CompuServe Messages

There's no simple way to have both ROM and WCS RAM in an A1000 board. And they've done a revised A1000 board that has WCS down on the main board, and no ROM slots. I don't know if that's what's actually shipping, but if it is that would really close the issue for a widespread modification of A1000 machines to use ROM instead of RAM. The ROM is likely to appear in a future machine; possibly all future machines. And there's been a proposal to also sell a WCS card as an add on for those with a new machine that want WCS instead of ROM. Though I'm sure any new Amiga system will have more than the 256K base of the A1000, especially since we've pretty much established 512K as a minimal setup for any useful multitasking. But unlike our friends over in ST land, its a small matter to replace alot of the ROM Kernal routines with disk loaded routines. I know that this can be done on a library-by-library basis, so any interm upgrades between major ROM releases could be via a few libraries, not the whole 256K of ROM Kernal. Any major revision COULD be upgraded with a new set of ROMs. The thing I don't like about a ROM locked ROM Kernal, however, is that it makes a software upgrade more difficult to achieve. If we make the 1.2 workbench and kickstart disks free upgrades, or even charge for cost of materials, most everyone will go out, pop in the new Kickstart, and be on their way. And with the overwhelming prevalence of 1.2 over 1.1 (hasn't happened yet, waiting on that FINAL release…), 1.1 becomes a thing of the past. If everyone had to open their machines and swap ROMs, it would take much longer for updates to be globally in place, and the percentage of holdouts could be large enough to form a critical mass. At this point, developers would write for both systems, avoiding any enhancements in the new system. -Hazy