Q: Amiga 3000 Kickstart

[save2600]

Hello all!

 Just landed my very first Amiga 3000 and am just now starting to poke around a bit. It came with an OS'less 52mb Quantum HD, but I just happened to have an exact replacement from an A2000 pull that has OS2 on it as well as a bevy of cool programs and utilities. After terminating the HD with the resistor packs (had to yank 'em from the old drive), the system booted up rather quickly and I was able to mess around a bit. First off, holy smokes this system seems 'fast' to me! HD operations and such. This 25mhz 030 built in is no slouch, but I guess the SCSI bus is exceptionally fast on the A3000 too, which is contributing to the overall speedy feel of the machine.

Okay, my question is this: there are 2.04 ROMS on the ROM Tower in it now. If I remove those, will the machine ask for a Kickstart Disk just as the A1000 does? I read something about a Kickstart 1.4... does that need to be installed in order for me to boot a different Kickstart from the HD?

I never had OS 2.x, so even its early Startup menu is foreign to me. Neat little system, although I'm sure I'll be wanting to upgrade her to 3.1. Using Sysinfo and looking at the mobo though, I was able to conclude that she's got 2mb of Chip Ram, 8mb of Fast zips and the 030/882 at 25mhz.

[save2600]

Thanks Tone - that's what I'm quickly gathering here. That ROM Tower... is that necessary for A2000 ROM compatibility? I see a jumper setting for that. Can I not just yank the 2 ROMS off this tower and insert them directly into the mobo? I guess I don't see what the purpose of this tower is. Looks like it should be a Kickstart switcher... lol

[save2600]

Gotcha - thanks! It does have all 4 sockets installed. It's a revision 7.3 mobo btw. Guess I'll just be leaving the tower in place for now since it *does* work. Hate to accidentally muck this thing up. lol

[save2600]

Okay, so the other A3000 showed up today. Turns out it is a 16mhz system, but had a SuperBuster 11 in its socket! Needless to say, I switched that puppy out but quick with the version 7 that was in the 25mhz board. lol  

The 16mhz board also did NOT have a ROM Tower and only had the bottom two Kickstart sockets. I tried installing those sans the ROM Tower in the other board (bottom two sockets) and the system would not boot up (don't worry, I didn't fry the chips, they still work). I did NOT try them in the ROM Tower however. Should I choose to use Kickstart 1.4, do they need to be placed in the upper two (there's 4 total) Kickstart slots or do they need to be placed in the Tower as well? This is all pretty confusing: Rom Tower, no Rom Tower. 4 chip sockets - 2 chip sockets. lol  

Being a huge fan of the A1000, I found/find the Kickstart option intriguing on bootup. Looks like you can select to load it from the HD OR floppy! Pretty damn versatile. The Kickstart early menu screen though talked about Kickstart 2.x and 1.3. If I put an A3000 3.1 Kickstart on DH0 and follow the instructions about relabeling the drive, etc. Would 3.1 then work?!  

Guess there's no real reason to ever boot into 1.3 other than to say WOW, that's "neat"... lol

[save2600]

If you are softkicking though, the disk (HD or Floppy) needs to be named  wb_2.x in hard drive toolbox and the drive set to FFS with out DC or international checked. Your KickStart image should be in DEVS: .  

Do you guys know what the KickROM needs to be called specifically for 2.x or 3.x?

[save2600]

Okay, until I get real KS 3.1 ROMS for my machine, a buddy dumped his ROMS from his 3000 for me to play around with.

I didn't know the Kickstart ROM needed to just be called KICK and have since put the HD back in the machine. SO, what I'm trying to do is put this Kickstart on floppy, boot from there so I can then go into my HD and rename the file appropriately - but I'm not having any luck.

Renamed the file to KICK and tried both creating a folder named Devs to put in there and left out. Nothing. The Floppy has been named wb_2.x...  the 'x' is correct? A number does not go in there?

Sounds like simply dumping ROMS from a machine with a different ROM tower might be the problem.

[save2600]

 Super-Kickstart?!?  lol  Okay, a quick trip over to Aminet revealed a program to do this. I'm gonna try it on my A2500 and see if I can make a Super-Duper Kickstart disk...  lmao!

-edit-

Just tried and now I get "Super Kickstart Bonus code missing"  

Oh well, more time "devoted" to the Amiga this afternoon. Always good practice opening/closing cases, pulling chips and resocketing them. lol

[save2600]

Thank you fellas! That did the trick and after renaming the HD and Kickstart ROM, she boots pretty darn quick. Coincidentally, I did just purchase a set of 3.1 ROMS for the old gal though, so I have the option of either software or hardware configs now!

Thanks again - I really appreciate it.