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From: john@x.UUCP (John Woods)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: AmigaDOS not im ROM
Message-ID: <536@x.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Aug-85 15:16:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: x.536
Posted: Wed Aug 21 15:16:14 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Aug-85 19:24:56 EDT
References: <584@brl-tgr.ARPA> <16177@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA
Lines: 36

*** Sigh, this seems to have been truncated by frog first time around... ***
*** I guess I will remove my sarcasm while I'm reposting this... ***
> In article <584@brl-tgr.ARPA> LAVITSKY@RU-BLUE.ARPA (Eric) writes:
> >	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
>
> Boy, the Amiga designers can do no wrong in your eyes!
>
> From pictures it seems the Amiga just has another 256K of DRAMs that the
> OS is loaded into.  Who cares if it is "hardware locked"?  The Amiga OS
>must be pretty buggy if the designers went to the trouble of write protecting
>the OS memory. In an appliance computer such as the Amiga, you should *never*
> have to reset the machine!

First, you must remember that occaisionally we mere mortals who program make
mistakes. I would much rather have an OS bug *not* smash the OS than go ahead
and smash it.  I would even be more ecstatic to be able to get a new revision
of their OS by just changing Kickstart disks, rather than opening up the cheap
plastic container (damaging those *&^%^*@# Phillips head screws in the
process) and popping in new ROMS (bending pin 16 while I'm at it...).

What's more, since they failed to provide a Memory Management Unit (shame,
shame, shame), user code too has the opportunity to damage the OS
(applications programmers make mistakes, too).

The OS darn well better be unwritable while the machine runs, and that means
either nnnK of ROM or nnnK of RAM.  I think they make a tremendously good case
for RAM here.

Three cheers and a bunny for the Amiga developers!

-- 
John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101
...!decvax!frog!john, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw%mit-ccc@MIT-XX.ARPA