boot times and software suspend (Was: Re: [plug] Distro Day !!!)

[Craig Ringer]

> | That's one of the advantages of the Intel desktop boards - stupidly fast 
> | POST, usually faster than the monitor can come out of standby.
> 
> Blimey!  My board (Asus A7v133) takes close to a minute just to do
> whatever it is that it does before it loads Grub.

Aha. Those things have an onboard Promise ATA/100 controller to 
suppliment the ATA/66 onboard the via chipset. If you're not using the 
ATA/100 ports, turn the loading of the Promise BIOS off in your main 
BIOS and your machine will POST considerably faster.

Craig