only a minority need the complex init paths - IDE, for instance, due to
compatibility with some obsolete CD drives.

> If the user can shutdown and reboot quickly (within a few seconds, I
> suppose), and does not have to go through the rigmarole of closing a lot of
> programs (windows) and then restarting them, I suspect the demand for a
> 'sleep mode' would be largely obviated.

This is how hibernate works.

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
maxim@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com