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From: saj@chinet.chi.il.us (Stephen Jacobs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: ROM disassembly for TOS 1.4
Summary: It's not to use undocumented features, it's to understand documented
Message-ID: <9442@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 1 Sep 89 16:15:34 GMT
References: <9401@chinet.chi.il.us> <1666@atari.UUCP>
Organization: Chinet - Chicago, Ill.
Lines: 23


John Townsend (who gets to pick up the pieces for Atari after third-party
programs break) disagreed with my request for an official Atari ROM disassembly
analogous to what IBM did with the PC.  He took my concession that use of
undocumented features by PC programmers resulted in a lot of mayhem as an
adequate argument against publishing such a listing.  But my point was that
even with that mayhem, the PC world has benefited enormously from the
availability of ROM listings.  There are always data structures that are only
adequately explained with "Look: here's how we use this".  There are clever
routines that one can learn from studying.  Sometimes there are even OS bugs,
stuff that doesn't do what it's supposed to, or has side-effects that didn't
seem worth mentioning when it was documented.  The PC world got better programs
sooner because the ROM listing was available, and after about the third round
of program-breaking upgrades, developers got the idea that you don't count
on anything staying the same unless it was specifically promised.  We've had
some of those 'told 'ya so' upgrades from Atari already.  I'm inclined to
believe that they WILL break any program that depends on undocumented
features.  But when I'm trying to write to a screen that is already guaranteed
to be video mode 1; or to understand why I can't open any more files (and
my counter of open files says zero), that disassembly is precious.
                                       Steve J.