AROS Kickstart Replacement Phase I and II

[dammy]

Typically, I would be posting this over on the AROS subboard, but I feel this should be mentioned to the UAE (as well as Classic Amiga users) subboard readers since this could be of major interest.

TeamAROS' has two (and third brewing) bounties Phase I and Phase II bounties that would lead to a AROS kickstart replacement for Amiga kickstart for UAE.  There is a Dev that is looking at it but is holding off till more $ is added to make the huge task more worth while to do.

This could be leading to new kickstart ROMs being burned for your machine or use in UAE.  Yes, individual amiga series would have to additional work done to it, but this is your chance now to push forward and leave Amiga Inc to the history books.

Dammy
TeamAROS

[motorollin]

There's already a Linux bootloader for classic Amigas, so could an AROS Kickstart ROM be based on that?

--
moto

[SamuraiCrow]

A bootloader uses Kickstart routines to do everything.  We're talking about a whole new ROM image here.

[Oli_hd]

That would be a great thing to see done, a binary compatiable ROM that you could load workbench on until Aros is perfected.
I wish whoever gets assigned this the very best of luck.

[SamuraiCrow]

Ummm... Workbench is contained in the Kickstart ROM as well.   :roll:

[nadoom]

wonderful idea! lets do it..

[motorollin]

Oh ok, so without the original Kickstart, the Linux bootloader would fail to work.

Serves me right for trying to be clever  :-P :lol:

--
moto

[SamuraiCrow]

IF the AROS Kickstart ROM were done correctly it would still work.  But there's always the chance that some programs wouldn't use the Kickstart in the correct way or would try to patch the system to use different functions.  For example, the new Kickstart would require the removal of the SetPatch command from your s:Startup-sequence file.  It would probably boot faster but at the expense of some compatability.

[dammy]

wonderful idea! lets do it..

Just takes cash or code.  :-D

Dammy

[Tricky]

This would certainly be useful for making your own Amiga using FPGAs.  It's been done!

[Oli_hd]

Ummm... Workbench is contained in the Kickstart ROM as well.

Err, the CLI is in the kickstart, the GUI (Workbench) is on floppy/CD-Rom/harddrive.

[Piru]

@Oli_hd

Nope. Workbench is in Kickstart ROM at least since KS V36.

For example KS 3.1:

workbench.task
wbtag 39.1 (20.4.92)
workbench.library
wb 40.5 (24.5.93)
icon.library
icon 40.1 (15.2.93)

The parts on floppy are LoadWB (to launch the WB) and version.library (workbench version). A4000T KS ROM 40.70 is special, it has a floppy based workbench.library.

[jdiffend]

Gee, the bounty is almost up to $300... about 10 times what it was when I looked at doing it when the bounty was set up.

Too bad that's still probably less than $1/hr for the amount of work required.

[jdiffend]

@Oli_hd

Piru is right... it's in the ROM for later releases.

[dammy]

Gee, the bounty is almost up to $300... about 10 times what it was when I looked at doing it when the bounty was set up.

Too bad that's still probably less than $1/hr for the amount of work required.

It does take time to build bounties up.  The more people who see AROS as a workable alternative, the faster donations are accumulated.  The larger the community builds up, the more donations flow in, more devs are attracted to AROS developement.  Long ass process, but that's the nature of a community based OS.

Yes, the bounties still need more cash, which is why I'm posting on here.  I can see an alliance between the Classic Amiga owners, Emulators, and AROS community being beneficial to everyone.  Classic owner can see a ray of hope for updating WB and kickstart.  Emulators can gain freedom from having deal with Amiga Inc's IP.

Dammy