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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watmath.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!csc
From: csc@watmath.UUCP (Jan Gray)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: AmigaDOS not im ROM
Message-ID: <16177@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 14-Aug-85 21:33:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.16177
Posted: Wed Aug 14 21:33:44 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Aug-85 15:35:14 EDT
References: <584@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Reply-To: jan@looking.UUCP (Jan Gray)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 34
Summary: 

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
>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.

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!

Besides, I'd rather have the extra RAM for other things.


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Jan Gray  watmath!looking!jan  Looking Glass Software, Waterloo  519-884-7473