IBM ROM BASIC or lack thereof

From: Glen Goodwin <acme_ent_at_bellsouth.net>
Date: Sat Sep 29 21:28:28 2001

> > What's the deal with the BASIC in ROM on these machines? Any other
early
> > PeeCee's have this feature?
>
> It's standard Microsoft cassette BASIC. Similar to (say) TRS-80 CoCo
> BASIC.
>
> The true-blue IBM PC. PC/XT (and therefore PortablePC), PC/AT, PCjr, etc
> all have BASIC in ROM. I don't think it was ever licensed to clones, and
> I don't think any clone company ever wrote a ROM BASIC from scratch. So
> pretty much the only place you'll find it is in IBM machines.

Tony, I think you are correct as I've never seen a clone mb with BASIC in
ROM, but I *have* seen clone boards -- including early Pentium boards --
which would cough up "no rom basic" if they didn't find a bootable device.
Oddly enough the text of this message is always displayed in 40-column
low-res mode. Doesn't this suggest that part of the ROM BIOS code was
"borrowed" from early IBM code?

Glen
0/0
Received on Sat Sep 29 2001 - 21:28:28 BST