classiccmp-digest V1 #163

From: Derek Peschel <dpeschel_at_eskimo.com>
Date: Tue May 9 11:15:28 2000

David Greelish wrote:
> In a message dated Mon, 8 May 2000 00:27:26 -0400 (EDT), Sean 'Captain
> Napalm' Conner" <spc_at_armigeron.com> writes:
>
> << Again, to bring this back on topic, there have been plenty of operating
> systems distributed in ROM---AmigaOS, QNX, OS-9 and the original MacOS
were
> all contained in ROM, were/are ROMmable and extensible. (snip snip)
Although this is true in a practical sense (especially because of the growth
of the OS), there is one exception I know of. On the original Mac Classic,
holding down Cmd-Option-X-O (the letter O) at boot time loads a small
version of the OS entirely from a disk image in ROM. (You can "Get Info" on
the disk and see an amusing note.) It may be System 6.0.2 or I could be
imagining that.

The new machines, on the other hand, load the "ROM" from disk and then write
protect the memory. Talk about going in the other direction...

Just like the original Amiga circa 1985, which loaded Kickstart off of disk
into write once protected RAM. Why?? Because the ROM code had not yet been
finalized when the computer was put on the market.

Another fine example of how marketing guys try to BS electrons . . .

Gary Hildebrand



-- Derek
Received on Tue May 09 2000 - 11:15:28 BST