Problem fitting kickstart 3.1 rom's in A3000

[dnelsonfl]

@drbytes,

What version were the original ROMs on the A3000?

Try reading some of the archived newsgroup messages about rom problems. Some of the solutions might work out for you. (link).

I vaguely remember reading about occasional compatibility problems with rom towers and 3.1 roms. The solution was to try a different set of 3.1 roms. I'm on my way out right now and I couldn't find the original links regarding this issue. Perhaps I've jolted somebody else's memory and they can step up?

Edit: From reading, it looks like there might have been two different versions of the 3.1 ROM out there. One set was for systems without a rom tower (such as rev 9 motherboard). You could also use it with a rom tower on an older motherboard, if it worked for you. If it did not work, then you had to get the special version that was for systems with a rom tower. Except, you didn't use the rom tower. The roms were programmed differently to compensate for what the rom tower did. I also read some issues with getting them to work with 16mhz, and some issues getting them to work at 25mhz.

At this point, your best bet is to contact a reliable Amiga vendor such as AmigaKit or SoftHut (or others, but those are the only two I remember). Explain to them your problem, and see what rom kit they recommend. That way you are sure to get what you need, and some assistance if you run into further problems.

Good luck!

-David

[adolescent]

Sounds like bad or incorrectly labeled ROMs.  Try to get another set and see.

[drbytes]

@dnelsonfl

I have the original bootroms (Loads kickstart from harddisk).

reading the solutions in your link did not really help since i already tried all that.

What you write about 2 different sets of roms i'v read also and i think that is indeed correct. Since i have an A3000 with Rom-tower i should be able to fit any of the 2 sets available.

To investigate some more I just tried a set of A1200/A4000 KS3.1 roms in my A3000 and as i expected i coud actualy boot :-) but ofcourse without SCSI and also fastram is not recognised. I also tested the A3000 Roms in my A1200 and it comes with a Red screen indicating a ROM (checksum) error. I conclude from that that the 1200 is actualy running instructions from the roms but that the roms are faulty. I also conclude from this that my set of A3000 roms is the one which requires the ROM-tower in my Amiga3000. Strange however is that i do not get the red screen when i place the roms in my A3000 (i get no response at all).

One solution for me might be to use the A1200/4000 roms and use an IDE controller with IDE harddisk (Still have an Buddha controller lying around).  :-D

I'm a bit reluctant to order new rom's (especially overseas) since the posibility of not working/incompatible roms seems rather high.

Thank you and everone here for your input :-)

Tom

[dnelsonfl]

@drbytes,

Interesting that your other Amigas show some kind of reaction to the 3.1 roms you're having trouble with. It would not be a good idea to use roms meant for another Amiga in your 3000. There are differences, for a reason, and it may go beyond just SCSI not working right. If anybody in your area has a 3000 and is willing to help, maybe he or she could try your roms in their machine and see if it works and you could try theirs. Also, if anybody near you can loan you some older roms, such as 2.04 roms, to try those out and see what happens. If it works with those, then suspect a compatibility problem with your 3.1 roms.

I do recall instances where for whatever reason, a zorro card or upgrade chip would work okay on one Amiga but not on another that was apparently identical right down to the motherboard revisions.

Having the old bootroms that load kickstart from disk can cause lots of problems, as you probably already read. You tried disconnecting the harddrive and booting from a disk? The A3000 will sit there for a VERY long time with a blank screen while the harddrive times out. On mine, this sometimes takes up to two full minutes.


-David

[drbytes]

@dnelsonfl

If i can find someone near with an A3000 (preferably a Rev8.x or 9.x) willing to help I would for sure test my roms in his/her Amiga. I however do not see the point of trying older roms since that will not tell me anything about my Amiga (is already working with my original bootroms and now also with KS3.1 from A1200/4000) and also it will give no extra information about my set of A3000 KS3.1 roms which are not working in my A3000. My roms are simply bad or not compatible with my A3000 so testing my roms in another Amiga3000 will be the best option to know if my roms are actualy bad or incompatible.

I did test with and without harddisk to be sure and i waited several minutes to let the machine scan the SCSI bus but if the roms are working i would at least expect the powerled to turn bright and even that was not happening.

In the last few days i was also working on another A3000 mainboard (Rev 6.2, also with romtower) which is was totaly dead but now is showing some more life after some repairs (yelow screen/blinking powerled) so i was able to test my set of roms in this machine too. It showed me the same result: With the KS3.1 the board will do absolutely nothing besides heating up the room a little ;-) More reason to believe my roms are faulty.

Tom

[Tahoe]

@drbytes:

Offer still open if you have a possibility to come to Amsterdam. Preferably bring your whole A3000.
Have a rev. 9.02 3000 currently running Kickstart 3.1 (ROM).

[drbytes]

@Tahoe

I'm happy to read you like to help me but Amsterdam is to far away for me to only test the roms since I'm living in Enschede. But thank you for your offer anyway :-)

Greetings from Enschede

Tom

[Tahoe]

Have you tried this:

ROM Speeds/Timing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some A3000 owners have noted that new 3.1 ROM chips can't be run at 25 Mhz.  Set the ROM speed at 16 Mhz with jumpers J150 and J151.

And ehr, you say you have the old 1.4 BootRom chips eh? Why bother at all? I just picked up a nice A3000 with the same chips and decided not to change them for 3.1 but simply Softkicking... It's much more versatile this way. You can actually make different partitions with different ROM'S. I can even fallback to 1.3 or 2.0....

[Crusher]

Hope these pictures will help. Observe that although it works for me it might not work for you, so be causious.

RomTower
Ver.7.0
16MHz_@28.37516MHz
The_correct_way
Sitting_in_U182_U183
Overflipped
The  _correct_jumpers

As you can see on the "Overflipped"-picture the "1" rom is on the right and the "0" rom is on the left side as it should be when you turn the romtower over. The "1" rom should still be on the right side i.e. towards the back of your Amiga (where all the external ports are).

EDIT: I´m soooo sorry, the pictures and statements I made about the settings was totally wrong. However it shouldn't have burned anything, it didn't do it for me anyway. I have now corrected the pictures and settings so now they are right. I have even tested my A3000 with these settings.
drbytes was right. :-)

[alexh]

If you are not going to install an accelerator, and you have some RAM in your Amiga, why not just install KS3.1 into the correct directory on your hard disk and use KS1.4's softbooting? You of course need the A3000 KS3.1 image that is not encrypted.

I recommend that you make a superkickstart floppy disk before trying any of this.

[alexh]

you have the old 1.4 BootRom chips eh? Why bother at all?

(1) Doesn't work with accelerators.
(2) Uses 512kbytes of RAM.

[drbytes]

@Tahoe

ROM speed jumpers i already tried (see tread) and since My a3000 has a 16Mhz CPU the jumpers were already at this position.

About Softkicking: With the bootroms an 68060 accelerator will   not work and I was intending to use my MKII 060 so that's the main reason for me to want rom's instead of softkicking 3.1. If my 060 would work with softkicking i guess the fallbackmode is a usefull feature and i would opt for this solution too. Ofcourse you loose 512k ram like Alexh is also pointing out....

[drbytes]

@Crusher

Thanks for making very detailed pictures:) Very handy. I noticed however your roms are placed BACKWARDS in the sockets!!!!!!! The notch on the roms (indicating pin 1) SHOULD be pointing towards the doughterboard of the amiga whilst in your pictures they point towards the side of the amiga (where the mouse/keyb. connectors are). If this is really the way they work for you i find this very strange indeed.

My romtower is seated exactly like yours, also in the same sockets. The bootroms i have work with Pin 1 towards the doughterboard. Also my KS3.1 roms should be inserted in the same way and in that way the text on the roms is also readed from left to right exactly like the text on the bootroms!! What i see in your pictures is the text is also upside down indicating they are seated backwards!

I also see your Amiga is missing some chips so perhaps you are working on it and maybe you put the chips in backwards by mistake so i hope you read this and be sure they are correct (for you) before they possibly cause damage...

More later....

Tom

[Crusher]

Got your PM :-)

Hmm.. they shouldn´t be wrong because I haven´t touched the roms after I turned this Amiga off for some parts for my A3KT. To be absolutely sure, I will put the chips back and test it. But I´m pretty sure that is why you have to use the romtower, a flaw in the production of these motherboards was made and they fixed it with a romtower instead of making a new motherboard.

I´ll test it later(much later)tonight and post the results.  :-)

[drbytes]

@Crusher

Well, The Rom tower changes realy only the adress lines because they were mixed-up (the flaw you are talking about) but in doing so the tower needs the chips positioned in the way i posted before. I Actualy measured today which lines go where to know exactly what the rom tower was doing.

And since we seem to have the same Rev. mainboard and my Original roms are working i'm pretty sure yours are placed reversed.

It could be possible to damage the chips if you place them backwards (but i'm not sure about this).

I will post more about the ROM Towers exact function later

Regards,

Tom

[drbytes]

YES I finaly got it solved, the 3.1 Rom's are working in my 3000!!!  :-)  :-)  :-)

After seeing the pictures Crusher posted with the 3.1 rom reversed in the socket while i also could see he had the same Rev. (7.x) mainboard with exacly the same Rev Rom-tower i got really confused. Could it be possible that my (until now not working) 3.1 Roms should be installed reversed in their sockets? Even If the original roms (V1.4 bootroms) AND the kickstart 3.1 Roms taken from my A1200 worked correct without reversing? I wanted to know for sure and took the schematics of the A3000 and compared them with the schematics of the A4000 and i also found out what the rom-tower is doing by measuring the lines from the sockets where the roms go to the pins which go into the rom-sockets on the amiga.


[color=0000ff]This is what the rom-tower is doing (short version):[/color]
Sockets U180 & U181 on the A3000 have Adresslines A2...A18 from the amiga go to A1...A17 on the rom chips.
Sockets U180 & U181 on the ROM-Tower have the same Adresslines A2...A18 coming from the amiga go to A0...A16 on the rom chips.
The A4000 and A1200 also have A2...A18 go to A0...A16 on the roms and that is where they are supposed to be. So basicly that is what the romtower is correcting, all other signals (D0..D15/D31, OE, CS, GND,VCC) stay the same.

So this confirms that the kickstart roms (wheter they are KS2.x or 3.x) should be placed in the same position as the original bootroms have been.

Still i did not have my KS3.1 at work and i also found out why: The Adresslines of A4000 and i guess also newer models of A3000 (Rev 8.x an higher) decode also A19 (from amiga) to A17 (on rom chip) which makes for a total of 1024K of rom space (18 adress lines, 16 data lines, 2 chips = 2^18x2(bytes)x2(chips)=1024Kbytes). On older Rev. (6.x, 7.x) A3000 A19 is not connected and that leaves room for max 512Kb. So since KS3.1 is (only) 512kb it should work great right? But my KS3.1 did not work. Looking a bit closer at my KS3.1 (they are eproms and not roms in my case) i found out that my chips are 4mbit (512kb) each so that totals to 1024K  so that means only half of it it filled with the KS3.1 code and the other half is not used. Now how does the amiga select the 'right' part of the chip and not the part which is not used? It uses the extra adresline (Amiga A19, Rom A17) to do so! I think this extra line was intended for future kickstarts which might be bigger than 512K (Older KS1.2/1.3 was only 256K and grew to 512 starting with KS2.0). The A17(rom) line on the sockets on the ROM-Tower was not connected to A19 (amiga) but was connected to ground(0V) and with that it selected the unused part of my Eproms and that is why my KS3.1 did not work in my Amiga3000. Until now because after i reconnected the A17 lines from my eproms to +5V (which makes the amiga use the other half of my eproms) it finaly worked :-D  :-D  :-D

So this also explains why 'some' KS3.1 roms seem incompatible with A3000 with rom Tower. Some roms like my eproms are actualy twice the normal size and need A17 attached to +5V to select the part where the code is. The 'compatible' roms probably are the right size and have no A17 so they would work in the rom-tower where the A17 line is connected to ground. (Ofcourse if the code in my rom would have been in the other half they would have worked too but would then be incompatible in newer rev's A3000 with A19 from amiga attached to A17 from rom).

It's a long story but it took me some time to find out how it all connected and i hope that this can help others who have the same problem if they try to install Kickstart 3.1.

Also i would like to thank all of you who posted (again :-) ) because without the postings i would not have searched so long i guess.

Tom