Re: ROM Card question

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Bryan Villados asked:

>There were two ROM cards. The Applesoft BASIC ROM card was for Apple IIs
>with Integer BASIC. The Integer BASIC ROM card was for Apple II+ that has
>Applesoft BASIC.
>
>What I don't understand is exactly what's the thought pattern of these
>products were... Why would someone buy a ROM card when they can easily buy a
>16K RAM card (Language Card what Apple called it) and load the BASIC you
>want to it. And with a 16K RAM card, you could use it for other things
>besides BASIC. With a ROM card, you would either be stuck with the RAM that
>came with the logic board, or you would have to use yet another slot and buy
>a RAM card that can live in slots other than 0. The only advantage I can see
>in a ROM card is loading of BASIC (DOS 3.3 takes several seconds to load
>BASIC into the Language Card).

As Paul Schlyter noted in another response, the ROM cards were available
prior to the Language Card, so that's a pretty direct justification.  The
Applesoft ROM card was the first product, to make Applesoft available on
all the installed Apple ]['s.  Then someone noticed that there were still a
lot of Integer BASIC programs that Apple ][+ owners might want to run,
and just swapping a few EPROMs in the ROM card made it into a quick
Integer BASIC option for people with Applesoft on the main board.

Another factor that prolonged its usefulness was the time it took for
Disk ]['s to penetrate the installed base.  You may recall that they were
pretty pricey at the time.

Later, of course, the primary utility of the Integer BASIC version of the
ROM card was to bypass the //e's memory-clobbering RESET code
and permit easier software deprotection.  (Eventually, people learned
to use a 16KB RAM card to do similar tricks, but not without some
hardware hacks.)

-michael

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