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From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Kickstart in ROM
Message-ID: <34127@sun.uucp>
Date: Tue, 17-Nov-87 17:18:21 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.34127
Posted: Tue Nov 17 17:18:21 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Nov-87 06:57:15 EST
References: <461@ra.rice.edu> <2802@cbmvax.UUCP> <6594@sunybcs.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 41

In article <6594@sunybcs.UUCP> ugevan@joey.UUCP (Evan Kahn) writes:
>	I was at a local C-A dealer yesterday and spoke to an official rep from
>Commodore.  Specifically, I wanted to know when KS 1.3 would be available and
>found out thatit isn't schedualed for release until late next quarter (March).
>At any rate we got to talking and I mentioned to him that I was in support of
>bootable firmware as opposed to it being in ROM.  He concurred and informed me
>that there is speculation that future Amigas may have EEPROMS to hold KS.
>     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The above person is of course speculating and therefore can't be 'wrong'
per se, however, lets get something perfectly clear.

Updating the Kickstart image can be done *WITHOUT* replacing the ROMs. That
is because Commodore has made explicit allowances for this. The technique
is *very* straight forward, you set function the vectors that have changed,
put a ROMTag in memory to make them permanent, and then Warmboot. From then
on you have 1.21 (or 1.3 or 1.4) until you ColdBoot again. So it is 
functionally equivalent to having Kickstart loadable from disk. The only 
exception is that really wild programs can stomp on this memory and thus
remove the changes for you (whereupon you would have to 'jumpstart' again).

From a businees perspective the ROM tower in the A1000 was a total kludge
and losing proposition. Do you *really* want to improve the performance of
your slap on the side A1000 peripherals ? Then *remove* the Kickstart tower
and replace it with Kickstart ROMs. That takes a significant load off the
CPU, Power supply, and expansion bus peripherals. Replacing $1.00 EPROMs
in the 2000 with $10.00 EEPROMS would be another losing proposition. 

If the kickstart changes are sufficiently large to warrant new ROM's then 
I suspect Commodore will make them. If not, there no reason why you couldn't
make your own. Sorry if this is sounding like a flame, it's not meant to.
Amiga and Commodore have devised what I consider to be an extremely clever
and workable way to sell machines with the bulk of the O/S in ROM and yet
keep open the door for easy improvements and cost effective updating.

Nobody else in the Computer business has managed to do that.


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.