Applications in ROM
Leon Howell
have all of their applications in ROM. So do some older i8088 laptops,
like the Tandy 600, HP-110+, etc, and some Tandy p.c.'s have the
DeskMate GUI in ROM.
I have noticed that ibm coruptibles take longer to access a 2.5" HDD
than my CoCo 3 or CP/M desktops take for a 5.25" floppy. But ROM-based
laptops-i8088 or not-are very hard to find. Dos laptops being dirt
cheap ($0-$25) I thought it might be worth asking if anyone knows if
it's possible to at least put MS or DR DOS in ROM, and preferably also
a set of applications or an integrated package. This would be faster
and also save battery life, since it would spend less time accessing
the disk drives.
I have a Tandy 1400LT, an ideal machine to experiment on, because it's
so big and has plenty of space inside to work with. But I also have
limited experience with this kind of thing, and no eprom programmer. I
would appriceate any advice anyone can give me.
This prodject would, of course, apply to DOS desktops as well, but
with CoCo 3's, C=128's, and Atari XE130's being so easy to get, who
would want one?
Joseph Fenn
virus software companies would hate that whole idea of course.
Joe (aka kilroy)
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Charles Dye
wrote:
>Many early laptops, such as the Tandy 200, NEC-8500, and Sord IS-11C
>have all of their applications in ROM. So do some older i8088 laptops,
>like the Tandy 600, HP-110+, etc, and some Tandy p.c.'s have the
>DeskMate GUI in ROM.
>
>I have noticed that ibm coruptibles take longer to access a 2.5" HDD
>than my CoCo 3 or CP/M desktops take for a 5.25" floppy. But ROM-based
>laptops-i8088 or not-are very hard to find. Dos laptops being dirt
>cheap ($0-$25) I thought it might be worth asking if anyone knows if
>it's possible to at least put MS or DR DOS in ROM, and preferably also
>a set of applications or an integrated package. This would be faster
>and also save battery life, since it would spend less time accessing
>the disk drives.
Brother made a super-low-end laptop like this once, the GeoBook.
It had, IIRC, Starlight DOS, GEOS, and a handful of applications
in ROM. And of course there's always the HP 200LX; you still see
various flavors on eBay. I think both machines had some kind of
flash-memory slot, so you wouldn't even need an eprom burner
to add you own applications.
(I had a Tandy 102 once upon a time, and I'm still kicking myself
for selling it. When you turned it on, it was up and ready before
you could get your finger off the power switch. Stinking 8085 CPU,
and it was faster in practical terms than any gigahertz Pentium
system running Windows.)
--
Charles Dye ras...@highfiber.com
Mike Yetsko
"Leon Howell" <purita...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ae64f04a.04080...@posting.google.com...
I've done it. It's not hard. But I had the MicroSoft developers kit to do
it
with. In fact, if you go to a DOS box and do a VER /r it tells you
'Revision A'
(up through WIN98SE, XP does not support the /r). The 'Revision A' was
for the standard bootable version. The 'romable' developement kit said
'Revision B'. But there weren't any real differences.
It's been a long time, but I forget where the kit stopped being supported.
Maybe as long as DOS 6.31, but I'm not sure.
Mike
colone...@yahoo.com
news:ae64f04a.04080...@posting.google.com...
> Many early laptops, such as the Tandy 200, NEC-8500, and Sord IS-11C
> have all of their applications in ROM. So do some older i8088 laptops,
> like the Tandy 600, HP-110+, etc, and some Tandy p.c.'s have the
> DeskMate GUI in ROM.
a free version. It ran on C128's so it can't be that resource hungry.
Worth a peek if you use older systems even if you don't use it in this
project.
> I have noticed that ibm coruptibles take longer to access a 2.5" HDD
> than my CoCo 3 or CP/M desktops take for a 5.25" floppy. But ROM-based
> laptops-i8088 or not-are very hard to find. Dos laptops being dirt
> cheap ($0-$25) I thought it might be worth asking if anyone knows if
> it's possible to at least put MS or DR DOS in ROM, and preferably also
> a set of applications or an integrated package. This would be faster
> and also save battery life, since it would spend less time accessing
> the disk drives.
How big are the ROMs in the tandy's etc? Did they fit under the 1 meg
limit or was there EMS-type stuff going on?
> But I also have
> limited experience with this kind of thing, and no eprom programmer. I
> would appriceate any advice anyone can give me.
The experience you'll get....
Could you start out running on a bare x86 emulator? BOCHS is a free one.
You might look around in the FreeDOS project. They probably have a ROMable
project. You might be able work on bits that don't need a ROM burner &
once you get working on it someone w/ a ROM burner could burn you a ROM
(hey, somebody's gotta test it!). Maybe you get your* fingerprints on the
project and I bet they could really use the help.
NASM (Netwide assembler) puts out ROM images as one of it's output
formats, so its documentation might be a resource too.
I think there is a open BIOS project too.
3ch
*assuming you need it.
Jeffrey Hayes
>How big are the ROMs in the tandy's etc? Did they fit under the 1 meg
>limit or was there EMS-type stuff going on?
The ROM drive in the 1000TL is 512k paged in a 64k window. There is a
BIOS call to map ROM pages (i.e., EMS-type stuff going on ;-) ).
Jeffrey Hayes
http://tvdog.shacknet.nu
"I'm a Deutschesuedwestafrikaner in love."
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Anthony J. Albert
wrote:
>Many early laptops, such as the Tandy 200, NEC-8500, and Sord IS-11C
One thing that I've done, with PC-type laptops and desktops, is to
replace the hard drive with a CompactFlash card & HDD adaptor. I have
run DOS and Win95 off CF, with no troubles at all, and the speed up is
substantial.
The CompactFlash standard dictates an "IDE mode", which makes turning
one into an IDE-compatible HDD a snap - all you need is a cheap
adaptor, for example: http://www.pcengines.ch/cflash.com There are
other manufactures as well.
This might suit your needs... on the other hand, I still use my
Cambridge Z88 - Z80 CPU, instant on because the whole application suit
is on ROM... and a full-sized keyboard. Weighs half of what most PC
notebooks weigh, too.
Anthony Albert
Leon Howell
> Cambridge Z88 - Z80 CPU, instant on because the whole application suit
> is on ROM... and a full-sized keyboard. Weighs half of what most PC
> notebooks weigh, too.
I have one of those. It's great, almost the ultimate laptop, but I've
never liked. 8-line diplays-40 or 80 collum. It's weird because I do
like the M200's 40X16 screen. Maybe it's just that I prefer something
that sticks up where I can see it when I sit it on the table, wich is
were I prefer to sit a laptop. "Pad style" is better if you like to
sit it in your lap. I read an old magazine article about an
RGB/cassette interface for the Z88. Did they ever make those?