[Coco] [Color Computer] Older site.

[Dan Olson]

>> From what I understand, they wanted/needed to ship the 1000 before
> Kickstart (the proper boot ROM) was finished.  So, instead, it has a
> small stupid ROM that is only smart enough to load Kickstart off
> floppy.  Once Kickstart is in the WOM (Write Only Memory :) (the
> 1000's special RAM where every other Amiga has ROM) it takes over and
> boots Workbench normally.

That much I knew, but for some reason thought the switch to ROM was more 
of a design change instead of something that was always intended but left 
out due to a time crunch.

> Amiga 1000 fanatics will tell you this is a feature, not a bug. :-)

I might be one of those fanatics, if only the WOM was larger, it would 
allow newer kickstarts past 1.x without the need to open the machine and 
switch out a ROM.  I'm a believer in using removable media for the OS if 
you've got it, so that upgrades and such are easily done down the road.

> Yeah, I finally got frustrated enough to upgrade to AmigaDOS 2.  I
> liked 1.3 but the software I wanted to run just wouldn't deal. :-(

I know, I have a 500 with a 2.x kickstart that I've started using just 
for that reason, otherwise I like the 1000 much better.

> The only two CoCO bootable hard drive controllers I know of are the
> old Burke & Burke, and SuperIDE.

Huh, I would have thought that true of all of them, interesting!

 	Dan