• Hello MLAers! We've re-enabled auto-approval for accounts. If you are still waiting on account approval, please check this thread for more information.

unirom: an Old World ROM info dumper

I recently came across a trove of interesting documents on Internet Archive. One of the documents seems very relevant to this thread. It is an internal document from Apple, published in 1989, documenting an effort to clean up and consolidate the ROM codebase into a single Universal ROM. It's a nice little discussion of what they were working to improve and a nice rundown of issues with prior releases:


Given the date of the document, and the fact that those machines are not mentioned, I suspect the document is talking about work that was being done for the IIci and IIfx.

Very cool
 
Yeah, that ROM became the 32bit clean IIci universal ROM. Interestingly I think I remember the document you're talking about ( I haven't read it recently) mentions possible making an updated universal 68000 let's call it SE) ROM version too. I find myself wondering did that project happen too? Will the Classic ROM boot the SE? Or the PB100 ROM?
 
Checking the debug symbols for the Classic and PB100 ROMs that came with Xcode they're not Universal. That said, the Classic is effectively an SE FDHD with the slots removed so I wouldn't be surprised if the Classic ROM just worked in the SE (possibly requiring an FDHD), at least with the ROM disk second half chopped off.
 
Checking the debug symbols for the Classic and PB100 ROMs that came with Xcode they're not Universal. That said, the Classic is effectively an SE FDHD with the slots removed so I wouldn't be surprised if the Classic ROM just worked in the SE (possibly requiring an FDHD), at least with the ROM disk second half chopped off.
I've been slowly pottering through a pondering thread here :


I'm at the point I want to poke the ROM - my SE is setup, but family visiting tomorrow so today has been tidying :) you know, to try to pretend I'm a normal human and not someone who has ... 6 macs in the dining room. 7... Missed one.
 
I added Universal Tables parsing to the ROM Fiend template for Hex Fiend.app.
#24
I believe every ROM with a Universal Table is supported. It handles some differences between newer and older versions but not all differences. For example, the ProductInfo record can be 64, 72, 88, 92, 100, 104, or 108 bytes.
 
Back
Top