I disassembled AES part of TOS 1.04 - what was something what I did not plan earlier. Partially because changing here mentioned RSC handling, partially for making it shorter by optimizations, and partially to change not really good section layout in TOS ROM. Start of it was troublesome - it appeared...

Most of text is static. No much editable ones. Editable should go in RAM, of course. And code for it should be not complicated, since order of txt items in memory must not follow order of objects on screen - so can put all static txt to end, and then just setting pointers to ROM addresses.

... again. Is it me negative, or that could be really solved better ? So, there are couple RSC structures in TOS, which contain all txt, objects, menus for Desktop, File Selector etc. In 1.04 it takes about 16KB ROM space. They go, when AES is initialized in RAM, with some changes - coordinates depe...

Sometimes it's slower not because new code is slower really, but because some new things are added in same routine, and that usually means slower resulting work. And AES and TOS have many of multi-function/parameter calls. For instance text outprint, where can set really lot of styles, sizes and oth...

I tried that fastboot TOS 2.16. It just boots not ACSI hard disk, so I really don't get what that fastboot means, and why is it in name, and not AES from Falcon something. Indeed unfinished, as some things make it crash. Now, considering complain of tuxie that no OS changes - really ? I made some 3-...

Things are that for some decades there is already general rule about 'consum' electronic - including home, office computers, TVs and like: There are more failures in first couple months than usual - what is caused by manufacturing errors. Then, about 10 years failure count is low. After 10 years it ...

Humidity (in air) is what harms chips with plastic case. No wonder that industry and military package is much better.
And I guess that there may be internal degradation too - nothing is 100% stable over time. Then, every power on or off is shock, what makes more harm than days of work.

"I just keep thinking the whole ST design is just a "house of cards"." - I don't agree with that. Atari ST is better quality than average micros from that era. In period 1987-1992 I made several upgrades, most by own design - like EPROM programmer for cartridge port, then TOS ROM upgrades (mostly wh...

Never heard about this problem. I think that main reason is aging of machines. For me, another argument to get rid of floppies. This reminded me that Simbo was who talked about it at AF some 3 years ago. But I don't know, was he thinking about how to solve some things without floppy drive - like ins...

Yes, that can be important factor too. I even explained it little at YT. Shortly: you need plenty of free time to do free SW. That would be part what is not so rare. But open source idea makes it more complicated: then need to spend extra time to make good sources, what some other can follow and doi...