Hypothetical Kickstart ideas

[save2600]

Ever since the A1000, one of the features we were attracted to and were promised, was that we could easily change the personality of our Amigas. Effectively turning them into very different machines. Commodore pretty much totally ditched that concept and betrayed us all by marketing machines with Kickstart in ROM. So you save a few seconds bootstrapping your machine with ROMS - big deal. The way I see it, had Commodore stayed true with the Amiga teams original design, things could have gotten REAL interesting.

I guess what I am asking is this... besides some of the modern Kickstart patches and hacks, has anyone ever bothered to write a totally new and non-Commodore type "Kickstart"? Of course, this would mean using a totally different OS. Perhaps ST, Mac and PeeCee emulation would have been easier to swallow and more accessible to the masses.

And before I get too far ahead in my reasoning, isn't all of this possible? 256k-512k surely would have been enough room to play around with. At the time, all of the above mentioned platforms BIOS chips were typically even smaller than either of those figures.  

So why hasn't the concept of a Kickstart on disk (or chips for that matter) been fully realised? Speed and ease of use emulating other platforms could have been so much better and Commodore could have marketed the Amiga as a true chameleon of sorts instead of wasting all that time and money marketing a PC-10, etc.  :idea:

Licensing this stuff could not have been more expensive than the resources it took to create standalone clones, could it?

[save2600]

Purely for the sake of argument, lets say you inserted a Kickstart disk that told the Amiga it was really an AtariST. Kind of a TOS written for the custom Amiga chips/drives, and other I/O functions. You would then be able to insert a REAL Atari GEM disk and away you go. This scenario would save you the hassle of configuring an ST system AFTER Workbench was loaded and hypothetically speaking, grant you greater compatibility and speed since you are not converting ST functions to Amiga - at a Commodore Kickstart or Workbench level. Not to mention, the time saved loading Workbench and then the emulator. Perhaps my reasoning is flawed or impractical  :-)

[save2600]

Early Commodore (or perhaps otherwise) marketing stated there was going to be much more made out of the Kickstart disk system. It certainly helped users make the transition from various Kickstarts a lot easier since they did not have to open up their computers and mess around with chips. Huge benefit for Commodore when dealing with the common end users.

Not trying to start a flame war here, just asking why more wasn't done to take advantage of Commodores awesomely flexible Kickstart architecture. 3rd party companies I would think, could have really exploited that, I would think.

Kind of like how you can turn your TI-99/4A into a Myarc computer system by installing a "simple" card into the PEB.

If it's true that Commodore only did the Kickstart on disk thing because the current Kickstart was so weak at launch and was all just a bad design, well... lol   they must have digressed with the A3000 then  :-)  

[save2600]

I guess my reasoning is flawed if you wouldn't have been allowed to have access to sourcecode Amiga<>Atari for their custom chips, etc. But that could have been ironed out through licensing. If not, how would original software be more incompatible due to no emulation? As an end user, I don't see how it's easier running emulation on top of and after Workbench. And we're all familiar with the incompatibilities of emulating. Especially when the MHZ (or lack of them) really count. I was just thinking emulation would/could have been more practical had it been written on and for more of a hardware level than software.

I'm sure I'm out of my league here and don't fully understand the politics and architecture of it all, just asking the "what ifs" and "why nots".

[save2600]

Right - like a Kickstart with the latest patches burned into a neat and tidy ROM. Has anyone actually burned their own EEPROM like this or is everyone content with the annoying patch and reset scenario?

[save2600]

I don't get it. What's the game got to do with Kickstart?

[save2600]

Well I'll be dipped. That sounds really cool, but awfully strange. What does it do... re-write Kickstart with a very streamlined one that doesn't use as many resources? This would mean it patches Kickstart, right? Erasing what is there and replacing it. If so, how come no reset? Game seems to simply fly off floppies. Figured they had their own proprietary crunching/de-crunching scheme, but not a Kickstart hack.

[save2600]

@Ratte:

KickTos... now we're talking  :-)  How does one get a hold of that brilliant piece of coolness? Twinkick I'm familiar with, but Kickwork3.1... what was that all about? Or should I fire up the German translation program?  lol

[save2600]

@billt:

I'm aware of the first three suggestions, but have no experience (yet) with the other machines and OS4.x

@little:

Thanks, yes I knew that :-)

@Ratte:

Didn't know Piru had an all in one solution. Guess I'll hound him for a copy  :-)  I've been using Andre's Twinkick, which is brilliant. BUT... on a 2.5mb A1000, you lose 256k (boo-hoo).  lol  

If I am reading this right, with 3.1 squished to fit into 256k, I should have even more ram  :pint:    

[save2600]

Oh - and duh. He did that in able to fit the whole bloody lot into an 880kb disk I suppose.  :crazy:   But perhaps a routine was written to throw the extra 256k in Fast Ram then?  And I'm sure that's got to be within a certain memory confine (my autoconfig expansion ram). Which since TwinKick works, Piru's should still work  :-)

[save2600]

R
save2600:
did you read your complete emails?

Hi Ratte:

 Had to do a little investigating, but yeah - finally tracked it down. Kickwork - WOW, you pulled another rabbit out of your hat!  

-seems to only work with my MiniMegs external 2MB expansion
-does not work with my A2091 and its 2mb of memory

...does the A2091 map its memory different or what? When plugged in,
the screen flashes red and constantly resets itself. Even after about 10
minutes. When I replace the A2091 with the other ram card, the screen
never turns red. Instead, flashes different colours for about 5 mins and
then finishes booting.

Not a complaint, but just wondering: why so long for it to boot? Is it 'cuz
of all the decrunching?

I'd really like a 3.1 software solution to work with my A2091 if at all
possible. As I mentioned before, TwinKick will go into constant reset mode too when the A2091 is plugged in and after I've tried disabling autoboot, slower drive, etc. :-(  

LMK if you need some beer zapped your way or maybe something
along the lines of a PayPal donation to help in the quest of getting it to work!  :pint:  

[save2600]

So... does DMA mean that it doesn't place or map the RAM where Kickwork, Twinkick and the like expect it to be?

[save2600]

Its related to the configchain.
Twinkick (& Kickwork) "needs" a memory-expansion as first expansion.
The A2091 is configured as a "hdd-controller" first and then as a "memory-expansion" in a second step (and thats to late for Twinkick).

You can try a workaround, but i cant promise that it works.
(Its just an idea ...)

Set the a2091 memory-jumper to "0kb" and give it a try.

Thanks Ratte. Good idea, but I just tried it with no luck. Was even thinking I could build a switch and in-between resets, switch her to the full 2mb, but all the A1000 wants to do is constantly reset after loading KS 1.3. That's without a HD connected. If a HD is connected, it wants to boot straight away after loading KS 1.3. Looks like I am DJBase bound again for a KS adapter  :-)