operating system a small program stored in
PROM (or
ROM), responsible for both loading the
OS and providing
some means to analyse OS
crashes. It may also have some
change the contents of memory, control the boot process
(specifying arguments to the
kernel, or changing where to
look for the it), and so forth.
The main difference between a PROM monitor and a
bootstraploader is that the PROM monitor regains control when the OS
terminates. This may enable a
wizard to find out what went
wrong if the OS crashed, although it is usually of little help
(1996-12-03)