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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Sandman on February 12, 2010, 09:37:20 PM

Title: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: Sandman on February 12, 2010, 09:37:20 PM

Hi,

I have both the 1.4 rom tower for softkicking my A3000 and I also have 3.1 roms.

I would like to build the best all-around machine to play with but I will be using the stock 68030 and not using an accelerator.  I also would like to play around with AMIX as I have the 3070 tape drive and AMIX stuff..... sounds like something fun to play with. :)

Is any of the above dependent on having 1.4 on the machine?

Title: Re: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: tone007 on February 12, 2010, 09:53:06 PM

All of that stuff works fine with any of the ROMs, I believe.

Title: Re: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: alexh on February 12, 2010, 10:17:05 PM

Hard ROMS for sure. You get back 512Kbytes of RAM plus you can use an accelerator in the future.

AMIX is KS1.4 dependant? Surely not?

Title: Re: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: save2600 on February 12, 2010, 10:18:50 PM

I'd recommend the real ROMS too. on top of the "free" 512kb of memory, the system boots up a little quicker - which is always a good thing.

I noticed when I softkicked 3.1, it had a revision number of 40.70 and now that I installed the ROMS, it reads 40.68... any real difference between the two?

Title: Re: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: alexh on February 12, 2010, 10:23:50 PM

There are reports that v40.68 is more compatible.

Quote

Olaf Barthel wrote:
A3000 SCSI driver for 40.70 which for some people caused trouble with their SCSI devices. The driver in 40.68 did not trigger the same problems, which is why, eventually, 40.68 shipped instead of 40.70. Some of the 40.70 ROMs shipped to customers who didn't have any problems at all with the SCSI driver.

I used my v40.70 file with KS1.4 for a decade without issues with countless SCSI devices.

Title: Re: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: save2600 on February 12, 2010, 10:35:49 PM

Thanks Alex!

This might be relevant to the OP also:

I just noticed this... not sure if this is just a coincidence, but when I soft-reset my machine after installing the ROMS, more often than not, I get the red windowed Guru telling me there was a "software error"...    I've heard of the SCSI NV Ram on the A3000, but don't know how to access it or if that might be the problem or not.

Title: Re: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: alexh on February 12, 2010, 11:49:02 PM

http://aminet.net/package/util/sys/SetBatt1_0

Title: Re: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: save2600 on February 12, 2010, 11:53:04 PM

You rock Alex... Gratis!

Title: Re: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: ChaosLord on February 13, 2010, 12:21:52 PM

Softkicking the kickstart is way better than having a real ROM.
1. Your OS runs much faster from fastram than from slow ROM.
2. It is soooooooo easy to change the ROM file to any version you want whenever you want.

Title: Re: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: alexh on February 13, 2010, 01:14:48 PM

1) SoftROM's don't work with any accelerator.
2) The OS isn't THAT much faster.
3) You can still map the ROM to RAM if you like.
4) Who changes the ROM file? I never did in all the years I used my A3000.

Title: Re: Softkick or Hard ROMS for A3000?
Post by: ChaosLord on February 13, 2010, 01:30:12 PM

IIRC the fastram is rated at 80ns and the ROM is rated at 280ns so that is 3.5x faster.

Fastram supports filling the instruction cache with BURST-mode but IIRC the ROM chips do not.  So that makes fastram at least 4x faster than icky ROM chips.


I used to change back to a 1.3 kickstart because Audition 4 and some other apps were never compatible with the new 2.x kickstarts.