3 Oct
2001
3 Oct
'01
5:15 p.m.
Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
At the time the PC was first introduced, the clone
manufactorers pretty
much had to follow *what* the PC BIOS did, but in their case, they *didn't*
have a BASIC to install in the BIOS. At the time, it probably made sense to
say ``no ROM BASIC'' but really, nowadays, do even IBM PCs come with BASIC
ROM? I think that in the abscence of ROM BASIC or some other internal program
that loads, saying ``no bootable device'' is acceptable.
No that particular message is not accpectable. It would lead any
rational person to check that all disk devices are connected and
fucntional. A more correct message would be "No bootable media found"
Our BIOS can display a "Trying device xxx" message making the final
message even more useful since it is preceded by a list of devices which
were tried.
If a user later adds a ROM with BASIC, it can follow
the established
guidelines to intercepting INT 18h with its own code.
Yes and no. In today's BIOS, INT 18 has bee "hijacked" or respecified to
be an integrated part of the boot sequence. It is actually called from
some bootstrap sectors to signal the fact that the media has no bootable
system.
Installing an option ROM with BASIC which redirects int 18 will probably
cause all modern systems to fail any boot attempt and always enter
BASIC. Perhaps not such a bad thing ;-)
-- HBP