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From: jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: 1.4 ROMS?
Summary: You betcha!
Message-ID: <435@tardis.Tymnet.COM>
Date: 18 Jul 89 19:46:40 GMT
References: <469@uncmed.med.unc.edu>
Reply-To: jms@tardis.Tymnet.COM (Joe Smith)
Organization: McDonnell Douglas Field Service Co, San Jose CA
Lines: 39

In article <469@uncmed.med.unc.edu> rhunt@uncmed.med.unc.edu (Rick Hunt) writes:
>I haven't seen any mention of this on the net and I was wondering if
>anyone knows (and will tell) if there will be any new ROMs needed for DOS
>1.4 or will it use the 1.3 set.  I haven't needed the 1.3 ROMs yet because
>I don't have an autobooting harddrive yet and not enough memory to set up
>a useful RAD: to boot from.  I would hate to buy the 1.3 chip and then
>turn right around and have to get 1.4.

It has been discussed a lot on the net.  You will remember that the main
difference between the 1.2 ROM and the 1.3 ROM is the ability to autoboot;
all the wonderfull stuff Commodore was planning has been held back for 1.4,
which means there will be a lot of changes to the ROM.  For instance:

1) Booting from a FFS formatted floppy.  The fast file system has to be
   moved into ROM for this to work.
2) New graphics modes such as 640x400 noninterlaced.  Requires that the
   graphics library (in ROM) be updated.
3) New features to WorkBench, such as multitasking (clicking on an icon
   while WorkBench is still looking for more icons).  The portions of ROM
   that contain WorkBench will definitely have to change.
4) Complete re-write of the dos.library into assembler and C.

Yes, there will definitely be new ROMs for 1.4.  Any they promise that
well-written programs will not break under the new version of AmigaDOS.

There are two related questions that remain unanswered:
1) Will any of the new programs be completely unusable if you boot a 1.4
   floppy on a system with the 1.2 or 1.3 ROMs?  (I expect them to at least
   say "Sorry, you must Kickstart 1.4" and not guru.)
2) Will the ROM be in the stores at the same time as the disks?  (Because of
   warrentee concerns, I don't expect the ROM to be in the box with the disks.)

I don't expect definitive answers to those questions until the week before
first customer ship.
-- 
Joe Smith (408)922-6220 | SMTP: JMS@F74.TYMNET.COM or jms@tymix.tymnet.com
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