< 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 bootstrap loader 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)