Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!prls!pyramid!hplabs!well!rogue From: rogue@well.UUCP (L. Brett Glass) Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga Subject: Re: Convenient Kickstart Message-ID: <1250@well.UUCP> Date: Mon, 9-Jun-86 19:20:31 EDT Article-I.D.: well.1250 Posted: Mon Jun 9 19:20:31 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 11-Jun-86 00:39:38 EDT References: <1241@well.UUCP> <1247@well.UUCP> Reply-To: rogue@well.UUCP (L. Brett Glass) Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito CA Lines: 43 In article <1247@well.UUCP> kdd@well.UUCP (Keith David Doyle) writes: >I thought that I had heard that 1.2 provides the ability to combine a > Kickstart and Workbench disk.... Wish 'twere so, Keith, but I have heard of no such plans from Los Gatos. And, what with the reduced staff and the need to fix the remaining bugs in 1.2, I doubt that it will be part of this release. > Utilities to cut and paste WCS resident >libraries, fonts, etc. would allow one to customize a Kickstart/Workbench >disk for various special applications. An OS-9 or GEM or MacFinder >Kickstart disk(s) would be great too. I've considered putting a >Forth OS on a Kickstart. Be nice to have a hard disk driver there so >when my developing program crashes, I don't have to boot as much off of >disk to recover, but I don't know what kind of hard disk I might have, or >whether I will have a optical disk driver, etc. hooked up someday. Such things might indeed be nice to have, and none of them should be precluded by a well-conceived one-step boot process. >The way things are now, I only have to boot kickstart >once when I power up, which I don't find at all objectionable. Once >kickstart/workbench combination disks have been implemented, the only >objection I can see to this technique is completely eliminated. The only problem that would remain in such a case would be that you'd have to put the "bootable" disk back in the drive to restart the machine. (And, since Kickstart takes up an imposing 256K, and a fairly complete workbench would take up all of the rest, that disk wouldn't be useful for much else.) Thus, you would have to either have an external drive or swap disks often to get at the workbench and CLI utilities. My IBM PC, with technology a decade older than the Amiga's, boots cheerfully from its hard disk with no muss, fuss, or bother. If the hard disk fails, or if I want to run a different OS, I can do so simply by putting a boot disk in the floppy drive when the system resets. And, miracle of miracles, it does this WITHOUT PUTTING THE OS IN ROM! (The IBM ROM routines might just as easily have been implemented in RAM, and would probably be done that way now if they did not complicate the process of clone-making.) I would expect at least as much from my Amiga.