On Thu, Feb 9, 2023 at 2:43 PM Comcast <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I bc am confused as to why they would design it this way? > > >> If you think about it from the application developer, it makes sense in terms of providing consistent, solid behavior. At least with real option roms, swapping them is a big, perilous deal. You have to remove whatever option rom was there... which may be hooked into the system software-wise. Like say TS-DOS and its BASIC extensions. So the user has to remember to do that, which they may not, leaving a broken crashy system. And its ROM dependent how to unhook it. Drill down to a menu? CALL some magic number address? Even if you do it, you may not do it right. Then you have to install the new option ROM through its own CALL. Additionally, option ROMs do not always seat properly, all pins need to make good contact, and that often doesn't happen. Which can cause dysfunction. So swapping a real option ROM there's a decent chance users are going to cause crash/hang/data loss anyway. If you're a careful user, you're going to save your files externally before attempting an OptROM change. So building in the cold start will cause, perhaps suboptimal, but consistent behavior. It's like McDonalds. It's not good, but a big mac is a big mac everytime, everywhere. Consistently mediocre, but consistent. REX and emulators make Opt ROM swaps a different affair, so disabling the cold start or auto install makes a lot of sense there. -- John.
