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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Flashlight on December 03, 2006, 10:43:30 AM
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Hey, im new to the forums, but i used a amiga when i was 6, now, 11 years later, i plugged it in again. And i was wondering. I have a amiga500 plus with 6 MB ram. Im thinking of buying a kickstart 3.1 chip. But is this wise to do? Wont the workbench run slower or will there be allot of games that wont be compatible anymore? I now have kickstart 1.3 and 2.0 (Switcheble)
Please flame me :-D
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kickstart 3.1 obsoletes kickstart 2. If you can remove the ks 2 from your switch and fit the 3.1 rom in there, you won't miss ks 2 ever again. ks 1.3 is still useful for old games.
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Kickstart switchers have been made pretty much obsolete by this program whdload (http://www.whdload.de) You will of course need a harddrive and for all other games, utilities like relockick can be found on aminet.
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Hi!
Replacing old KS 1.3 with ANY other higher versions (2.04, 2.05 or 3.1) will bring you trouble running games. On the positive side, you'll get better support for peripheral expansion HW, more user-friendly Workbench GUI and more sofware options in general.
Unfortunatelly, benefits of "higher" Kickstarts are impossible to reach on stock A500. OK, you have additional 5Mb of FAST RAM, which is enough for "sofkicking", without real Kickstarts. But in the same time, if you don't own real KS chip, this could be illegal - Kickstarts are still copyrighted - respect the owner.
My point is, clearly, that you should try to get some CPU accelerator and HDD for A500. This would speed-up everything in boot process and make it possible to upgrade both Kickstart (in any sense) and operating system (Workbench). At the paramount of A500 operations, you will be able to install WHDLOAD, application which allows running almost every game made for non-AGA chipset, clearing your way of typical KS constraints we had for years.
For more info, feel free to send a PM.
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Or you could just, you know, save yourself the trouble of finding ancient rare and criminally expensive turbo cards for the 500 and just get a 1200 from Amigakit or Analogic. I spoke to the guy incharge there recently and he said they had about a thousand unsold stock above their offices. Anyway. With a 1200 you have internal IDE for a harddisk straight away, AGA, 3.0/3.1 kickstart and the much more available (though still criminally expensive) accelerator cards.