IBM ROM BASIC or lack thereof

Yes, providing a default ROM monitor program would be useful and simple to implement. The Otrona Attache would go into terminal mode if it couldn't boot the OS. It also provided a set of diagnostic routines that could be run from terminal mode.

I agree with you that error messages should be more informative. One problem is that they often just tell you the last of a series of errors. "No ROM Basic" accurately describes the last "error," but it might be more useful to the user to also know that the system got to that point because it couldn't boot from disk. - Bob -----Original Message----- From: ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk [mailto:ard@p850ug1.demon.co.uk] Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 5:43 PM To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Re: IBM ROM BASIC or lack thereof <snip> I wish more manufacturers would put a program in the boot ROM that allows reading and writing to memory, running (machine code) programs and preferably also reading/writing I/O ports (if they're not memory mapped). It makes debugging the machine a lot easier if it can't boot a disk (or if you don't have a bootable disk for the machine, at least you can do something with it. Tiny (or otherwise) BASIC allows one to do this. So does Forth. Or just a little machine code monitor. With ROM space being so cheap these days you'd have thought they could find room for something like this... -tony