Re: ELKS 0.0.81 available from ftp.ecs.soton.ac.uk

[Alistair Riddoch]

John Galt writes:
> 
> 
> Not really--All I know is that PCs and XTs fell back on cassette BASIC
> when the disk boot failed--AMI BIOS still makes a call to it when it
> fails, but the BASIC roms don't exist in post-8088s.  It does seem
> intriguing, though. I'll see what I can come up with.
> 

I have come across a few old machies that had sockets like this, but never
one that actually had a BASIC rom in it. I don't know what the ROM in this
socket needs to contain in order for the BIOS to recognise it as a BASIC
ROM and run it if boot fails.

Interestingly enough the ELONEX 486DX33 I use for testing ELKS alot of the
time has cassette BASIC built into its BIOS. I only found out by accident
because I took out the harddrive.

Al