Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!sdd.hp.com!caen!umich!sharkey!aucis!zds-oem!easton
From: easton@zds-oem.zds.com (Jeff Easton)
Subject: Re: The Amiga's Future
Organization: Zenith Data Systems, OEM Systems Engineering
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 1991 01:04:26 GMT
Message-ID: <1991Jun05.010426.21000@zds-oem.zds.com>
References: <1991Jun03.053144.3208@ariel.unm.edu> <5202@dirac.physics.purdue.edu> <1991Jun4.200756.9421@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>

In article <1991Jun4.200756.9421@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> es1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Ethan Solomita) writes:
>In article <5202@dirac.physics.purdue.edu> murphy@gibbs.physics.purdue.edu (William J. Murphy) writes:
>>In article <1991Jun03.053144.3208@ariel.unm.edu> nwickham@triton.unm.edu (Neal C. Wickham) writes:

>>I just don't get it.  I remember a year ago or so when the A3000 came out.
>>Didn't it have both 2.0 and 1.3 ROMS?  Although 2.0 ROMs weren't finalized,
>>Why has it taken C= a year to produce those chips for retrofit into A2000s and
>>A500s?  Will the entire ECS be available for <A3000 machines?  You would
>>think that C= would get on the ball.  This is almost getting to be as bad 
>>as Steven Jobs' NeXT initial announcement.
>>
>	Your memory is way off. There are no ROMs in the A3000.
                                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>1.3 and 2.0 are loaded off of the hard drive and run using some
>magic. The reason is that, as each new bug fix comes in, the OS
>can be easily updated. 2.0 is being continually updated. When
>they stop updating it is when you'll see the ROMs. What's the
>point of coming out with ROMs now that need to be changed in 4
>months?

  There are ROM's in the A3000 (honestly, I just looked :-).  They are
not however the kickstart ROM's.  They are a simple bootstrap loader.

  The bigger question is when the Kickstart 2.0 ROM's do come out, will 
we lose the capability of booting a 1.3 system?  Anyone?

>>Bill Murphy

>	-- Ethan


        Jeff Easton               Zenith Data Systems
     // Systems Engineer 
   \X/  easton%zds-oem@caspian.cs.andrews.edu
	easton@andrews.edu	
   What?  Preemptive Multitasking in only 256K of RAM?  :^)  :^)