Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!reading!bru-cc!ralph
From: ralph@cc.brunel.ac.uk (Ralph Mitchell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: bios function 0x7f
Message-ID: <527@Terra.cc.brunel.ac.uk>
Date: 9 Jan 89 16:43:22 GMT
References: <1263@atari.UUCP> <3774@druhi.ATT.COM> <1268@atari.UUCP> <5542@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <3186@sugar.uu.net> <470@bdt.UUCP>
Reply-To: ralph@ccs.brunel.ac.uk (Ralph Mitchell)
Organization: Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK
Lines: 43

In article <470@bdt.UUCP> david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) writes:
>In article <3186@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>>Moral: Atari should say "the following programs are going to break in rev
>>such-and-such of TOS. Other programs that make this, thato, or the other
>>assumption will also break. We're giving you X months warning. These changes
>>are necessary to fix the a, b, and c bugs and to add these enhancements...".
>
>Maybe in a perfect world they *should* do this, but in the real world there's
>no way in heck they *can* do it.  It's a no win situation for Atari, so
>they have to take the "lose the least" option.


Just how do you suppose Atari are going to find out who has been making use
of the bugs in TOS ??  How many suppliers can you name that have declared
"Note: This program makes use of TOS bug such-and-so." ??

I think it unreasonable to expect ATARI to keep track of ALL 3rd party
software and to find out which suppliers are using which bugs.  If a
supplier uses an un-documented "feature" of an operating system, he 
should issue a warning saying "this program is only known to work with
OS version NNN dated dd/mm/yy", and/or offer updates when  the program
breaks.  This already happens with IBM-PC software, where programs are
marked as "DOS3.1-compatible" or "compatible with DOS3.0,3.1,3.2,3.3", etc.

Of course, if the supplier has "ceased trading" there's not much you can do
about it...

Possible solution:  Could Atari produce a ROM cartridge that would accept
the current "buggy" ROMs when a user upgrades to the new TOS ??  That way
you'd be able to switch back to the old TOS just by plugging in the cartridge.
This presumes that a cartridge can over-ride the builtin ROM's, and also
that it could be made bigger than 128K...

Or perhaps the cartridge could just intercept certain system calls that 
contain the most popular "illegal" entries ??  Then the new ROMs could
have a pair of vector tables, selectable by an option on the menu-bar.

Ralph Mitchell
-- 
 From:  Ralph Mitchell at Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8, 3PH, UK
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