LARSON@USC-ECLB.ARPA (05/10/84)
From: Bob Larson <LARSON@USC-ECLB.ARPA> <> Why is there all this complaining about the 1/2 gigabyte (or whatever) being read only? A properly designed piece of software can be placed in rom, and those modules that have bugs be replaced by versions in ram. Of course this requires a modular piece of software designed with this possibility in mind. Os9 is a good example of this: it first looks for modules in rom and links them in, then if a new module is loaded with the same name as one already in it's table of available modules it replaces the existing module if the version number is greater. The vast amount of storage give plenty of space for source if anyone is willing to distribute it. (Os9 itself is of course modularized, most systems need at least a dozen modules to operate properly. Each type of device (disk, printer, terminal, etc.) has it's own module, and each physical device has it's own module pointing to the device driver module giving it information.) Even the lowly color basic (trash 80 coco) has a number of places in the code where it jumps to ram to see if any patches are in effect. (Normaly the patches are extended color basic and disk extended color basic.) Bob Larson Larson@Usc-eclb.arpa -------