Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!ruuinf!verwer
From: verwer@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl (Nico Verwer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: ST/STE ROMs (was: Re: Gadgets by Small - Possible new '030 ...)
Summary: large ROMs for 1040ST?
Message-ID: <2109@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl>
Date: 28 Nov 89 16:05:51 GMT
References: <2307@hudson.acc.virginia.edu> <1814@atari.UUCP> <1820@atari.UUCP>
Organization: University of Utrecht, Dept. of CS
Lines: 23

In article <1820@atari.UUCP>, kbad@atari.UUCP (Ken Badertscher) writes:
> walkerb@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Brian Walker) writes:
> | What did you do with the line F compression?
> It's gone.  Because of the larger ROM space in the STE, (and TT), the line F
> compression is no longer required to make the TOS ROM image fit.  With the
> exception overhead gone, the AES moves along noticeably faster, too.

Why didn't Atari use large ROMs for the 1040 in the first place? Using
line-F makes upgrading to a 68020 and a floating-point coprocessor really 
difficult. Now it also appears that exception overhead seriously affects
AES-speed 8-( !
Were ROMs so expensive at the time that Atari felt they should decrease
ROM-size at any cost, or is this a problem of the MMU, or what?
Will there ever be a chance for 1040 owners to use a larger ROM-set,
thus being able to painlessly use a 68020 running standard TOS? Is it
possible to make a hack and solder the extra ROMs in? Or would you have
to replace the whole motherboard with an STE-board (which has the same
case anyway)?
I'm not complaining, just wondering, so send flames to /dev/null (or the
trash can).

Nico Verwer @ Dept. of Computer Science, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
verwer@cs.ruu.nl    +31 30 533921