Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: nyteschayde on March 18, 2003, 04:47:20 AM
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Before you start flaming me I do actually own 3.1 ROMs for my A3000D and my A3000T. The trouble started when these machines broke recently. I purchased an A4000D and it has only 3.0 ROMs on it. I cannot afford to purchase ROMs right now so in the interim I want to use SKick.
SKick 3.44, which is version 3.43 with .PAT and .RTB files for 40.68 A1200 ROMs, will not work with a 40.68 A4000D ROM image that someone else was already nice enough to loan to me.
I would like to try using A1200 versions of the 40.68 ROMs as I expect them to work. It appears, from my testing, that these patch and relocation table files are ROM specific. I can use my 34.05 (kickstart 1.3) ROM from my A500 on the A4000D but I need a valid A1200 3.1 ROM to use the supplied patch and relocation table files supplied in the SKick archive.
If anybody with an A1200 has 3.1 ROMs and would like to help me out please email me. I plan to have the cash to get rid of the ROM image sometime within the next few months but I can't stand using Workbench 3.1 any longer. I can't believe how dependant I've become on the 3.9 release already. Please help.
-nyteschayde
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nyteschayde noted:
Before you start flaming me I do actually own 3.1 ROMs for my A3000D and my A3000T.
[Snip!]
I need a valid A1200 3.1 ROM to use the supplied patch and relocation table files supplied in the SKick archive.
[Skip!]
If anybody with an A1200 has 3.1 ROMs and would like to help me out please email me.
:-( Not as helpful as you would like, I suppose, but bear in mind that Cloanto’s Amiga Forever is said to come with licensed ROM images for all versions of Amiga. If you can find a copy of that, cheaply, you may be able use the appropriate ROM image with your machine. E-bay and Amibench may be good starting places to look…
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Actually I own Amiga Forever as well. The ROMs from there don't seem to be working for me. Has something to do with the fact that they're encrypted. UAE is designed to use the rom.key file that comes with Amiga Forever but SKick and native Amiga applications are not. Thanks for the heads up though.
Really I have purchased more Amiga ROMs than I own computers. I just need another and I don't have the money for it right now. Please help me out.
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nyteschayde niggled:
Please help me out.
:-( Actually, that was the best I could do.
Be mindful that, on the one hand, what you're asking is, strictly speaking, piracy. Although with your special circumstances, you're as close to the borderline as one can get and still be (strictly speaking,) on the wrong side of it.
On the other hand, any discussion on that topic is moot, as I don't own an A1200.
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Hey nyteshayde, that's NOT piracy if you own the
roms...anyhow check your PM. ;)
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I am waiting for an image, but I still haven't been able to hook up with the user. C'mon people, I know there is an A1200 out there with a 40.68 ROM image on it that I can use.
If you are worried about piracy I'll send you an email with my purchase receipt from Cloanto showing that I have purchased all legal ROM images that exist... with the serial number blotted out of course.
I have 2 A500's, 1 A3000T, 1 A3000D, and now 1 A4000D. I purchased my first A500 in 1989 and have been an avid Amiga fan since. I have not lacked in support of this community. I was there in when Jim Collas offered his false hopes. I was there when Commodore repeatedly screwed up releasing bad choice of machines one after another (A600, CD32, etc..).
If your first Amiga was an A1200 I was writing C programs and advanced AmigaDOS shell scripts before you knew how to use Workbench. I just need a ROM image to hold me over. Help me out.
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@ -D-, Nyteschade:
8-) You're right, of course. If you own an Amiga Forever CD, then you've bought the legal right to use the Kickstart data, encrypted or not. I only mentioned it as over-compensation for a tendency NOT to mention it, which I noticed I was doing only because Nyteschade's avatar was so pretty, which isn't supposed to influence such decisions.
:roll: I need to get out more.
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Pardon me if this is a stupid idea, but why can't you boot UAE with the encrypted ROM and then run transrom on the virtual amiga to get an unencrypted rom? I've never looked at the source for UAE, but it would seem to me to be a huge slowdown to unecrypt the ROM as you run the routines in it, so UAE probably just unencrypts it on bootup, and the virtual Amiga just sees it as a regular, unencrypted chunk of data (which you can just save off with transrom).
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@nyteschayde
Just use Google, you should find it straight away,
Encrypted Roms?? i own Amiga forever 5 and those roms are about as encrypted as this amiga.org forum, just load rom.key in a text editor/viewer to see, just a copyright text file not a magical key which many think.
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CodeSmith wrote:
Pardon me if this is a stupid idea, but why can't you boot UAE with the encrypted ROM and then run transrom on the virtual amiga to get an unencrypted rom? I've never looked at the source for UAE, but it would seem to me to be a huge slowdown to unecrypt the ROM as you run the routines in it, so UAE probably just unencrypts it on bootup, and the virtual Amiga just sees it as a regular, unencrypted chunk of data (which you can just save off with transrom).
Works just fine like that..
Also, WinUAE is open source, so you can get the source and build a ROM decrypter out of those if you like.. :-)
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CodeSmith cautiously suggested:
Pardon me if this is a stupid idea, but why can't you boot UAE with the encrypted ROM and then run transrom on the virtual amiga to get an unencrypted rom?
:-D It’s not a stupid question, it’s just that "You do not have all of the facts.™"
;-) If AUE's ROM.kick files are truly encrypted, then it would be because the bundled transrom program encrypts the data as it copies it from the Kickstart ROM chip in the first place.
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@Paul
Regardless of whether the rom.key file is nothing more than a copyright text or not the ROMs included with AmigaForever are larger by a few bytes and none of the existing soft kickers recognized them implying that they are indeed encrypted.
@Jope
That on the other hand is an excellent idea. I booted WinUAE and typed version. Unfortunately, even if it did work it would be the wrong 3.1 ROM version. Version 40.63 is really common, and its the version that shipped with my Cloanto Amiga Forever. SKick doesn't support 40.63 boot ROMs.
@everyone
I received an A1200 40.68 ROM. It is recognized by SKick and gets patched and relocated correctly. It turns out however that I may end up being out of luck after all anyway. One the soft kicker boots the machine warm boots like normal and goes into an endless cycle of rebooting.
Once I Ctrl-A-A a few times it resets like a cold boot and goes back to my 39.06 3.0 ROM and I can try something else. I tried SKicking without patching and that works. I get a purple screen with a 40.68 ROM notice and ... wait. Purple screen. No HDDs!!! Also no Fast RAM as I found out. I have mailed the person who uploaded SKick3.44 to aminet but have received no response as of yet.
I may just be without a real amiga until I can afford the ROMs. I am more than open to suggestions but I wanted to thank those who offered to help me. You know who you are. I am avoiding placing your names here so that you don't get flammed. Thanks again.
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Regardless of whether the rom.key file is nothing more than a copyright text or not the ROMs included with AmigaForever are larger by a few bytes
Going by AF5 the roms are identical sizes to the roms files you would download from a site and they are not encrypted at all, a friend has a old A1200 with a Apollo 1240 card in it and it boots most of the roms from Amiga forever fine (kick130,kick20,kick30,kick31)
none of the existing soft kickers recognized them
Remapollo and Blizkick work fine with AF5 roms,
Just open a Amiga forever rom in a hex editor to see.
Anyway check your PM.
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It's possible that you may have to use the
40.68 image that's for the 4000...I'm pretty
sure there were small differences between the
1200 and 4000 versions. I had problems using
the 4000 version on the 1200.
>I need to get out more.
Hehe, me too...with another new machine in the
house my eyes have been bleeding for days...I
think I'll take a break for a bit. :)
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Hi :-)
In fact there IS differences between Amiga's ROMs.
You can not use A3000's roms in an A4000D since you will miss the right scsi.device (IDE_scsi.device in the A4000D and SCSI_scsi.device in an A3000(T), and a small file named A3000_bonus IS different from the A4000_bonus file in the 4000's Rom.
And some other small but important differences (memory space used, ect...).
The only Roms that are pretty identical are A500 and A2000 ones and are interchangeable.
Skick is really ageing now, better use Blizkick.
Conclusion : You have to have an A4000 ROM in your A4000, either Real or Softkicked for it to work :-D
Amigalement,
Jean-François.
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If AUE's ROM.kick files are truly encrypted, then it would be because the bundled transrom program encrypts the data as it copies it from the Kickstart ROM chip in the first place.
Nope. Transrom creates normal byte-for-byte copies of the kickstart..
Amiga Forever != WinUAE even though it is built on top of it. :-)
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-D- -described:
...I'm pretty sure there were small differences between the 1200 and 4000 versions. I had problems using the 4000 version on the 1200.
;-) Well, yeah. Each Kickstart ROM has support for hardware features that are unique to each 'miggy model, and the A4000 and A1200 differ greatly: The A4000 has real Zorro III slots, while the A1200 has a PCMCIA port, but not the other way around, and probably other differences that I can't think of, right now.
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@ Jope:
;-) My point was that Transrom is bundled with UAE (Whichever flavor,) and is written to run on an Amiga and create the data file that UAE expects. If UAE expects an encrypted ROM, then Transrom would be the tool that encrypts it.
If the version of UAE on the Amiga Forever CD was re-written to use encrypted ROM data, then your idea has merit, though it stands to reason that any version of UAE that expects encrypted ROM files would be bundled with a version of Transrom that correspondingly encrypts any ROM file it reads.
On the other hand, AF's UAE may not include Transrom at all, since it includes its own ROM images.