Notes

Called Phoenix Hyperspace, it looked like nothing so much as yet another entry in the the then-popular (and also then-reviled-and-ignored) push to find a way to make computers boot faster. There were several companies trying to do this at the time, and it is a far less interesting subject in general than Hyperspace - or, at least, I thought that when I initially wrote this treatise. Since then, I’ve invested a lot of time into this particular niche of software history.

As part of that investigation, I managed to obtain a machine with Phoenix Hyperspace, and was shocked to discover that, as batshit as the previous statement was, that product (which never really got shipped in anything, AFAIK) doesn’t hold a candle to the weirdness of what actually made it into consumer hands. Phoenix invented a completely novel way to abuse the BIOS, and trust me, this article is worth the read if that intrigues you. The Unholy Saga of Phoenix Hyperspace