Power Macintosh: Power light delay at Startup

I'm using a Power Macintosh 6500 and I get a 45 second delay during the startup. I think this delay might be similar to the one the 6400/6360/5400's had after OS 7.6.1 was released. I'm measuring the delay from the time the startup chime occurs to when the power light comes on. What's going on?
A delay in the power light to appear may occur on cold starts (i.e. starting up after a shutdown, instead of a restart). The delay occurs during the memory/hardware test phase of the boot process. The delay can be longer in seconds based on the amount of RAM that is installed.

For customers that are unhappy with this delay, Mac OS 8.5 offers a hidden feature to disable the startup memory tests. To do this in Mac OS 8.5, hold down the" Command - Option" keys while opening the Memory control panel. Below the RAM disk information part of the window, there will be a set of radio buttons to selectively turn on or off the startup memory tests.

For additional information see the following article:
Tech Info Library Article 24215: "Macintosh Performa 6400 Series: Frequently Asked Questions".
Published Date: Feb 20, 2012