Subj : FreeBSD
To   : Jasen Betts
From : Roy J. Tellason
Date : Sat Nov 24 2001 10:19 am

Jasen Betts wrote in a message to Neal Robles:

 JB> Hi Neal.

 JB> 21-Nov-01 00:51:00, Neal Robles wrote to Roy J. Tellason


 NR> A monitor is like having a permanent copy of DOS
 NR> "debug" in ROM. This is one feature that I really miss in all the
 NR> newer computers.

 JB> Apple macintosh (atleast the 68K based ones) had that
 JB> Suns did too (I've only played with 68K based suns too)

 JB> not exactly new today, but certainly a generation above the old
 JB> 8-bit machines.

What makes you think the old 8-bit stuff didn't have this?  I have one 
"machine" here and that's *all* it has,  though I can get it to boot Xerox SSSD 
floppies,  even though the hardware is DSDD capable.  It's actually some pretty 
nifty software,  in that it'll figure out where you are (built-in keyboard 
port,  which enables and activates the onboard video,  or one of two serial 
ports,  in which case it figures out what baud rate you're running at).  
Keyboard strobe polarity is also automatic.  And I can stick a floppy in there 
and tell it to read a sector and it will,  whether that sector is 128 bytes 
(Xerox SSSD) or 1024 bytes (Osborne SSDD) or even msdos.  Pretty nifty coding 
in there... 

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