Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Matt_H on August 06, 2004, 10:46:38 PM
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A while ago, I quit out of the 1.4 bootmenu on my A3000 and used GrabKick to take an image of the Kickstart - it came out as version 36.016.
Today, while experimenting with some softkickers, I clobbered the Devs:Kickstart file on my hard disk and had to use the SuperKickstart disk to boot up in order to restore my backup file. To my surprise, loading in the kickstart from floppy and then booting the system from the hard drive failed, (didn't recognize WB_2.x: as bootable) and I got the "Insert Disk" screen - this time with a 36.143 version indicator! Booting with a Workbench2.05 floppy failed with a "Suspend/Reboot" requester. I booted without Startup-sequence and grabbed the kickstart.
A quick browse through both files in a Hex reader shows that they ARE different! How could there be 2 different versions in ROM? The best theory I could come up with was that one was loaded from SuperKickstart, but I'm 99.9999% certain that has version 37.175 on it.
Well, to conclude, I've got the system operational again, but I'm still very confused about these different versions.
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I belive your Kickstart 36.016 is an alpha version of the Kickstart... aka not yet compleatly done. I have a Kickstart.rom file rev 36.022 from an A3000 which is an "Alpha18" version.
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Original A3000s that were shipped with 2.0 (not 2.04 or later) could be superkickstarted (later there was a rom upgrade that took this capability away). 36.16 was shipped on very early machines.. There was an upgrade made available to owners with the release machine later on.
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The reason you got two different Kickstart revisions is because you were actually running two different Kickstarts. Early A3000's used a hardware 1.4 ROM to boot to the OS selection menu which then would softkick either 1.3 or 2.0. When you booted with the SuperKickstart, you were running the Kickstart on that disk, obviously, whereas when you got the 1.4 bootup screen you were actually running the hardware 1.4 ROM.
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Wasn't WB 1.4 an early (beta) release of the later completed WB 2.04?
Just curious, as I thought I heard that somewhere.
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As far as I recall, Kick 1.4 was the working title of Kick 2.0. Back then, they worked on 68030 systems with MMU for the first time, and could first see "enforcer hits". A friend of mine was in the Amiga developer group, and had all the information available. He told me that they found something like 130 enforcer hits in Kickstart 1.3, and since the update was so major, they decided not to call it 1.4 but 2.0.
Starting my A3000 without a DEVS:kickstart file is like starting an Amiga from a parallel universe. The windows look just a little different, but Amiga-like. It's 2.0 colours, but still a little 1.3 style in them, although clearly different from 1.3. I first discovered that when I tried the Buddha controller as the only harddrive in an A3000. It actually worked, and I was surprised to see that so much of the Amiga system is aleady running when it's re-kicking [from Buddha!].
Jens Schoenfeld
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I remember back in the day getting a copy of a beta Workbench 1.4 disk. It must of been a beta of 2.0, as it had some monitor drivers on it.
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I actually have WB1.4 (AlphaRelease Beta1) and it's deffinitly WB2.0 like. Also the 1.4ROM (Alpha15) that I have look alot like 1.3ROM.
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@TjLaZer
Sure that wasn't the "Jumpstart 1.4" ?
That one was a 1.3-WB patching the 1.3-ROM with some modules of 2.0 to allow the use of the A2024-monitor.
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Might of been. I never used it much from what I remember. What I would like to find is that cool Atari ST Emu from germany. Wish I could remember what it was called... :P
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I don't remember where I got them, but I have ADFs of Kickstart & Workbench 1.4 Alpha15. They're fun to load up and play with in WinUAE, I strange mix of Workbench 1.3 with some 2.0 stuff thrown in. I was going to include some screenshots with this message but I can't seam to get the image manager to work (all I get is a small window with a Xoops banner, a pulldown gadget with nothing in it, a button beside it that doesn't seam to do anything, and a close button. :(
Workbench has it's own window on the Workbench screen; there is the ability to view "All files" and "View By" icon, name, size, etc; windows have a new "Up Arrow" gadget that brings the Workbench window infront of ALL other windows. There is also a WBStartup drawer and some interesting shell commands like "AddMonitors" and "IP" but everything else is basically 1.3
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@mpiva
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_b14.html
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@ Piru
Hey, that's a great page there! I wish I still had my A3000 to play around with. Any idea where I could get an ADF of the Extras disk? I didn't know that one existed.
It was also cool checking out some of the other betas on that page as well. I'm going to have to bookmark that site for times when I want to reminisce about the "good old days" :)
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The various betas are floating around on P2P networks, although they are in other collections like TOSEC (IOW, there is no 'Kickstarts - Beta' collection). 1.4a15 and 1.4b1 are in the TOSEC Kickstart and Workbench collections, and there are some miscellaneous 2.0 builds buried within the TOSEC Amiga Applications collection. I am currently in the middle of compiling some Amiga screenshots for a friend's site, so in the process I will make a list of all the current Kickstart and Workbench prototypes I have (I will say this - there are more proto Kickstart images than there are Workbenches to go with them - so I just test many of the 2.0 Kickstarts with the earliest 2.0 I could find, which was the A3000-bundled version), and whether the ROM is a standard Kickstart at $F00000 (512K)/$F80000 (256K), or a 'special' one meant for softkicking with either Kickit or Rekick. It would be nice if WinUAE natively supported Kickit/Rekick images, but for now i just boot with 1.3, CTRL-D out of the startup-sequence, and run Kickit to load the softkick image.
There is no extras disk that I know of for 1.4a15, all I have is Workbench. 1.4b1 does come with four disks, one of which has Kickit and the $200000 Kickstart image, one is the Workbench, one is Extras, and one is Autodocs+Includes.
Edit: Also, for the record - when booting 1.4b1 (as listed in the filename), the boot image says "1.4 Alpha 18".