OK.. So we've all had discussions on various Commodore 8-bits as to what should have been or could have been done differently, often resulting in increased cost of the machines, or delayed production.

This is just another theoretical thing I was thinking of. Lets say you have no say what-so-ever on the hardware, but you could change the ROMs in the C64 and put them in a time-machine back to 1981 or so. What would you change?

So far here's my list:

• Auto-start from disk on bootup, assuming disk drive present and bootable disk inserted. (Much like the C128 did)
  
• Upon failing to boot from disk, present a menu to the user with several options such as LOAD FILE, SAVE FILE, ENTER BASIC, ML MONITOR, DISK UTILITIES, etc. If the user picks to load a file, it would then give you a device selection, including tape and disk drives. If the user picked a disk drive, it would give the directory of that drive and allow them to scroll through the files and pick one to load. The disk utilities would be similar to midnight commander, giving the user the option to copy files from one location to another, rename, delete, etc.
  
• faster load/save routines for disk and tape.
  
• Graphics/sound commands for BASIC (much like C128 and Plus/4)
  

I realize this would increase the size of the ROM, maybe altering the hardware design a bit. But it would have made the computer a lot more useful and user-friendly rather than having the end-user always learn to type LOAD"*",8 for every disk that they use.
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@ mistermsk :

Do you have a link for that autostart ROM? I would like to try it out in my EF3.

I'd probably fail when trying to fit bash or zsh into 8K...

but you could always reverse the scroll direction =P
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An alternative for the graphic and loading would be also to make a program that adds the feature that you would load first. I seen many programs through the years do this. SAM has the SAY command. Lately someone did that with networking but I forgot the information on that one. In addition you could have it autostart another program automatically. You could call it something like C128.prg. Load this and you can make the calls just like you do with a C128 (or at least a few commands from the 128). If loaded and ran, you could have it check drive 8 for autostart.c128. If it is there it will auto-load that program. If not it will just drop to a C128-READY prompt. This way you don't need a hardware rom to use it. No sense limiting the people using it. Just put it in a D64 or on a real disk and your golden.
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Honestly? Have Jiffydos installed stock, upgrade the basic interpreter to at least what the PETs had and since hardware is hands off but I could send tech back it would be the ability to address more ram (not sure if that would be hardware specific but...)
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I do agree that auto-boot would be handy, but i think it should have been placed onto commdore run/stop.

The sx-64 did change the run key to boot disk instead, and it hardly broke anything.

Hmm.. Shouldn't be hard... (as long as the space is there in the ROM) - and my wonderful Easyflash arrived the other day....

I wouldn't use any of the suggested keys - I'd use the SHIFT key to autostart. That way, shift-lock could be engaged if you wanted unattended startup, without messing up the standard BASIC boot.

Callan