MindStor OS Location

Arno Wagner <me DeleteThis @privacy.net> wrote in message news:<bvrrgd$vnj33$5@ID-2964.news.uni-berlin.de>...
 > Previously Richard Alexander <pooua DeleteThis @aol.com> wrote:
  > > I have a Minds@Work Mindstor PSS-1810. Recently, it was giving me
  > > trouble, so I took it apart. Considering that I was able to put it
  > > back together and it now works, it is obviously easy to assemble.
 >
  > > I might like to swap out the 10 Gig hard drive with a bigger hard
  > > drive, but I'm wondering if the OS is stored on the hard drive, or in
  > > a chip? It would be interesting to know if I could simply plug another
  > > 9.5-mm thick, 2.5-inch hard drive and have like a new machine.
 >
  > > Any ideas?
 >
 > I don't _know_, but I strongly suspect it is on the disk.
 > HDD storage is far cheaper than ROM/FLASH storage, by a
 > factor > 1000. So usually only a very small part of the
 > boot system is in ROM/FLASH (i.e. the chip), just enough to
 > load a small part of the OS that doe sthe rest of the loading.

That was my assumption, until this last week. A few days ago, I read
this statement for a similar device:

"The X'S-Drive Pro works with 2.5 inches Hard Drives of any capacity.
You can purchase the X'S-Drive Pro with a pre-installed Hard Drive or
install your own (provided it's 9.5mm)."

That looks pretty clear to me that on the X'S-Drive Pro, at least, the
OS is not on the hard drive. Furthermore, if the BIOS is on a 2 Meg
chip, it could easily hold the simply OS needed for these devices (I
imagine the OS on these things could not be more than a few
kilobytes).

I have never found any boot files on the hard drive of my MindStor.
There is one system file on the hard drive. My documentation informs
me that it is OK to delete this file, because the system will simply
regenerate it when it reboots.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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