PDP-11/44 boot prompt

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Sun Nov 1 15:22:50 1998

"Max Eskin" <maxeskin_at_hotmail.com> wrote:
> It's too bad most micros don't have a debugger in ROM. Except for
> computers made by Apple, I don't know of any. I especially wish the
> PC had a ROM debugger. It would really help me feel like I'm using a
> worthwhile machine.

Most of the later revisions of the Commodore PET firmware. Don't know
why they didn't put it into the C64 though.

IIRC some Ohio Scientific machines had a ROM debug monitor. And of
course, that was often ALL you got with KIM, TIM, SYM, AIM, etc., though
there were BASIC, Assembler, and FORTH ROMs available for some of them.

On a modern machine the utility would be much lower. For instance, if IBM
had made a debugger like DOS's DEBUG available as part of the ROM BIOS,
would you really want to use it to debug a Windows (or Linux) application?

Even on big iron in the 60s and 70s that had real front panels, most
software debugging was done using debugger programs like DDT loaded in
from disk or tape.

Eric
Received on Sun Nov 01 1998 - 15:22:50 GMT

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