Re: Steamband for RISC OS _ DO NOT USE

George Smith wrote:
> Harriet Bazley wrote:
>> It used to hang up on me sometimes when changing level, or when vast
>> numbers of monsters all attacked at once (usually when you were about
to
>> die anyhow, so I took that as a bonus for the fact that you had to
>> restart the computer ;-)
> 
>> Unless it's writing to zero page (wouldn't that get reset on a
>> power-down anyway?) I'm not sure it could have that sort of lethal
>> effect on the OS?
> 
> Who the hell wrote this OS anyway? It sounds suspiciously like Windows 
> ME by another name, by these descriptions. Or maybe Windows 3.1. No 
> proper protected mode? App faults easily b0rk the whole OS? Apps can 
> scribble on key OS memory pages willy-nilly? Even Windows 98 was 
> (slightly) safer than this! Almost nothing can knock my WinXP boxes down

> -- only buggy drivers, and apps that set off bugs in buggy drivers. That

> mainly means one or two high-end games like Quake IV. Linux, I've heard,

> is nearly invulnerable to this sort of thing. Meanwhile here you are, 
> apparently using something that goes bump in the night. Or maybe just 
> goes splat.

To be fair, the zero page writing only affects old versions of the OS 
(RISC OS 3.1), I think all modern ones since about 1995 in user mode 
cause a data abort error if you try to write to protected areas of 
memory (like zero page).

Alex.