Thomas Stewart 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
> >
>
> If I remember right the bios setup replaces the basic, On my 386, if you
> call basic (with an int or someting, did it years ago and can't remember)
> the bios setup loaded. The original IBM PC's had basic on a rom, but I do
> not know how big the rom was.
>
The Elonex definatly has both a BIOS setup program and BASIC. I will see
what docs I can track down on this.
Al
