9 May
2000
9 May
'00
11:15 a.m.
David Greelish wrote:
In a message dated Mon, 8 May 2000 00:27:26 -0400
(EDT), Sean 'Captain
Napalm' Conner" <spc(a)armigeron.com> writes:
<< Again, to bring this back on topic, there have been plenty of operating
systems distributed in ROM---AmigaOS, QNX, OS-9 and the original MacOS
were
all contained in ROM, were/are ROMmable and
extensible. (snip snip)
Although this is true in a practical sense (especially
because of the growth
of the OS), there is one exception I know of. On the original Mac Classic,
holding down Cmd-Option-X-O (the letter O) at boot time loads a small
version of the OS entirely from a disk image in ROM. (You can "Get Info" on
the disk and see an amusing note.) It may be System 6.0.2 or I could be
imagining that.
The new machines, on the other hand, load the "ROM" from disk and then write
protect the memory. Talk about going in the other direction...
Just like the original Amiga circa 1985, which loaded Kickstart off of disk
into write once protected RAM. Why?? Because the ROM code had not yet been
finalized when the computer was put on the market.
Another fine example of how marketing guys try to BS electrons . . .
Gary Hildebrand
-- Derek