Is there such a thing as ROM software?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jm
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J

jm

How much "space" can a ROM chip hold? I know this may sound stupid,
but why can't they put the Operating System on a ROM chip and make it
faster? Or Microsoft Office on a ROM chip? I was just thinking about
it and was curious. Thanks for indulging me.
 
How much "space" can a ROM chip hold? I know this may sound stupid,
but why can't they put the Operating System on a ROM chip and make it
faster? Or Microsoft Office on a ROM chip? I was just thinking about
it and was curious. Thanks for indulging me.
Click to expand...


It depends on who "they" is, and what's the purpose of the OS, and
the computer it's installed in.

Most of the OS in a Palm Pilot is in ROM. There is a Linux in ROM in
many Linksys routers. Cable TV desktop boxes have some flavor
of Unix in them. Lots of other consumer devices do.

There is an OS (fsvo "OS") in ROM in your PC. It's the BIOS and it's
just bright enough to book the OS of your choice, be it WIn/98, Linux,
Freebsd, XP, w2k, etc. And that's the point. Anything in ROM is
static inflexible.

Besides, if it's in ROM you can't sell upgrades easily.
 
jm said:
How much "space" can a ROM chip hold? I know this may sound stupid,
but why can't they put the Operating System on a ROM chip and make it
faster? Or Microsoft Office on a ROM chip? I was just thinking about
it and was curious. Thanks for indulging me.
Click to expand...

These days, ROM is really flashram. And they have tons of storage these
days. Just look at any memory stick, digital camera, MP3 player, or
cellphone, and how much memory they have. Some of these things have several
times more storage capacity than my first PC hard drive (my first one was a
30MB drive in a PC-XT clone).

Yousuf Khan
 
These days, ROM is really flashram. And they have tons of storage these
days. Just look at any memory stick, digital camera, MP3 player, or
cellphone, and how much memory they have. Some of these things have several
times more storage capacity than my first PC hard drive (my first one was a
30MB drive in a PC-XT clone).

Yousuf Khan
Click to expand...


5MB hard disk.. ISTR the list price was $999. Slower than an old 1X
CD reader.

At the same time I had 200MB disk drives on the mainframe systems
that cost $40k each.
 
How much "space" can a ROM chip hold? I know this may sound stupid,
but why can't they put the Operating System on a ROM chip and make it
faster? Or Microsoft Office on a ROM chip? I was just thinking about
it and was curious. Thanks for indulging me.
Click to expand...

Currently available ROM and flash memory devices are a *lot* slower
than DRAM. You could install the OS in ROM or flash, and boot from it,
but you would need to shadow it in RAM to get any decent performance
out of it.


- Franc Zabkar
 
How much "space" can a ROM chip hold? I know this may sound stupid,
but why can't they put the Operating System on a ROM chip and make it
faster? Or Microsoft Office on a ROM chip? I was just thinking about
it and was curious. Thanks for indulging me.
Click to expand...

Cost? Right now even the cheapest 256MB of flashram costs something
like US30 in retail. To just have Windows on it would need the
equivalent of 8 pieces or around US$240. But the prices tend to go up
exponentially with size. No thanks, I'll stick with my less than $1
per GB HDD :PpPpp

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[email protected] (The little lost angel) wrote in message news: said:
Cost? Right now even the cheapest 256MB of flashram costs something
like US30 in retail. To just have Windows on it would need the
equivalent of 8 pieces or around US$240. But the prices tend to go up
exponentially with size. No thanks, I'll stick with my less than $1
per GB HDD :PpPpp
Click to expand...

I think it would be neat to plug in an Atari 2600 type cartridge that
says Windows XP or Office XP! If it were really fast, I wouldn't
care. And I'd have Combat, of course.
 
I think it would be neat to plug in an Atari 2600 type cartridge that
says Windows XP or Office XP! If it were really fast, I wouldn't
care. And I'd have Combat, of course.
Click to expand...

Remember (historically) the IBM XP had the BASIC interpreter software
installed in the ROM BIOS - that was what made it different from the
clones. The XP clones did have the empty ROM socket that you could
plug anything into.

In the early 90's Radio Shack had a PC with DOS 3.2 in ROM, an earlier
version of what you're thinking of.

The only advantage would be using ROM that could NOT be flashed to
prevent changes to the files, which would be loaded into a cache that
would serve as a RAM drive. The problem is that most software does
need to save changes.

I would suggest using a CD-ROM and loading it into a RAM drive set up
in conventional memory as an alternative.
 
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