Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!jonka
From: jonka@microsoft.UUCP (Jonathan KAGLE)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.emulations
Subject: Re: AMAX & Mac ROMS
Message-ID: <70487@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 5 Feb 91 21:12:33 GMT
References: <7293@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: jonka@microsoft.UUCP (Jonathan KAGLE)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 21

In article <7293@crash.cts.com> bobl@pro-graphics.cts.com (Bob Lindabury, SysAdmin) writes:
>Why is it that AMAX only uses the 128K roms?  Why don't they make the AMAX II
>able to use either the 128k OR the 512K roms.  Seems kind of stupid to limit
>you to emulating the old machines.

I don't know very much about the actual AMAX II product, but there seem to be
some logical reasons behind this decision.

     - AMAX copies the ROMs into RAM and modifies the binary.  The changes
       are made to absolute addresses and have a fixed size.  ReadySoft
       would have to re-reverse engineer each type of ROM.
     - There are at least three kinds of 256K ROM and two kinds of 512K
       ROM.
     - Many (all?) of the new ROMs come in SIMMs, which are incompatible
       with the DIP sockets in AMAX.
     - Color QuickDraw is probably tough to hack, especially if you have
       only 512K of chip RAM.
     - There aren't very many ROM sets available for these new machines
       that are available on the market.

       -Jonathan