Plug-n-Play for vintage machines?

Or you could be like other current software products that say helpful things like, " There has been an error." Or, " Unable to complete this task. Please contact your system administrator." Or, "Error -423586293856238392312867896532983." [In a dialog box with an OK button - what's OK about this error?] You're just trying to be too helpful.... ________________________________________ From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jim Brain [brain at jbrain.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 5:00 PM To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Plug-n-Play for vintage machines? Or, I could just make each of the cartridges a single task board, and have users either insert and remove them as needed, or make their own cartridge expander with switches to manually enable or disable each cartridge slot. Applications could then display screens stating things like: "I'm sorry, but this application requires 16K of expansion RAM for use. Please turn off the computer, insert a 16K RAM Expander or a 24K expansion cartridge with the upper 8KB turned off, and reload this application" "Could you tell me what UART cartridge you have inserted into the computer? I have no way of obtaining that information from the cartridge itself, so you'll have to enter it in my application." "We can't find the UART cartridge at $de40. Since you've no doubt inserted it, it is possible you've not set the address range to $de40-$de5f. Please turn off the machine, ensure the jumper for $de40 (located inside the cartridge shell) is closed and all other are open, and reload this application" "There's a bug in v1.3 of the expander cart, but I can't tell which version you are using, so please select and I will enable the workaround based on your selection" Jim