Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: barney on May 25, 2008, 12:45:34 AM
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Sombody here may be able to answer this qustion I have. Is it better for me to softboot kickstart 3.1 or install kickstart 3.1 ROMS? I read somewhere on the internet that installing the 3.1 ROMS makes the computer much slower and very unstable. Somobody even said that they had to slow their MHZ down from 25 to 16. If anybody has any input to this, I would appreciate it.
Barney
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I can not confirm any problems with Kick 3.1 roms.
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barney wrote:
Sombody here may be able to answer this qustion I have. Is it better for me to softboot kickstart 3.1 or install kickstart 3.1 ROMS? I read somewhere on the internet that installing the 3.1 ROMS makes the computer much slower and very unstable. Somobody even said that they had to slow their MHZ down from 25 to 16. If anybody has any input to this, I would appreciate it.
Barney
What you were told was a bunch of crap. I have installed 3.1 Kickstart ROMs in almost all my Amigas and in every A3000 & A4000 with no problems. Many accelerators softkick the ROMs into faster memory for increased performance, but it is not a huge difference and I have never heard of anyone having to "slow down" their CPU to use the ROMs.
Buy them from AmigaKit and support one of the few Amiga dealers that we have left. Don't be tempted to pirate the ROMs from anywhere.
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Thanks Amigadave. I currently have the A3000 with the boot tower and 1.4 roms. Are you saying that I some places sell a sofboot version of kickstart 3.1? I have heard it mentioned before but all I ever seen myself is A3000 kickstart chip ROMS. If you know of a place that sells the sofboot version, please tell me where it is. thanks.
Can sombody tell me the minimum kickstart required to run OS 3.1?
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barney wrote:
(...) Can sombody tell me the minimum kickstart required to run OS 3.1?
Required KS 3.0, but work better with 3.1.
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barney wrote:
Thanks Amigadave. I currently have the A3000 with the boot tower and 1.4 roms. Are you saying that I some places sell a sofboot version of kickstart 3.1? I have heard it mentioned before but all I ever seen myself is A3000 kickstart chip ROMS. If you know of a place that sells the sofboot version, please tell me where it is. thanks.
Can sombody tell me the minimum kickstart required to run OS 3.1?
I suggest you get the real ROM chips to install in your ROM tower, as I don't know all the steps to soft-kick 3.1 into your A3000.
But if you must, buy AmigaForever from Colanto to get all the Kickstart files, but ask someone else for directions on what to do next to get the files into your A3000.
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Softkicking to 3.1 is simply done by copying the KickROM image to WB2.x:Devs/Kickstart - where to get it legally might be a larger problem. AmigaForever ROMs are encrypted and can't be used.
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amigadave wrote:
barney wrote:
Sombody here may be able to answer this qustion I have. Is it better for me to softboot kickstart 3.1 or install kickstart 3.1 ROMS? I read somewhere on the internet that installing the 3.1 ROMS makes the computer much slower and very unstable. Somobody even said that they had to slow their MHZ down from 25 to 16. If anybody has any input to this, I would appreciate it.
Barney
What you were told was a bunch of crap.
What AmigaDave said is correct.........
My A3000 was an SoftKicker when new.
I replaced the 1.4 roms with 3.1. roms and it runs great.
There was 'NO' slow-down or any other problems you
mentioned. It performs just like any other Amiga with
the hard-kick roms.
Before I changed to the 'Hard' roms I had all the soft-kick
rom images from 1.3 to 3.1.
You can't use just any rom image, the image requires the
bonus code attached. Using 'GrabKick' on a 3.1 rom won't
work.
My suggestion would be to install the 3.1 roms.
Unless you have a very special reason to be softkicking,
it isn't worth the trouble. To my knowledge all the games
etc. will run under the 3.1 rom, WHDLoad etc.
Mel
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AmigaForever ROMs are encrypted and can't be used.
The encryption isn't the problem, however.
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A 3.1 Kickstart image for 3000s was only available to registered Commodore developers. It's a special ROM image with additional code for the 3000. Regular 3.1 images don't work.
Real 3.1 ROMs are your best option.
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@Barney,
It'd be of help if you provide the link to the website from where you read about the info.
@all,
However, i *actually* noticed the 'slow' speed of my A3000 with KS3.1 ROMS - as reported by Sysinfo.
When i first got my towerised A3000 five yrs ago - all the way from Germany - it came with 2mb chip + 4mb fast, but due to my lack of experience, i inadvertently screwed up the zip rams :-( Thereafter i cold-storaged my A3000 (i mean can you run any program productively with a 2mb amiga?)
Recently i bought a Fastlane pop'd with a whopping 64mb ram (the max is 256mb but you'd have to be extreme lucky &/or rich to get this kind of ram modules), and got all excited to revive my A3000.
Indeed the extra ram speed up the operations on the A3000 (plain WB3.1) tremendously. So i installed Sysinfo for the 1st time on this system to check. The report was a shock... so very perplexing! altho in reality i'm very happy with the RAM boost.
Perhaps there's some flaw with the Sysinfo?
(I have no other A3000 with different KS ROM version hence i can't really verify the claim)
I'll take a screenshot of the sysinfo report and upload to the Images section, when i have time later ;-)
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barney wrote:
Thanks Amigadave. I currently have the A3000 with the boot tower and 1.4 roms. Are you saying that I some places sell a sofboot version of kickstart 3.1? I have heard it mentioned before but all I ever seen myself is A3000 kickstart chip ROMS. If you know of a place that sells the sofboot version, please tell me where it is. thanks.
Can sombody tell me the minimum kickstart required to run OS 3.1?
Getting a softboot Kick3.1 is easy!
All you need is a A3000 WITH Kick3.1-ROMs and the WB3.1 Install-Disk.
In directory c: you can find the "extractkickstart" tool.
With this tool you are able to create a A3000 superkickstart with kick3.1.
With this superkickstart you are able to boot Kick3.1 on a softboot A3000.
YES, COMMODORE RELEASED A KICKSTART-RIPPER WITH WB3.1 !!!
:lol: :-P
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I have never seen this tool on any of my WB 3.1 installs...
Oh wait you mean on the actual install disk? I'll take a look at it later and see if I can rip the ROM on my A3000T.
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Yeah, I think you guys are right: actual 3.1 ROMS are the best option.
Bonami, I can't remember where I read all that negative talk about installing 3.1 ROMS in the A3000. But to sum everything up, they stated that it made their system unstable and that they had to jumper it from 25mhz to 16.
When I do buy actual roms, do I remove the 1.4 roms from the ROM tower and install these in their place? Thanks
Barney
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The Superkickstart3.1 file is available in lots of places on the net. A regular KS3.1 (for A3000 with SCSI support) with the bonus code tagged on the end.
The file (Kickstart) just replaces the 2.x one ( WB2.x:Devs/Kickstart) and next time you reboot voila KS3.1.
The downsides over a hard ROM are: you loose 512Kbytes of FastRAM and you cannot use an accelerator.
P.S. If you are incapable of identifying and unpacking LZX files, you probably shouldnt have an Amiga at all, not to mention a fiddly A3000 KS1.4 ;-)
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alexh wrote:
The downsides over a hard ROM are: you loose 512Kbytes of FastRAM and you cannot use an accelerator.
You can use a Blizzard 4030 @ 50Mhz ... and with softroms you are able to use Commodores Unix for the A3000.
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Ratte wrote:
You can use a Blizzard 4030 @ 50Mhz ... and with softroms you are able to use Commodores Unix for the A3000.
I tend to doubt this, ( can't say for sure since I never
tried it).
I can't beleave how much erroneous info is floating around
about these particular Amigas. I've had mine since 1990,
(bought it new). I guess the reason for all the bad info
is there are really not that many of them around.
Mel
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I think Jeff would know... seeing as he has one!
http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=2395=11
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You can use a Blizzard 4030 @ 50Mhz ...
Yes. The issue is that the 1.4 ROMs are hard-coded to the 030's MMU. 040 and 060 accelerators won't work because their MMUs function differently so that the ROM image can't be softkicked. Any 030 accelerator should work, but I think there are only 2 kinds, the Blizzard being one of them.
and with softroms you are able to use Commodores Unix for the A3000.
Unix doesn't make use of any special 1.4 ROM features as far as I know. Whenever I boot it, I need to kick in 2.04 first and then use the boot menu to boot from the Unix partition.
Also, I always thought ExtractKickstart was for pulling an updated kickstart off of a SuperKickstart disk, not for pulling one from ROM...
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@Bonami-
However, i *actually* noticed the 'slow' speed of my A3000 with KS3.1 ROMS - as reported by Sysinfo.
When i first got my towerised A3000 five yrs ago - all the way from Germany - it came with 2mb chip + 4mb fast, but due to my lack of experience, i inadvertently screwed up the zip rams Thereafter i cold-storaged my A3000 (i mean can you run any program productively with a 2mb amiga?)
Recently i bought a Fastlane pop'd with a whopping 64mb ram (the max is 256mb but you'd have to be extreme lucky &/or rich to get this kind of ram modules), and got all excited to revive my A3000.
Indeed the extra ram speed up the operations on the A3000 (plain WB3.1) tremendously. So i installed Sysinfo for the 1st time on this system to check. The report was a shock... so very perplexing! altho in reality i'm very happy with the RAM boost.
Perhaps there's some flaw with the Sysinfo?
Why would you think this is due to the kickstart? It's actually due to the different speed of access to your RAM.
For fastest to slowest access time...
FastRAM on accelerator card
FastRAM on motherboard
FastRAM on ZorroIII
FastRAM on ZorroII
RangerMem (A500 bay)
CHIP RAM
The fast RAM that was on your motherboard would be faster access than the fast RAM on your ZIII board, hence the overall performance loss of not having RAM on the motherboard.
I've never heard of a ROM having a slower access time than the 1.4 SuperKickstart. In fact, either way, your ROM timing is going to be exactly what you set your motherboard ROM timing jumpers to. :lol:
If you really want to boost performance on ROM calls, like others have said, get an accelerator and blizkick your ROM to the FastRAM on your accelerator. That'll give you a speed boost.
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Having to clock down to 16 MHz is b*llsh|t - there are jumpers to adjust ROM speed (J151/152) from 160-280 ns - they can't be that slow (at least original ones).
@ilwrath
Actually ranger mem and chip mem are exactly the same speed. You can also find ranger mem in A2000s with OCS Fat Agnus (512 KB chip).
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Ratte wrote:
Getting a softboot Kick3.1 is easy!
All you need is a A3000 WITH Kick3.1-ROMs and the WB3.1 Install-Disk.
In directory c: you can find the "extractkickstart" tool.
With this tool you are able to create a A3000 superkickstart with kick3.1.
With this superkickstart you are able to boot Kick3.1 on a softboot A3000.
YES, COMMODORE RELEASED A KICKSTART-RIPPER WITH WB3.1 !!!
:lol: :-P
And what arguments should be used? :-D
extractkickstart ?
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And what arguments should be used? :-D
extractkickstart ?
necrobump.
I believe this tool only allows you to RIP a Kickstart from a SuperKickstart disk to a file.