No, all the extra firmware will load one device at a time. So you get to see all 4 NICs load their firmware, your onboard SAS controller loads its RAID stuff, then your fibre-channel HBAs, your BIOS does its thing, and so forth and so on, not necessarily in that order, and all in serial.

One of the reasons things are done this way is that generally each device's firmware will give the operator an opportunity to modify settings as it boots, so it will ask you to hit a key or some combination of keys and then wait a number of seconds for that to happen.

If we had some fancy modifications to LinBIOS maybe you could just tell the BIOS that you want to get into the firmware options for X device and then it would take you right to it, while skipping all the waiting for input.

But, alas, we don't, so we just wait for 5 or 10 minutes while the server boots.

It takes place in a flat desert yes, but that desert is also the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, and there's only one road in or out of the area, meaning that letting people just drive off over the desert will tear up the earth (and damage the ecosystem there) and allow people to try to jump on to the road anywhere they please, leading to slowdowns and accidents.

Scotty?

I know printing it out in binary format has already been mentioned, but there is actually a tool for this. If you use high quality paper, it might last for centuries.

Here's the (free) software: http://ronja.twibright.com:8080/optar/