This thread is a lot worse than that one at AW.net.. ;-)
Anyway. Up to half the boot delay seems to be due to various stages of boot menus that waited for input before continuing on default. The OS4 selection was obvious with a progress bar shrinking over 10-15 seconds before it continued.
I don't believe saying that a debug kernel would slow things down (apart from serial debugging), and be compiled without optimization. Using different optimization modes for debug and non-debug is dangerous and should never be done!
However, to reduce the FUD I think someone should take an hour and configure an X1000 with optimal boot speeds:
1. Set the serial speed to 1Mbit (I'm sure it supports it, otherwise at least 115k2.)
2. Remove all boot selection timeouts or reduce them to something minimal, or do a manual selection immediately to speed it up.
3. Comment out all modules and libraries not needed for the machine, such as 3dfx, SIL, SCSI and whatever other kickstart modules.
4. Put Run >NIL: on the AddNetInterfaces in s-s.
Now make a new video and amaze us all :-D