ROM BIOS

[Jim Battle]

Chuck Guzis wrote:
...
> Actually, a lot of people spent a lot of time reverse-engineering the 
> IBM BIOS.  You really don't get a sense of this until you realize 
> that Phoenix not only made sure that the functionality of the BIOS 
> routines was the same, but that the routines themselves were located 
> at the same place in memory.
> 
> I wonder why this wasn't done with the Mac ROMs?  Fear of Apple 
> suing?  Anyone know for certain?
> 
> Cheers,
> Chuck
> 
> 

Not for certain, but I'm sure relative market share had a lot to do with 
it.  I'd say another factor was that the mac ROMs were quite a bit 
larger than the PC BIOS of the time (512KB vs 40 KB).