IBM ROM BASIC or lack thereof

From: Hans B Pufal <hansp_at_aconit.org>
Date: Mon Oct 1 03:17:37 2001

Glen Goodwin wrote:

>>hard disk and floppy disk and then call INT 18h. Since there is no ROM
>>basic, INT 18h points to a little bit of code that displays the No ROM
>>BASIC message (as far as I can see this message is not in the IBM ROMs)
>>and then halts the CPU.
 
> This was the point to my original question: why would clone makers go to
> the trouble of displaying the message and then halting the system, instead
> of just *halting the system*? (Unless they were using stolen code.) Just
> doesn't quite make sense . . .


To tell the user what had happened?

The code pointed to by Int 18H is responsible for printing that message
and could be invoked from elsewhere than th BIOS boot sequence so it
seems just user friendly to display some message if you are going to
hang the system.


Of course today you would get a BSOD - much more informative ;-)

  -- HBP
Received on Mon Oct 01 2001 - 03:17:37 BST