How can I reduce the boot time for an xPC Targetbox in xPC Target 2.7.2 (R14SP2)?

I have an xPC TargetBox 108 with the QuickBoot capability. However, the boot time is closer to 7 seconds rather than about 2 seconds as mentioned in the documentation. I would like to know if there are ways to achieve a boot time of about 2 seconds.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

There are three important items that need to be considered when trying to minimize the total load/boot time:

1. General BIOS load time: This is constant and cannot be modified by the user. The TargetBox x07 and x08 have a QuickBoot capability where the load time is around a second.

2. Boot device: Since the floppy disk access is slow, you should not be using the floppy to boot (or a Hard Disk). Instead, use the built-in IDE FlashDisk. Also disable the settings related to floppy drivers in the BIOS:

a) Turn the "Boot Floppy Seek" setting off, so the floppy drive isn't accessed during the boot device search.

b) Switch the Boot sequence to "C,A" or "C only" instead of "A,C".

c) Ideally, you can remove the floppy drive from the BIOS.

With this, the C drive should be accessed immediately after the QuickBoot of the BIOS is complete.

3) Make sure that the DOS environment on the IDE FlashDisk is 'lean' and there must be no unnecessary DOS utilities before the "xpcboot" command in 'autoexec.bat'.

With these settings, one should be able to push the overall load time to around 2 seconds.