Boot differences between Pi and Pi Zero

[hollymcr]

Specifically in my case Pi 3B vs ZeroW, but ideally more generally:

What are the differences between the two from a boot perspective (other than are obvious from the differing hardware)?

The reason for asking: I have been playing with Plymouth to change the boot visuals, and on a 3B I have no problem displaying a splash screen with minimal other info. Indeed a clean Raspbian desktop install does this.

But if I transfer the uSD card to the Zero it refuses to do this, always displaying the three-dot splash.

As this is the same on a clean Raspbian install, I assume there's an underlying reason for it?

If so, then I'd like to better understand why and any other subtle differences that aren't as obvious as "it doesn't have an Ethernet port", which is pretty much all I got from Googling.

[tvjon]

"But if I transfer the uSD card to the Zero it refuses to do this, always displaying the three-dot splash"

Shown is a desktop pic' booting on a RPi0W from a µSD card I usually use in a 3B. Said 0 shows the welcome box then boots to the desktop pic', all identical (apart from speed) to the 3B.

[jgreen71]

Actually, there *is* a difference in what files are loaded between the 3 and the Zero. If you look at this ( admittedly old post ) on the boot sequence https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... t-sequence you can see reference to all the files needed to load.

And if you look at the firmware GitHub https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware ... aster/boot you can see that there are still various .elf/.img/.dat files, depending on which Pi is being booted.

Hope this helps in your investigation.