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From: LAVITSKY@RU-BLUE.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.micro.cbm
Subject: Re: AmigaDOS not im ROM
Message-ID: <3216@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 15:05:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3216
Posted: Fri Aug  9 15:05:51 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 04:44:07 EDT
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: Eric 


>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

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