Kickflash experiences

[JohnFante]

I am considering buying a Kickflash from Induvidual Computers for my A4000D.

Does anybody have any experiences/advice they would like to share? For instance how much the boot time increases etc.

Thanks in advance.

[Effy]

Isn´t that the Zorro3 card of that can be expanded to 1 Gb but nobody knows how  :-?

[redrumloa]

Effy wrote:
Isn´t that the Zorro3 card of that can be expanded to 1 Gb but nobody knows how  :-?

Zorro II or III. It can be expanded up to 1GB via it's built in clockport, however the modules have not been released yet.

[Crusher]

I have both the eFlash4000(1MB, ZorroIII only.From Elbox)(Yeah I know, please don't hit me) :-)  and the KickflashOS4(1MB, ZorroII and III. From IC) and I must say that the Kickflash is better with it's extra clockport.

The speed diff between them isn't noticeable. The Kickflash sits more firmly in the Zorro than the eFlash, that tends to "wiggle" a bit.
My version of the eFlash4000 was from the very first batch so I had to make a little hack on them(yes I have two) for them to work in my A3K's but after that it did it's job.

The Kickflash has only one jumper, enabled(then it reads it's memory and it's write protected) and disabled (then it's not reading the memory and it's not write protected). The eFlash has three jumpers(Write protected or not, read or no read and the third is for future features)

Bootup time is diff on diff Amigas, so I can only tell about mine and it went faster than I had expected so I'm pleased. I'll time them between when the board are enabled and disabled as soon as possible.

Oh, I almost forgot... The Kickflash is darkblue, veeeery nice :-)

[Effy]

I prefer to wait for those modules to come out, to have 1 Gb memory on a card, that should be the way to go  :-)

[X-ray]

1gb: oh yeah, gimme!!!

Whats the maximum I can address with this 060?

[PaSha]

I have a Kickflash, and I'm quite happy with it.
I had some problems in the start (the latest firmware didn't quite like my particular A4000T) but I got great and fast support from Jens Schönfeld/Individual Computers and CoyoteFlux (programmers of the CoyoteFlash tool), and it's working now.
As for the reduction in boot time, it's very individual. Basically, the boot time is reduced by the amount of time that passes between the setpatch reboot and when the computer starts booting again.

Go ahead, you won't regret it.

-Paul

[JohnFante]

Thanks for all the advice. Just a fast, last question:

I allready have a legal 3.1 Rom-image (Amiga Forever) on my PC. Will I be able to transfer that to the Kickflash and use that?

Thansk in advance.

[tjaoz]

@JohnFante

I am considering buying a Kickflash from Induvidual Computers for my A4000D.

If you have A4000 you should rather choose an eFlash 4000 card. Eflash 4000 is a regular Zorro III card, Kickflash is a Zorro II card. Yes, Kickflash works in Zorro III slots, but in Zorro II mode only. It makes that the access to the Kickflash Flash memory is over 10 times slower than to eFlash 4000 Flash memory.

Paying a little bit more only you can have eFlash 4000 with 2MB(!) of Flash memory. Additionally Elbox has worldwide Free Shipping offer now. :-D

[x56h34]

@tjaoz:

Hey, btw...your laundry from Elbox is just done.

[adolescent]

JohnFante wrote:
I allready have a legal 3.1 Rom-image (Amiga Forever) on my PC. Will I be able to transfer that to the Kickflash and use that?

Probably not.  The rom images included with Amiga Forever are specially encrypted, and only work with WinUAE.  Even then, I'm not sure the licensing allows you to use them elsewhere.

[Orjan]

@tjaoz

Even so, I would still buy the Kickflash, should I ever consider one such solution... Jens has always made fine products and I would rather support him than Elbox... Not saying that Elbox makes crappy stuff, but still...

[platon42]

@Tjaoz:
Ah, the little Elbox-Rat is back.

> It makes that the access to the Kickflash Flash memory is over 10 times slower than to eFlash 4000 Flash memory.

Oh, right! Except for that factor of ten must be from your wildest dreams, let's calculate: Reading 1MB over Zorro II with 2.8MB/sec is about 0.35 seconds. Now, reading 1MB over Zorro III with presumably 7MB/sec is 0.14 secs. Now this has saved you really some of your lifetime! My gosh!

> Paying a little bit more only you can have eFlash 4000 with 2MB(!) of Flash memory.

Yeah, and what would you want to fill in there? The eFlash software has no support for Kickstart flashing and it allows only a maximum of 15 modules. So first find something that makes sense to place into the flashrom before advertising with even more space. Unfortunately, the eFlash software does not support compression, unlike the Algor (Pro) software, hence, you could easily fit nearly same amount in an Algor Pro FlashRom-

In a german magazine, Amiga Plus (recent issue), Algor/Romulus, eFlash and KickFlash have been tested intensively. And guess what, the eFlash has the worst software (a "Installer script" to select the flash rom items with absolutely no user-friendliness), the worst documentation (less than 2 KB?), the least features (even normal romtags hardly work!) and least additional modules and goodies (there are none). But hey, at least the CD contains 41MB of Elbox website, with the software for the eFlash being less than 30KB.

I don't need to tell you what was the winning product in this review. Elbox' software is lightyears away from being something usable. Who cares about that Zorro III interface? The flashrom is only read ONCE after turning the machine one, who cares about a few milliseconds more or less.

[orange]

Maybe I didn't understand all this, but ROM is certainly read more than once unless it has been copied to RAM. All the programs use ROM routines, and most of Amiga OS is held in ROM  (thank God)
Can you explain me why are you all mentioning 1Gb, do you mean 1Mb? Kickflash is ROM image in flash memory, right?

[platon42]

orange wrote:
Maybe I didn't understand all this, but ROM is certainly read more than once unless it has been copied to RAM. All the programs use ROM routines, and most of Amiga OS is held in ROM  (thank God)
Can you explain me why are you all mentioning 1Gb, do you mean 1Mb? Kickflash is ROM image in flash memory, right?

There are only two "real" ROM spaces: 0xf80000-0xffffff where the normal kickstart ROM resides and 0xf00000-0xf7ffff for the "debugging" ROM (AFAIK used by CD32 and Cyberstorm/Blizzard early init ROM). The code in this location is already relocated to these fixed addresses -- they cannot be moved except by using virtual mapping by the MMU (or special hardware hacks like the MapRom feature).

Replacing Residents (aka RomTags aka Modules) from the ROM with new ones (e.g. from AmigaOS Update in 3.5/3.9/BB2) is done by relocating these modules somewhere in fast memory and letting a mechanism in the Kickstart ROM initialize the newer ones (KickTagPtr/KickMemPtr or the Residents list) instead the ones from the ROM.

Hence, as FlashROM actually behaves like a ROM in the sense that it cannot be written to in normal ways (it is not RAM), but you cannot guarantee that RomTags do not have DATA/BSS segments and need to write into associated memory or code, these modules have to be relocated to "real" RAM.

Under normal circumstances, this relocation of RomTags from the FlashRom only happens once at the very first boot, thus, the FlashRom is only read once and it is not time critical, how fast this is.

The Kickflash and Algor (PRO) cards are autobooting Zorro II cards, but they only use a 64KB segment of the Zorro II address space for accessing the 512KB/1MB of FlashRom.

Both Kickflash and Algor have to copy the contents to fast ram (including the kickstart rom image, that might be stored in there). (Again, this happens only once). The eFlash has to do this aswell, because of the reasons mentioned above (relocation) -- but unlike the other solutions, the eFlash cannot remap the Kickstart ROM.

The Kickflash has an additional clockport on its board, and it has been said that it should be able to hold a flash memory module with 1GB capacity (again, this will not show up as real memory in the computer, but rather some kind of ram-drive).

Hope this helps a bit.