Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!mordor!sri-spam!rutgers!rochester!cornell!batcomputer!engst
From: engst@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Adam C. Engst)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Free Multitasking Kernel
Message-ID: <3540@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 31 Jan 88 17:23:44 GMT
References: <122@bdt.UUCP> <5425@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: engst@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Adam C. Engst)
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 33
Keywords: ATARI TOS RTX

In article <5425@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> weaver@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Andrew Weaver) writes:
>Or, better yet, Atari 
>finally says, "gee, why don't we just get rid of the ROMs and make the
>OS RAM resident" and not sell any machine with less than 1Mb.  What a 
>great idea!  Now we only have to make disks and we can release updates
>every few months instead of every few decades.")

>Andrew Weaver, OSU College of Business            weaver@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu


I must disagree with Andrew's point about putting the OS back on disk so we
can get updates every few months.  As much as I like the idea of frequent 
updates, I absolutely detest having to waste mongo megabytes just getting the
stupid machine to boot.  I work with Macs a lot, I really get frustrated when
I can't even copy files between two disks because I have ONLY two floppies and
neither of the disks I'm using has a system on it.  I really like the way the
ST boots without the system files on disk; that way you only waste DA space on
the disk.  It also speeds boot time a lot.  Admittedly, if you have a hard
disk it won't make a major difference, but I doubt most people do.  Perhaps
Atari could do something really neat and use the cartridge port for something,
instead of just letting it sit off the side of the computer, as it does now.
I'm not sure of any details, but it seems the cartridge port is the way to go
as far as a compromise between ROMS and disks goes.  After all, you can get
those Atari 2600 cartridges for a few bucks now - and I can't believe that the
price of making a cartridge is that much more expensive than making and
copying a disk.  And what if it is?  Maybe the cartridges would become more
popular and might actually be useful in the future (aside from David Small's 
Magic Sac, of course).
                                             Adam
 
-- 
Adam C. Engst                                     engst@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu
        		      		          pv9y@cornella.bitnet
"If it's not interactive fiction, it's not fun."