The Autostart
ROM on the
Apple II series of
computers was the second major revision of the Apple II ROMset. As the
name implies, it added the very useful feature of clearing the screen nicely, displaying "APPLE II" top and center, and searching for a
device to
boot the system from when the computer was powered up from a cold start. See
Reset Vector to learn how this was implemented.
It also added a few other less obvious but still handy features. For instance, you could press CTRL-S and the current output would pause; hitting any other key would continue the output. You could move the cursor around the screen by hitting ESC once, then using I, J, K, and M as directional arrows. (The Apple II had no directional arrows on the keyboard.) This was in contrast to having to hit ESC-ABCD over and over again each time you want to move the cursor.
Of course, some things had to go to make room for the new features. The SWEET16 16-bit code interpreter went bye-bye, for instance.
The Autostart ROM had many revisions, but was standard on the Apple II+ and beyond.