SuperKickstart

[Tension]

Why did the A4000 not have this? Cost cutting? The story of the development of the 4000 is quite depressing to read.

[Heiroglyph]

Because that management team didn't come up with the idea?

It seemed like there were a lot of changes just so the new management could "own" the project.

In reality for the 1000 and 3000 it seemed more like "the OS isn't ready, how can we ship without burning ROMs?"

IMHO, it was a workaround.

[save2600]

That's what I've been lead to understand as well. That Kickstart disks were only around because the OS wasn't ready or good enough to be burned to ROM.

Screw that. The way I see it, Kickstart disks are an awesome concept. On a system such as the A3000 though, at least you had the choice of booting Kickstart off the HD to speed things up. Very cool option, but I always wondered... if you have say Kickstart 1.3 and 3.1 on the first partition of a HD, how do you tell the computer to boot from a particular partition appropriate for said Kickstart?

What do you do... put OS 1.3 on the next available partition, make it bootable and if you want 3.1, you select the partition with OS 3.1 in early startup?

[adolescent]

There was a boot menu option that allowed you to select 1.3 or 2.x (and HD or floppy).  HD partitions needed to be named WB_1.3 and WB_2.x with the appropriate software in order to boot.

[save2600]

There was a boot menu option that allowed you to select 1.3 or 2.x (and HD or floppy).  HD partitions needed to be named WB_1.3 and WB_2.x with the appropriate software in order to boot.

Oh yeah, that's right - thanks! That boot option was in that special A3000 Kickstart 1.4 ROM set (which I also have) Totally makes sense. So it's pretty much an "automatic" affair booting the appropriate OS then. Cool!

Assuming that option in Kickstart 1.4 would load 3.1 (even though the screen might say 2.x) that is.  :lol:

[Matt_H]

I'm with Heiroglyph on this one. It was definitely a workaround. While it seems nice to be able to change kickstarts that easily, the compromise is that you're left with a beta-quality core system on the A3000 1.4 ROMs (exec v36). That means pre-2.x levels of compatibility with accelerators and zorro cards, which limits you in different ways.

(From a technical standpoint, the way the A3000 SuperKickstart ROMs work is that they look for the file Devs:Kickstart on a partition called WB_2.x: or WB_1.3:. You need both partitions on your hard drive to be able to switch between them from the early boot menu; you can also choose either from floppy if you prefer)

[SpeedGeek]

Both the A1000 Kickstart disk and the A3000 SuperKickstart ROM (AKA Kickstart 1.4) were specifically made because 1.2 wasn't ready when the A1000 shipped and 2.0 wasn't ready when the A3000 shipped.
 
The SuperKickstart ROM only works in a A3000 with an MC68030. It won't work with MC68040/060 due to MMU issues and won't work in the A4000/030 due to lack of a real "scsi.device".

[mfilos]

I wish we could ROMsplit these SuperKickstarts with Remus (or other tool) to it's modules so we could burn some custom Kicks for fun

[alexh]

What for?? I mean if you've got an accelerator you've got SuperKickstart functionality built in through the Blizkick (or equivalent MAPROM) feature.

At the time RAM was far more expensive than ROM

[save2600]

Would be nice for us A1000 owners to have a custom Kickstart with a specific SCSI xxx.device included for non-autobooting SCSI cards such as the Starboard.

[psxphill]

Would be nice for us A1000 owners to have a custom Kickstart with a specific SCSI xxx.device included for non-autobooting SCSI cards such as the Starboard.

Custom a1000 kickstart disks have been around since 1985.
 
Create your rom as normal and then put it on a disk. I'm pretty sure that you can get an app to write the floppy but even if you can't then it's very trivial.