Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!cbmvax!ulowell!page
From: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: How much can you do without new ROMs (was V1.3 OS?)
Message-ID: <5159@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 29 Feb 88 15:41:21 GMT
References: <34268R38@PSUVM> <42864@sun.uucp> <5070@swan.ulowell.edu> <4535@garfield.UUCP>
Reply-To: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 33

john13@garfield.UUCP (John Russell) wrote:
>Amazing Computing mentions that a new graphics.library could support new,
>more powerful hardware by supplanting the rom version with a disk-resident
>one. I wonder, how much could you change via this method?

Hmmm.  I think you'd need to SetFunction() all the calls in the library,
but it's certainly do-able.

>Dos.library (an ARP version, such as Bill Hawes is supposed to be working on)?

I think you'd have to call it something like d0s.library ... but it
means you'd have to change the binaries with FileZap or something.

>The "dream Workbench"?

Since Workbench is just a user-program in ROM, you can write your own,
and never call the one in ROM.  Just write a new version of loadwb
that loads your own version.

>FFS?

There's a new version of the Mount command for 1.3 that takes some
additional params.  One of them is FileSystem, where you can name
the file system handler you want to run, like   L:FastFileSystem
or what have you.  In fact, FFS is on disk in 1.3, not in ROM.

So, it's pretty easy.  Of course, for all the ROM code you replace
with disk/RAM code, you lose more memory for your applications...

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.  page@swan.ulowell.edu  ulowell!page
"I don't know such stuff.  I just do eyes."  -- from 'Blade Runner'