Amiga 1000 (or any model) that needs a kickstart disk
For those who know, if my Amiga 1000 has v 1.1 ROMS, will it only boot with a 1.1. kickstart disk? Thanks Bill
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 1:56 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
For those who know, if my Amiga 1000 has v 1.1 ROMS, will it only boot with a 1.1. kickstart disk?
If your Amiga is asking for a Kickstart disk (i.e., it has a WCS board not Kickstart in ROM), then it should work with any version of Kickstart from 1.0 to 1.3. 2.0 is too large to fit on the WCS board so that's when a bunch of us got ROM expanders to use an A500/A2000 Kickstart ROM chip. Some people also converted the WCS RAM to be extra RAM, I think, but that was a bit of a hack. -ethan
thanks. I have a beta version of 1.2 and a "gamma" version of 1.4. Otherwise I have no disks and will have to make them. My 1000 is very early, the dates on the chips are spring/summer of 85. It could be then that the disk drive is bad, the disks are bad, and/or I need to make a 1.1 Kickstart disk.. Bill On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 2:09 PM Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 1:56 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
For those who know, if my Amiga 1000 has v 1.1 ROMS, will it only boot with a 1.1. kickstart disk?
If your Amiga is asking for a Kickstart disk (i.e., it has a WCS board not Kickstart in ROM), then it should work with any version of Kickstart from 1.0 to 1.3. 2.0 is too large to fit on the WCS board so that's when a bunch of us got ROM expanders to use an A500/A2000 Kickstart ROM chip. Some people also converted the WCS RAM to be extra RAM, I think, but that was a bit of a hack.
-ethan
the disk may be bad. Get a clean new disk, and or clean the drive. Of course, you'll need an amiga to do that. I can help if you need one (I have a working A2000 and I'm reasonable close to you). -andy
On Mar 12, 2021, at 2:11 PM, Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
thanks. I have a beta version of 1.2 and a "gamma" version of 1.4. Otherwise I have no disks and will have to make them. My 1000 is very early, the dates on the chips are spring/summer of 85. It could be then that the disk drive is bad, the disks are bad, and/or I need to make a 1.1 Kickstart disk.. Bill
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 2:09 PM Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 1:56 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
For those who know, if my Amiga 1000 has v 1.1 ROMS, will it only boot with a 1.1. kickstart disk?
If your Amiga is asking for a Kickstart disk (i.e., it has a WCS board not Kickstart in ROM), then it should work with any version of Kickstart from 1.0 to 1.3. 2.0 is too large to fit on the WCS board so that's when a bunch of us got ROM expanders to use an A500/A2000 Kickstart ROM chip. Some people also converted the WCS RAM to be extra RAM, I think, but that was a bit of a hack.
-ethan
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 2:12 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
thanks. I have a beta version of 1.2 and a "gamma" version of 1.4.
I would expect both of those to work. I remember the 'gamma 1.4" and while I played with it, there was no compelling reason to use it. I switched to 2.04 when I got my Rejuvinator and that really extended the useful life of my A1000.
Otherwise I have no disks and will have to make them. My 1000 is very early, the dates on the chips are spring/summer of 85. It could be then that the disk drive is bad, the disks are bad, and/or I need to make a 1.1 Kickstart disk..
You could have dirty heads, bad disks, possibly a bad drive... there's no reason I know of that you'd be restricted to KS 1.1. No change in motherboard ROMs, no change in chips (original chips or EHB Denise, etc). It sounds like you don't have another Amiga, even an A500 handy or you should be able to copy disks. There's nothing magical about a Kickstart disk - identical low-level format to "regular" 880K Amiga disks, it just has a signature word at the front and contains a valid KS firmare image on the first 256 that all the A1000 ROMs know how to import. -ethan
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 2:24 PM Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 2:12 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
thanks. I have a beta version of 1.2 and a "gamma" version of 1.4.
I would expect both of those to work. I remember the 'gamma 1.4" and while I played with it, there was no compelling reason to use it. I switched to 2.04 when I got my Rejuvinator and that really extended the useful life of my A1000.
Otherwise I have no disks and will have to make them. My 1000 is very early, the dates on the chips are spring/summer of 85. It could be then that the disk drive is bad, the disks are bad, and/or I need to make a 1.1 Kickstart disk..
You could have dirty heads, bad disks, possibly a bad drive... there's no reason I know of that you'd be restricted to KS 1.1. No change in motherboard ROMs, no change in chips (original chips or EHB Denise, etc).
It sounds like you don't have another Amiga, even an A500 handy or you should be able to copy disks.
There's nothing magical about a Kickstart disk - identical low-level format to "regular" 880K Amiga disks, it just has a signature word at the front and contains a valid KS firmare image on the first 256 that all the A1000 ROMs know how to import.
-ethan
I have only Amigas with Kickstart ROMs, other than the 1000. I have a few disks from unknown origin that are both beta version of the the Kickstart disks, not official ones, and I have no idea if they ever worked. Obviously the drive could be bad, etc. I just wanted to see if anyone knew whether the very first 1000 required the very first kickstart disk or not. You never know. Bill
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 2:27 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
There's nothing magical about a Kickstart disk - identical low-level format to "regular" 880K Amiga disks, it just has a signature word at the front and contains a valid KS firmare image on the first 256 that all the A1000 ROMs know how to import.
I have only Amigas with Kickstart ROMs, other than the 1000.
You can use any Amiga to copy Kickstart disks. You could even use another Amiga to duplicate any of the KS disks you have right now - if you get a read error trying to copy it, you have bad media. I don't know that there's any easy way to check for corruption (i.e., how to checksum the data), but if you have a way to get files from the Internet onto any Amiga,
Obviously the drive could be bad, etc. I just wanted to see if anyone knew whether the very first 1000 required the very first kickstart disk or not. You never know.
No. There's nothing "special" about the early A1000s.
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 3:56 PM Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 2:27 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
There's nothing magical about a Kickstart disk - identical low-level format to "regular" 880K Amiga disks, it just has a signature word at the front and contains a valid KS firmare image on the first 256 that all the A1000 ROMs know how to import.
I have only Amigas with Kickstart ROMs, other than the 1000.
You can use any Amiga to copy Kickstart disks. You could even use another Amiga to duplicate any of the KS disks you have right now - if you get a read error trying to copy it, you have bad media. I don't know that there's any easy way to check for corruption (i.e., how to checksum the data), but if you have a way to get files from the Internet onto any Amiga,
Obviously the drive could be bad, etc. I just wanted to see if anyone knew whether the very first 1000 required the very first kickstart disk or not. You never know.
No. There's nothing "special" about the early A1000s.
Thanks Ethan. Is there a way to use an Amiga to make a kickstart disk, kind of like how a MS DOS machine can SYS.COM a diskette to move the system files to it and make it bootable i.e. format /s/v)? Bill
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 4:50 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Thanks Ethan. Is there a way to use an Amiga to make a kickstart disk, kind of like how a MS DOS machine can SYS.COM a diskette to move the system files to it and make it bootable i.e. format /s/v)?
There's no complex structure to a Kickstart disk like there is to a bootable floppy, not even a "bootblock", let alone a filesystem. IIRC, it's just a raw block dump with some sort of Kickstart signature in the first block. No code from the Kickstart disk is executed at boot time. I've always just copied existing, working Kickstart disks, but apparently there's an Amiga tool WriteKickDisk that will take a ROM file and write it to the correct sectors to make a fresh Kickstart disk. https://lateblt.tripod.com/a1k_kick.htm I have not tried this, but the instructions seem to be reasonable. -ethan
Ethan Cant a person using and Amiga with a Gotek drive and a floppy drive, just Copy the Adf file to the Gotek drive and make a floppy disk? Including Kickstart and Workbench files? Sent from: My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.
On Mar 12, 2021, at 6:55 PM, Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 4:50 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Thanks Ethan. Is there a way to use an Amiga to make a kickstart disk, kind of like how a MS DOS machine can SYS.COM a diskette to move the system files to it and make it bootable i.e. format /s/v)?
There's no complex structure to a Kickstart disk like there is to a bootable floppy, not even a "bootblock", let alone a filesystem. IIRC, it's just a raw block dump with some sort of Kickstart signature in the first block. No code from the Kickstart disk is executed at boot time.
I've always just copied existing, working Kickstart disks, but apparently there's an Amiga tool WriteKickDisk that will take a ROM file and write it to the correct sectors to make a fresh Kickstart disk.
https://lateblt.tripod.com/a1k_kick.htm
I have not tried this, but the instructions seem to be reasonable.
-ethan
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 7:17 PM Sentrytv <sentrytv@yahoo.com> wrote:
Ethan Cant a person using and Amiga with a Gotek drive and a floppy drive, just Copy the Adf file to the Gotek drive and make a floppy disk? Including Kickstart and Workbench files?
I don't have a Gotek but I see no reason why that would 't work. There's nothing magical about a Kickstart disk except the first sector has a signature in it ("KICK") and starting with the second sector, it's a ROM dump. No run-at-kick-time code like a bootstrap, no filesystem. Raw blocks. The ROMs in an A1000 just make the WCS board writable, hoover in 256K of blocks to RAM, then lock the WCS RAM and reset. Voila! Kickstarted! $ hexdump -C Kickstart-Disk\ v1.1\ r31.34\ \(1985\)\(Commodore\)\(A1000\)\(NTSC\).adf | more 00000000 4b 49 43 4b 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |KICK............| 00000010 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................| * 00000200 11 11 4e f9 00 fc 00 ce 00 00 ff ff ff ff ff ff |..N.............| 00000210 00 1f 00 22 ff ff ff ff 0d 0a 0a 41 4d 49 47 41 |...".......AMIGA| 00000220 20 52 4f 4d 20 4f 70 65 72 61 74 69 6e 67 20 53 | ROM Operating S| 00000230 79 73 74 65 6d 20 61 6e 64 20 4c 69 62 72 61 72 |ystem and Librar| 00000240 69 65 73 0d 0a 43 6f 70 79 72 69 67 68 74 20 28 |ies..Copyright (| 00000250 43 29 20 31 39 38 35 2c 20 43 6f 6d 6d 6f 64 6f |C) 1985, Commodo| 00000260 72 65 2d 41 6d 69 67 61 2c 20 49 6e 63 2e 0d 0a |re-Amiga, Inc...| . . . -ethan
Amiga 1000 Was not made with kickstart in ROM. Sent from: My extremely complicated, hand held electronic device.
On Mar 12, 2021, at 2:08 PM, Ethan Dicks via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 1:56 PM Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
For those who know, if my Amiga 1000 has v 1.1 ROMS, will it only boot with a 1.1. kickstart disk?
If your Amiga is asking for a Kickstart disk (i.e., it has a WCS board not Kickstart in ROM), then it should work with any version of Kickstart from 1.0 to 1.3. 2.0 is too large to fit on the WCS board so that's when a bunch of us got ROM expanders to use an A500/A2000 Kickstart ROM chip. Some people also converted the WCS RAM to be extra RAM, I think, but that was a bit of a hack.
-ethan
You can run 2.0 and up on the 1000 but must have enough fast RAM to load them. So you need an expanded 1000 and have to use a program to relocate Kickstart to RAM and load it there. I did that 'back in the day even on my 2000 to try out 2.0 before I bought the upgrade. Just look for zkick and ykick on Aminet. Ykick I believe will even use the Kickstart RAM for half the ROM file (though it'd been a long time since I played with these). There also is twinkick on Aminet that let's you make a dual 1.3 / 3.1 Kickstart disk though you also have to be aware of other requirements for later OSes ans if you don't have a hard drive/accelerator, going above 2.0 on a 1000 might not have much ROI. Gotek floppy drives should work. Not totally sure about the original cortex firmware. If that don't work try the FlashFloppy firmware. That has an added benefit of the ability to add an LCD screen to see the actual name of the adf being loaded. This can be important since you must use the buttons n the Gotrk to select the Kickstart disk. The 1000 can't boot the menu disk to select your loaded adf since you have to be past loading Kickstart for that to work. "Make no small plans. They have no power to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans." - Daniel Burnham On Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 10:18 PM Wil Birkmaier via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Do you mean workbench disk, on a a1000 with 1.1 kickstart roms? You can run 1.3 from what I recall, don't remember for 2.x or 3.x
On Mar 12, 2021 13:55, Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
For those who know, if my Amiga 1000 has v 1.1 ROMS, will it only boot with a 1.1. kickstart disk? Thanks Bill
participants (6)
-
Andrew Diller -
Anthony Becker -
Bill Degnan -
Ethan Dicks -
Sentrytv -
Wil Birkmaier