Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!LAVITSKY@RU-BLUE.ARPA From: LAVITSKY@RU-BLUE.ARPA (Eric) Newsgroups: net.micro Subject: Re: AmigaDOS not im ROM Message-ID: <584@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 15:13:11 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.584 Posted: Fri Aug 9 15:13:11 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 04:42:39 EDT Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 41 >Date: Fri, 9 Aug 85 12:32:55 EDT >From: Tom Hornick (CSC)>To: LAVITSKY@RUTGERS.ARPA >Subject: AmigaDOS not im ROM > >Eric, > Just curious as to whether the guy that posted the article on AmigaDOS >was correct about it not being in ROM? If it is true, do you happen to >know why it was removed from being in ROM? > >Thanks, Tom Hi, Yes, there is a 'Kickstart' disk that you must have on power up. The Amiga is still a little far ahead of the Mac and the ST in this regard. Both the Mac and the ST require that their 'finders' be loaded into RAM every time the machine is reset. The Amiga is a little more sophisticated. The Writable Control Store (WCS) is RAM that can be hardware locked. Once the OS is loaded into WCS, the information contained in WCS remains even through hardware resets. This provides an added level of flexibility and power to the Amiga OS designers. Additions and improvements to the OS can be made rather easily. The Mac finder was probably under development longer than AmigaDOS, and there are still problems with it today. The Mac designers and owners should be happy they didn't freeze it into ROM right away (though that is coming apparently). There is or may be still one major difference between the MAC, ST and the Amiga. The writable control store does not detract from user RAM. As far as I can tell it is there in place of ROM above and beyond the normal 256K user RAM (or 512K depending on what you've got). I should know something more definite soon. Eric ARPA: LAVITSKY@RUTGERS UUCP: ...{harvard,seismo,ut-sally,sri-iu,ihnp4!packard}!topaz!eric SNAIL: 16 Oak St., Flr 2 New Brunswick, NJ 08903 -------