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From: rogue@well.UUCP (L. Brett Glass)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Convenient Kickstart
Message-ID: <1241@well.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Jun-86 11:51:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: well.1241
Posted: Sun Jun  8 11:51:06 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Jun-86 03:17:22 EDT
Reply-To: rogue@well.UUCP (L. Brett Glass)
Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito CA
Lines: 25

References:


 [ May this line give you indigestion: !@#$%^&*()#@$%^&*$^&^^&%&(*&*( ]


Whether it be through EPROM, EEPROM, or just a more integrated disk format,
I think that it is very important to get rid of the necessity for a separate
Kickstart disk. After having swapped disks constantly on the Mac for many
moons, it's frustrating to do so on the Amiga (an otherwise superior machine)
every time I reboot! Having to have a Kickstart disk in the main drive
prevents me from running a BBS without an expensive UPS (since a power
glitch will cause the system to wait for the Kickstart disk again). It also
diminishes the utility of a hard drive -- which, I'd hoped, would obviate
the need to handle floppies at all.
 
Seems to me that, as the Amiga is cost-reduced, the boot ROMs could be
replaced with something that either 1) looked for a hard disk, or 2) could
accept the Kickstart code off of a Workbench disk. If this is too radical,
it could AT LEAST look for the Workbench disk in an external drive, so that
I could leave Kickstart in the main drive and be able to reboot after a
power failure!

For a machine this sophisticated not to be able to boot without shuffling
of floppies is a travesty. How about it, Neil?

<rogue>