Where is super-kickstart?

[Amiduffer]

I've never heard of this!

Looking through my old AOS 3.0 manuals, trying to figure out how to use the screendump feature, I came across something that said, if you have an A3000D or A3000T, you should have a disk that has something called "super kickstart".

Now that I have a 3000D with OS3.5, is that something I should bother about? Why was it developed?

[sdyates]

I have two a3000s -- one has the super kickstart, the other does not.

What does it mean?
Super kickstart is the ability to boot Kickstart 1.3 or 2.1 -- at least that is what mine has -- get this by hglding down both mouse button on boot -- otherwise if it is not there, then you will get the options of bootinh ecs versus ocs, etc...

[Amiduffer]

sdyates wrote:
I have two a3000s -- one has the super kickstart, the other does not.

What does it mean?
Super kickstart is the ability to boot Kickstart 1.3 or 2.1 -- at least that is what mine has -- get this by hglding down both mouse button on boot -- otherwise if it is not there, then you will get the options of bootinh ecs versus ocs, etc...

Oh! Heh.  :-P

[Matt_H]

Some additional details:

A3000s equipped with the so-called 1.4 ROMs need a SuperKickstart disk if a hard drive (or ROM image) is not installed. The ROMs search for a file called DEVS:Kickstart on the boot volume and load that into Fast RAM. If the system can't find that file, it'll ask for a SuperKickstart disk and give you the option to boot 1.3 or 2.x.

When installing 2.x, part of the prep work should include extracting the 2.x Kickstart from the floppy and copying it to Devs:Kickstart. I can't remember if this is done automatically, but a tool called ExtractKickstart on the 2.0 install disk will do it. That tool needs to be run manually with some additional parameters to get the 1.3 image off the disk if you're doing a manual HD install of 1.3.

[sdyates]

Matt_H wrote:
Some additional details:

A3000s equipped with the so-called 1.4 ROMs need a SuperKickstart disk if a hard drive (or ROM image) is not installed. The ROMs search for a file called DEVS:Kickstart on the boot volume and load that into Fast RAM. If the system can't find that file, it'll ask for a SuperKickstart disk and give you the option to boot 1.3 or 2.x.

When installing 2.x, part of the prep work should include extracting the 2.x Kickstart from the floppy and copying it to Devs:Kickstart. I can't remember if this is done automatically, but a tool called ExtractKickstart on the 2.0 install disk will do it. That tool needs to be run manually with some additional parameters to get the 1.3 image off the disk if you're doing a manual HD install of 1.3.

Very well said <-- what he said

[InTheSand]

Hi,

If you want to make your own SuperKickstart disk, you can use MakeSuperDisk from Aminet. You'll need the relevant A3000 KickStart ROM images.

 - Ali

[reflect]

It can also load 3.x.

[Amiduffer]

Matt_H wrote:
Some additional details:

A3000s equipped with the so-called 1.4 ROMs need a SuperKickstart disk if a hard drive (or ROM image) is not installed. The ROMs search for a file called DEVS:Kickstart on the boot volume and load that into Fast RAM. If the system can't find that file, it'll ask for a SuperKickstart disk and give you the option to boot 1.3 or 2.x.

When installing 2.x, part of the prep work should include extracting the 2.x Kickstart from the floppy and copying it to Devs:Kickstart. I can't remember if this is done automatically, but a tool called ExtractKickstart on the 2.0 install disk will do it. That tool needs to be run manually with some additional parameters to get the 1.3 image off the disk if you're doing a manual HD install of 1.3.

It all sounds rather convoluted! :-o I'll stick with 3.5 thank you. It was pretty good explanation though. HD-less computers aren't too fun.

[Matt_H]

Yes, it's a bit of a challenge to get the system up initially, but it's pretty much transparent once everything's installed.