Amiga Kickstart 3.1
Tinisha
Kickstart is the bootstrap firmware of the Amiga computers developed by Commodore International. Its purpose is to initialize the Amiga hardware and core components of AmigaOS and then attempt to boot from a bootable volume, such as a floppy disk. Most Amiga models were shipped with the Kickstart firmware stored on ROM chips.
Commodore's AmigaOS was formed of both the Kickstart firmware and a software component provided on disk (with the software portion often termed as Workbench). For most AmigaOS updates the Kickstart version number was matched to the Workbench version number. Confusingly, Commodore also used internal revision numbers for Kickstart chips. For example, there were several Kickstart revisions designated as version 2.0.[1]
The first Amiga model, the A1000, required that Kickstart 1.x be loaded from floppy disk into a 256 KB section of RAM called the writable control store (WCS). Some A1000 software titles (notably Dragon's Lair) provided an alternative code-base in order to use the extra 256 KB for data. Later Amiga models had Kickstart embedded in a ROM chip, thus improving boot times. Many Amiga 1000 computers were modified to take these chips.
Kickstart was stored in 256 KB ROM chips for releases prior to AmigaOS 2.0. Later releases used 512 KB ROM chips containing additional and improved functionality. The Amiga CD32 featured a 1 MB ROM (Kickstart 3.1) with additional firmware and an integrated file system for CD-ROM.
Early A3000 models were, like the A1000, also shipped with Kickstart on floppy disk, and used a 1.4 BETA ROM as bootstrap. Either Kickstart 1.3 or 2.0 could be extracted to a partition specifically named WB_1.3 or WB_2.x, respectively, and put in DEVS:kickstart, an absolute system location from where the A3000 system will find it at bootstrap and copy its image into RAM. This early A3000 supported both ROM based Kickstarts and disk-based Kickstarts, although not simultaneously. An A3000 configured to use disk-based Kickstart images had the benefit of being able to boot various versions of AmigaOS without additional tools, simply by selecting the appropriate Kickstart image at boot time.
The Commodore CDTV featured additional firmware ROMs which are not technically part of the Amiga Kickstart. The CDTV's original firmware ROMs must be upgraded in order to install a Kickstart version later than 1.3.
AmigaOS 2.1 was a pure software update and did not require matching Kickstart ROM chips. Workbench 2.1 ran on all Kickstart ROMs of the 2.0x family. Later releases of AmigaOS (3.5 and 3.9) were also software only and did not include matching ROM upgrades instead requiring Kickstart 3.1, with ROM-file based Kickstart components replacing those in ROM. Kickstart modules of AmigaOS 4 are stored on the boot disk partition.
Up to Kickstart v2.0 (V36) only 512-byte blocks were supported.[28]Motorola 68040 uses write caches that requires the use of the functions CacheClearU() and CacheControl() to flush cache when program code has been modified. These functions are only available in Kickstart 2.0 or better.[29]
However, if an Amiga received a colorcode, it does not always mean that the error comes from a hardware fault, red can also happen if a ROM is mapped to fastmem or by ROM-patches from software. For yellow it can be unstable software in memory. Some Amigas can give a short color on screen at power-on which can be the last background color. Keep in mind that bad activity on the databus that should not be there can have effect on other chips on the bus.
It is not generally possible to boot directly into the Workbench windowing environment from Kickstart alone. Though much of the functionality required for Workbench is contained in Kickstart, as some disk-based components are needed to launch it.
From release 2.0 onwards it is possible to enter a boot menu by holding down both mouse buttons at power on or reset. This allows the user to choose a boot device, set parameters for backwards compatibility and examine Autoconfig hardware.
An MMU-enabled Amiga is able to "shadow" Kickstart from the embedded ROM chip (or from file) into RAM and pass control to it at start-up. This is often preferable as RAM access times are significantly faster than ROM, particularly on expanded systems. At subsequent resets the copy of Kickstart is re-used, reducing boot time and allowing faster access and execution of Kickstart functionality. Similar shadowing functions were also developed for some devices without MMU hardware.
Hi all im a new amiga user and have a amiga 500 i understand i need a new kickstart rom to be able to load workbench 3.1
im not sure what the rom does or what it contains as i thought you could just boot the os from a disk?
if i find a new modern kick start rom where does this live on the board and will it break compatibility with older software and games?
what are some useful workbench 1.3 software or do people not use this anymore?
A500 1.3 is fine if you want to play games and run software on floppys.
If you plan to play games from Harddisk, you have to buy a solution for the A500. You can still play games from Harddisk with 1.3 if you use games that have a harddisk-installer (look here )
There is even an option to play games that were patched to run on harddisk (WHD-Loadslaves) with 1.3. Look for "JST". But you will likely have much more RAM. 2-4 MB is the very low end for this.
hi thanks for your reply so whd are games that are to be installed on hds?
i have seen these whd files and i cant get them to load.
i have the gotek floppy emulator
i would like to run a more modern version of amiga os
i only have the 512k ram expansion board i didnt know you could buy bigger ones
Depends on what you want to do. But for a good/great experience you'd want an A1200 with HDD/CF card and some accelerator board - like Blizzard 1230 with 16MB of memory or more. Runs pretty much everything except some heavy/newer demos that expect 040 and/or PowerPC CPUs.
WHDLoad-Slaves are Diskimages to play these games from Harddisk. You will likely have double the RAM for that.
A game that requires 1MB on stock A500 on floppy will likely consume 2-3MB as WHDLoad-Slave.
This is because the Diskimage is in RAM and the game is executed in RAM and the Kickstart 1.3 that is required for the game is also copied in RAM.
You see you will have to invest a lot more to do so, that's why my advice is play these games on real floppy this is MUCH!!! cheaper.
You need to transfer the ADF Images to the Amiga (best if it has 1MB Ram) and then write back to disk on the real amiga.
You need some tools for this. Transfercable, Transfer-Software and Disk-Image-Software.
The A500 is great for non-AGA games. It will play hundreds of titles as-is. There are lots of cheap accelerator options for it as well. Pistorm, HC508, ACA500, Vampire, Terriblefire TF534/536, Classic 520, etc. There are tons of different ways to expand the RAM, Chip RAM, CPU, hard disks, and all sorts of accessories.
The cheapest option to get started with gaming is obvioiusly the Gotek so you can quickly load ADF files on the USB stick. WHDload is the slightly more expensive way, but really awesome. I suppose you can also use a Greaseweazle to image/write real floppies - I do that sometimes, but it would get costly for tons of games since DD floppies are in short supply and using HD floppies sometimes gives issues.
The route I took with my A500 a little over a year ago was to get a HC508, load Amiga OS 3.1.4 + WHDload. It works really well and wasn't too expensive. However now there is the PiStorm which is way cheaper and gives more features.. not a Vampire in terms of performance, but extremely good (Amiga 4000 CPU performance). The latest CPLD firmware and updates to it have made it pretty stable and every game/app I've loaded as worked just fine. An upcoming firmware update will enable the Pi4 to work with it, and that will be extremely fast. Some people don't like it because it isn't an actual 68000 CPU, but at least the option is there if you want to have a killer accelerator for less than $75. (provides CPU + Z3 RAM + soft ROM + hard disk + networking + RTG)
Thanks all i have the gotek but i really just want it to be able to play non aga games and run a nice version of workbench so i can use office software ect.
i have the 512k ram expansion that came with the computer is this slow ram? and if so how do i upgrade the ram as the only port i know is the trapdoor expansion.
it would be nice to play aga games ect. bit as others have mentioned i will most likely need a 1200
You'll have to decide what kickstart/workbench you want to run. Version 3.1 is the last original Commodore Amiga kickstart. You can run Amiga OS 3.1, 3.5, and 3.9 with it. 3.1 is very common to run. There's also Hyperion versions of 3.1.4 and 3.2. I run 3.1.4 myself -- 3.2 just came out and I've seen some people have issues with it depending on their mods/upgrades. For the Hyperion OS's mentioned, you run the corresponding kickstart ROM with them.
To upgrade RAM if your intent is WHDLoad, you are best off with an accelerator card that provides extra RAM. You can choose an accelerator that has a SD/CF slot to store all the games on too. WHDLoad requires more RAM than a standard A500 w/ 512k trapdoor expansion offers, so that would be best handled with an accelerator.
If you just want to run a nice version of workbench and boot games via the Gotek (which would be the cheapest option), you can use a IDE68K for installing the OS to a CF card. A whole variety of programs/software can also be installed to the CF card and run from it.
To be fair, though, the Atari ST community is not much better.
The later programs require STE models, TT models or the ultra rare Atari Falcon. ?
Well, at least they got a free, open TOS clone (EmuTOS). The Amiga OS is still proprietary.
Edit: Memory upgrades are excepted, they happen on all platforms, as time wents on.
Even on the old C64, people needed such upgrades (REUs like geoRAM, Pagefox cassette etc).
But memory upgrades don't change the personality of a computer, so it's no loss.