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From: anthony@convex.csd.uwm.edu (Anthony J Stieber)
Newsgroups: comp.virus
Subject: Re: MS-DOS in ROM; Re: NVMs (PC)
Message-ID: <0005.9106031950.AA02037@ubu.cert.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 31 May 91 19:22:18 GMT
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walker@aedc-vax.af.mil (William Walker C60223 x4570) writes:

>to a RAM-disk ).  The method of running MS-DOS from ROM, as Padgett
>states, is currently used by some laptops, and also by some diskless
>LAN- stations and third-party boot cards.  The method of booting from
>a ROM- disk ( with an infection-proof boot sector and system files ),
>which I wrote about, is not implemented at this time, to the best of
>my knowledge.

The Toshiba T1000, and the Zenith MinisPort laptops as well as some
Tandy desktop machines have ROMdisks with MS-DOS 2.x or 3.x.  This
technology has been around for some time, since at least 1987.  All it
really is, is a RAMdisk with a write protect tab :-).

MS-DOS running in ROM hasn't been around so long.  It takes special
effort to get a program to run in memory that is not writable.  As far
as I know, the only machines that run MS-DOS in ROM are the HP-95LX
palmtop running MS-DOS 3.22 (just announced last month) and possibly
the Poquet PC.  The Atari Portfolio palmtop runs DIP-DOS in ROM, which
is MS-DOS compatible.

Network bootable network adapters used in diskless workstations and
elsewhere are more likely to just load the operating system off a file
server rather than actually hold the entire OS in ROM.
- --
<-:(= Anthony Stieber	anthony@csd4.csd.uwm.edu   uwm!uwmcsd4!anthony