Re: ROM Card question

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <1f8s7gb.pj3422onzbswN%dempson@actrix.gen.nz>,
David Empson <dempson@actrix.gen.nz> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter <pausch@saaf.se> wrote:
> 
>> In article <3c891a4e_3@news.onlynews.com>,
>> Bryan Villados <news002@macgeek.org> wrote:
................
>>> 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.
>>  
>> Two reasons:
>>  
>> 1. The ROM card was available before the Language Card.
................
>> 2. Even after Apple's Language Card was available, there was still
>> a reason to buy the ROM card instead: since the Language Card initially
>> was sold only with the Apple Pascal system, it was quite expensive;
..................
> There was one other reason: the switch on the card lets the user control
> whether the motherboard or ROM card gets control at reset time.  This
> has some useful applications in the hacking vein (the old monitor ROM
> can be useful as a poor man's cracking card, or you can use custom
> firmware on the card).
 
You don't need a ROM card for THAT!  You can just as well replace the
motherboard monitor ROM with a ROM which does whatever you want at
RESET.
 
> By comparison, the language card doesn't change its enable state for a
> hardware reset (but is disabled after a power-on reset).  Apple II
> Pascal made use of this feature: Ctrl-Reset does a warm start of the
> operating system, reinitializing and returning to the main menu.
> 
> The built-in language card emulation in the IIe and later machines
> doesn't retain this behaviour - the language card is disabled by a
> hardware reset, so Ctrl-Reset in Apple II Pascal will reboot the
> computer.
 
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
e-mail:  pausch at saaf dot se
WWW:     http://hem.passagen.se/pausch/index.html
         http://home.tiscali.se/~pausch/