Raspberry Pi use in education: boot times, repeatable boot

I'm not sure what Brian has added to his RISC OS boot to make it that slow! Even Theo's times seem a bit on the long side to me.

My experience is that RISC OS boots without network is about 10s, and with network 15s. Note that this is booting into a full GUI environment. If configured to boot to the command line, or into BASIC like the BBC Micro, it's about 8s.

Bryan.

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It depends on your SD card. I'm using The World's Slowest 2GB Card (TM), so probably using a faster card is what makes the difference.

A faster card is a way to speed up Linux boot too.

Theo

From my expierience as a pupil I would say that programmable pocket calculators are the best teaching devices for beginners. Today you will have to throw in some graphics. Adding some GPIO-capability via any wireless means to a pocket calculator would be fine.

seems to be under 2 minutes.

This is possible by pulling the power or the card at the wrong time.

yeah, it might pay to have some replacement cards on-hand

might work if the root FS was mounted read-only.

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?? 100% natural

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Anyone can buy one. Our school has purchased a few for 'computer club' and they will probably also use them for the new GCSE.

I doubt any school would want to get loads of old TVs. Hopefully they would already have enough monitors.

No harm in pupils buying their own too.

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(\__/)  M. 
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around 
(")_(") is he still wrong?

As Theo notes, it is the DHCP stage that takes a long time. With the TCIP suite disabled in Configure -> Network the boot time is

18sec.

I was also starting a SCSI-formatted USB memory stick as an extra drive. Removing that reduces the boot time to 14sec.

The card I'm using is "Sandisk 2GB" which says also "2(in a circle)" and "SD(italic)". I have no idea whether this is supposed to be a slow or a fast card.

Brian.

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Brian Carroll, Ripon, North Yorkshire, UK   
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The 2 in a circle is the class of card. 1 is slowest, 10 (currently) the fastest. Class 2 is about the same speed as reading a DVD for video playback.

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Tciao for Now! 

John.

I've read that while class 10 is good at streaming a small number of large files, it may be slow to seek, so that class 6 or even class 4 may be better at reading large numbers of small files.

First I've heard of that one. Mind you, the only uses I have that stretch them are HD video and multi-track audio.

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Tciao for Now! 

John.

On Mon, 29 Jul 2013 19:32:11 +0100, John Williamson declaimed the following:

One should also be aware that Class 10 cards are rated using a different criteria than Class 2/4/6 (I've never seen a card marked class

1). 2/4/6 are rated for fragmented contents (still photo camera with small files and some deletions). Class 10 is rated for freshly formatted, single file in streaming video mode. It is, therefore, hypothetically possible for a Class 10 card to come off as slower than 2/4/6 cards when accessing lots of small files scattered over the "surface"... ie, booting an OS

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	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN 
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It's not hypothetical, have a look at Amazon reviews with user contributed pictures - some have CrystalDiskMark benchmark screenshots of performance.

4KB random write speeds can be

Surely it depends on the learning objective?

If I'm teaching the nature of functions (graphs) then I'd want something with a good graphical display, quick to 'program' eg iPads with Quickgraph or PCs with Autograph.

If I were teaching programming, I'd not start with an iPad- other than possibly as an interface device to something more suitable.

There is no 'on solution' to the range of things that need to be taught- if they are to be taught properly.

In the past, 'IT' in schools tended to mean learning to use an 'Office suite' (probably MS Office) to complete a series of projects which were, in theory, representative of real world applications. How representative could be a moveable feast. Thankfully, moves are afoot to include more 'indepth' elements.

RISC OS can boot as fast as 10 seconds even with network turned on - just s et either manual IP number setting or make your router map MAC to IP.

But why does it matter much if it takes as long as a minute in a class? It will take that long for kids to settle down, find the right page in a book, take notice of a chalkboard note about the day's lesson etc. Unless you're proposing to reboot once a minute for some odd reason, where is the issue?

Any excuse for the kids *not* to settle down, they may be continuing with work from a previous lesson so no need to open a book or read a chalkboard note.

BTW: Please post with a complaint newsreader. I had to edit your post to quote it.

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(\__/)  M. 
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around 
(")_(") is he still wrong?

What is that, a complaint newsreader? A newsreader that automatically adds offtopic complaints about formatting to other people's posts?

One that that follows the standards, of course.

Don't be silly.

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(\__/)  M. 
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around 
(")_(") is he still wrong?

He is trying to say that you misspelled 'compliant'.

I don't think he was being silly, just a little facetious. :)

Bill Garber

I think you mean compliant! :-)

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Chris Green 
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Damned spellchuckers ;-)

Weird. I saw "compliant" despite it reading something else.

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(\__/)  M. 
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around 
(")_(") is he still wrong?