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unirom: an Old World ROM info dumper
Posted by: David Cook on 2024-04-12 21:15:01
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
Posted by: Phipli on 2024-04-13 00:00:10
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?
Posted by: Arbee on 2024-04-13 15:40:58
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.
Posted by: Phipli on 2024-04-13 15:49:04
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 :

Back Porting the Classic ROM to the SE

Hey folks, what if anything is stopping you flash the Classic ROM to a Hi and Lo chip for the SE? This would gain you a ROM disk, and perhaps some bug fixes, not sure. As well as being a FDHD compatible ROM. Anyone got thoughts on this?
68kmla.org 68kmla.org

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.
Posted by: joevt on 2025-10-15 19:35:22
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.
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