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From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Should 64K ROMs be supported?
Message-ID: <1490@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Tue, 16-Dec-86 03:25:11 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1490
Posted: Tue Dec 16 03:25:11 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Dec-86 05:22:26 EST
References: <476@runx.OZ>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Centram Systems, Berkeley
Lines: 33

In article <476@runx.OZ> baron@runx.OZ (Jason Haines) writes:
>
>Come on people, how about some discussion to the point of whether
>the ol' 64K ROMs should be supported by developers!
>
>To date, the discussion has moved tangential to my original subject.
>
>PLEASE, I need to see some REAL discussion of this subject.
>
>Thanks,
>	Jason Haines

I thought my first answer spoke directly to the issue.  To repeat, it is
absolutely vital to any commercial software that it continue to support the
tens of thousands of Macs with only 512K and old ROMs.  Yes, yes, yes,
continue to support the old ROMs, at least until Apple comes out with a
RAM-based version of the new ROMs (which they seem uninterested in doing;
they just want everyone to cough up three hundred bucks for the new ones,
regardless of the fact that large networks with hundreds or thousands of
machines can not conceivably afford to do so).  If you do not, your
application will not run on a large fraction of the Macs out there.  These
Macs are *NOT* going to convert next week.

On the other hand, fun public domain software (like my backdrop file) need
not be developed with such stringent conditions in mind in many cases.  I am
glad that some people are getting some free fun out of it; it doesn't
particularly bother me that some others are cut out.  If, however, your
public domain software is serious, like my/CMU's MacIP or Dubois' TransSkel,
then you definitely should support old ROMs.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot
{ihnp4,sun,well,ptsfa,lll-crg,frog}!hoptoad!tim (uucp)
hoptoad!tim@lll-crg (arpa)