Quad-booting a superkick A3000

[Failure]

I have an A3000 with the old superkickstart ROMs in it.  I recently put the machine back to factory using the original disks, so now it has a 1.3 kickstart and a 2.0 kickstart.  I also have a 3.1 superkick disk, which I used in the past to put AmigaOS 3.9 on the machine.

Basically, I want to be able to run four OS on the machine.  1.3.2, 2.04, 3.1, and 3.9.  I have three things I was curious about.

1) Is it possible to have all three kickstarts on the HD?  I assume not, I was planning on using 3.1 kickstart from floppy for occasions where I needed it.

2) Is there a method for multi-OS booting besides the early boot menu?  The early boot menu isn't horrible though.

3) And the question I am really curious about.  Is there a way I can remove the kickstart from the machine's memory without powering the machine down all the way?  A cursory search of Aminet didn't turn up anything.  Something like a "reset-all-the-way" utility or method?

Any tips to help me get this thing switching OSs with a minimum of fuss is appreciated!

*edit* it might be fun to put AMIX on it too and have it booting 5 OSs, but I don't have the HD space for it

[Castellen]

As far as I understand it, the OS1.4 SuperKiskStart ROM looks for a hard disk partition called either WB_1.x or WB_2.x, then if found looks for DEVS:kickstart and loads the ROM image into memory.

If you copy an OS 3.1 ROM image into WB_2.x:DEVS:kickstart then it can boot OS 3.1.
Not sure if you can then run OS 3.9 from this or not???
You might need to buy a pair of 3.1 ROMs for it.

You could write some kind of script to copy whatever ROM image you need to DEVS:kickstart then force a cold boot.


As for the reset program, I use this:
http://amiga.serveftp.net/Temp/reset.lha

It makes the machine do a cold boot and causes it to reload the ROM image into memory.  Works for me with A4000T and OS 3.9, not sure about earlier OS versions.

[Noster]

Hi

running three OS on the machine would be no problem:

Buy a KickflashOS4 from Individual Computers. Using this flashrom in conjunction with a 2.04 Kickstart ROM you could easyly switch between OS 2.04 (disable the KickflashOS4 via a switch), OS 1.3 (by pressing the fire-button of a joystick connected to the second mouse-port) or OS 3.1 resp. OS 3.9 (depends on whether the ROM-update is placed on HD or in the Kickflash ROM or not).
So you have three Kickstarts in ROM (EPROM) and the system boots very fast regardless which OS you are using.

There is a tool called "ColdReboot" available at Aminet. This tool does remove all patches made to the system and everything loaded to memory, i.e. it resets the Amiga into the state it has just after it is switched on. This should work.

ftp://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/util/boot/ColdReboot.lha

Noster

[Failure]

Ok, well here is where I am at with that thing.

I got 4 OSs installed like I wanted.  1.3.2 and 2.04 boot if their kickstarts are loaded with no further intervention; 3.1 and 3.9 must be booted from the early boot menu after the 40.55 superkick is loaded.

I do not really want to buy another kickflash ;-) so I came up with a kludge.  After installing 2.04 I made a copy of the kickstart to kickstart2.04.  Then I ran upgrade_2.x and installed the 3.1 kickstart, and made a copy called kickstart3.1.  I will write a script that renames the copied kickstart that I want to run to just devs:kickstart and reboots the machine.

The reboot is the problem actually.  Neither program suggested seems to clear the ROM image from memory.  I wonder if this part is going to be possible or not?  This is a bummer cuz I don't like spinning that ancient HD up and down.

[Matt_H]

Why stop at Quadruple booting? Get AMIX installed, and then throw a bridgeboard and Emplant card in there!  :-P

That would have been one killer machine to own in the early 90s...

As for the multiple Kickstarts, I've never had much luck softkicking anything other than 2.04 from the HD or 1.3/2.04 from SuperKickstart. I have a spare set of 3.1 ROMs, but it's much more fun to get it softkicked. :-)
Once the Kickstart image is loaded into memory, though, you can do whatever you want to the Devs:Kickstart file. So your script could rename the current one to Kickstart.2.04, rename Kickstart.1.3 to Kickstart, and then launch the cold reboot.
It might make more sense to put the 1.3 image on a WB_1.3 partition - cleaner version separation, too.

I guess there'd be no avoiding the early boot menu, then...

Might a softkicker like SKick be easier? It has a GUI...


EDIT:
AMIX clears the kickstart from memory... maybe you could do a small dummy install that boots a core environment and then reboots?