28 Mar
2008
28 Mar
'08
10:42 a.m.
While I can appreciate this philosophy, I still
can't see how it would
be beneficial on the 5150/5160. For example, let's say I want to move
the cursor to a new location, say (10,15). Typical way is something
like this:
It has nothing to do with efficiency, it has to do with compatibility.
Everyone was jumping on the IBM bandwagon, and they were not all good
designers - lots of commercial code depended on details of the ROM that
they should not have ... but they did.
Your clone might have a fantastically wonderful BIOS. Faster, more bug
free than IBM, and code that was a work of art to appreciate... but as
soon as some bit of software called a function in the IBM rom that you
didn't provide, or provide in the right place, you machine became one
of the many "incompatibles" that didn't make it.
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html