Need suggestions for Kickflash board.

[Ral-Clan]

I just got a Kickflash board for Christmas (they're quite cheap to my surprise).  I've used Amigas for 15 years but ROM patching and all that is still a bit mystical to me, so I don't want to screw things up.

Right now my Amiga re-starts twice after the initial power-on.  Once to load the patches for OS3.9 (at SetPatch?) and a second time for the utility ROMTAGMEM which turns on my 040 accelerator's caches & its on-board 32MB of RAM.

- What files from the OS3.9 Boingbags 1 and 2 do I need to put on the Kickflash?

- I use SCSI and have heard there's an updated SCSI device in OS3.9, in what directory would I find this to install it on the kickflash?

- Once I've put the OS3.9 ROM update and SCSI update on the kickflash, how do I make sure my startup-sequence doesn't try to re-update these files (i.e. how do I disable it in the startup sequence)?  I'm guessing this is done in the SETPATCH command, but I don't exactly how that command works.

- After my Amiga is booted, is there any way to verify that the above patches are working (have been installed) from the kickflash during boot?

- What other modules can I put on the kickflash?  I know of a NoClick module so far, but that's it. (I assume there is no 3.9 kickstart image yet).

Lastly, I assume I should disable any utility in the startup sequence that copies kickstart to RAM, as that would interfere with the kickflash's function, correct?

Thanks!

[Ral-Clan]

motorollin wrote:

Just put the BB2 ROM Update file (the whole thing) in to the KickFlash, then either delete the file from DEVS: or modify your setpatch line to stop it loading the ROM Updates.

I assume renaming it to "ROM UPDATE *DISABLED*" will also work.

Any BlizKick module! Also commands which have a resident tag and are "ROM-able" will work.

Sorry, I don't know what a Blizkick module is, nor a command with a resident tag.  I assume Blizkick has something to do with Blizzard accelerators.  If so can these utilities still be used with Amigas not installed with a Blizzard accelerator?

Does "resident tag" mean a utility that can survive warm re-start of the Amiga?  Other than "noclick" are there any great "must install" utils like this that would be useful with the Kickflash?

[Ral-Clan]

Okay, thanks.  

Now, there is a A1200 style clockport on the KickFlash.

The docs say that there will be a 1GB module released for it.

I'm just thinking: since most Amiga Kickstart images are 512K or no more than 1MB, why would anyone need 1GB of RAM on the Kickflash?

[Ral-Clan]

But what WOULD the 1GB expansion be good for had it been released?  Only for storing kickstart related stuff, right?  Not useable as FastRAM?

I have noticed that a lot of people have the USB Subway board attached to their Kickflash.  Very tempting.  When using a Subway, do you need to run some sort of USB network stack program in the background, and does this steal a lot of RAM/CPU cycles (on my old Amiga, ever CPU cycle and KB of RAM counts!).

[Ral-Clan]

keropi wrote:
when u connect a SUBWAY on the kickflash (or any amiga clockport) it just stays quiet until it is "waken" via the poseidon driver. The poseidon driver can be switched on/off via commands so it won't consume any resources when not needed... you can even put it in your flash rom so u can use usb keyboards/mice/mass storage from boot time! (this means the driver is always "on" )

Very cool.  But when Poseidon is running, is it quite a RAM/CPU hog?  I've heard that because USB devices are fairly dumb, USB transfers & stacks can really slow down older computers.

[Ral-Clan]

Okay, the Kickflash has an A1200 style clockport connector.  I understand that the Amiga sees this as an extra Zorro slot.  But is that Zorro II or Zorro III?  But since my Kickflash is going to be plugged into an A2000 computer, which is Zorro II, does this mean that certain clockport devices which need Zorro III transfer rates should not be used with a Kickflash attached to an A2000 Zorro II slot?