Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!noao!asuvax!hrc!gtephx!covertr
From: covertr@gtephx.UUCP (Richard E. Covert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: ROM
Summary: In the old days......
Message-ID: <43608391.14a1f@gtephx.UUCP>
Date: 22 May 89 17:08:11 GMT
References: <8905171833.AA01200@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu>
Organization: AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, Arizona
Lines: 63

In article <8905171833.AA01200@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu>, cmm1@CUNIXA.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Christopher M Mauritz) writes:
> Recently, I posed the following question in the Atari ST roundtable
> on GEnie (actually, I did not phrase it exactly like this, but this
> is the gist of what I said):
> 
> Would I have any legal problems with Atari if I disassembled the ROM
> code, altered it to suit my individual needs, and then burned a new set
> of ROMs for my machine?  I also stated that the ROMS would be used only
> in my machine and that (1) I would not release the original code to
> anyone and (2) I wouldn't release the bastardized code to anyone
> either.  All of this is for my own little 1040ST.
> 
> Well, a Mr. Townsend replied that he thought the process was illegal,
> but he didn't give a reason.  I can't understand why.  If that is
> illegal then wouldn't it be illegal to modify the carburator in my new
> Ford, etc...?  Oh yeah, this guy was from Atari.  A few other users saw
> things my way.  I personally thought that after the purchase of my
> computer it was my right to change/alter/modify any part of the
> computer that I saw fit.  What do you think about this?  Myself and a
> couple of friends are (1) really impatient for the ROM upgrade (which
> Tramiel just said wouldn't be available anyway for the 1040) and (2)
> very curious to see if we can "improve" and debug this version of TOS
> enough to suit our needs.  BTW, both of my friends are PhD candidates
> in Comp Sci and one of them is involved in heavy OS research.  Hehe,
> I'm just gonna watch and maybe learn a bit in the process.  We have
> tons of equipment to burn the ROMs and a very cheap source of EPROMs.
> What do the rest of you netters think?
> 
> Curious as hell,
> 
> Chris Mauritz
> cmm1@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu
> No points for 2nd BEST!

In the old days of S-100 buss computers, I had the SOURCE code to CP/M-80,
and it was typical of hackers to rewrite it. In fact, an alternate OS called
ZCPM, or somehting like that, came out. It was CPM completely rewritten in
Z80 assembly language. I don't know what Digital Research Inc (owners of
CPM-80 et al ) thought of all this, but it didn't seem to stop the hackers.

	But, cpm was more open anyway, in that you had to modify the BIOS
for your specific hardware for a new system. I had rewritten the BIOS to
use an IO card I designed and a floppy disk controller that I designed.

	The ST is much more of a closed system in that you don't have
the docs that CPM had for its BIOS. Also, since TOS is ROMed people don't
seem to hack it up much anyway. It is too bad because there is an awful lot
of neat hardware (CD ROMs, Bournelloui boexes, scanners, etc) which could
be interfaced to the ST if the system software interface were better
understood. As things stand now, we wait for two years for Atari to update
TOS and add new hardware. Oh well, things change slowly for us Atarians!!

	It was neat to have the source code to CPM though. I would like to
get the source code to TOS. As far as disassemblying your ROMS, TOS is mainly
written in 'C' (I believe) and so the raw 68000 code may not be too
intellible unless you do a lot of 'C' debugging,  CPM-80 was written in 8080
assembly language, so it was relatively easy to disassembly (and quite a bit
smaller then TOS also!!).

	Of course, soemone from Atari could just , ahem, let us 'look' at
the source to TOS for a few minutes.. We can be trusted here, right folks :-)

richard (where's my source to TOS??) covert