VDict mobile



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
sort of user interface which can be used to examine and
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
for the average sysadmin.
(1996-12-03)