Question about A3000 Roms

[AmiDude]

OK, this is the question:
I picked up an A3000 with a rev. 6.1 MoBo.
It's fitted with the standard 37.175 ROMs
on U182 & U183. See link:

Linky Link

The ROMs automaticly put the ROM into FastRom on boot,
taking 0,5MB FastRam from the system.
(I've got 2 other A3000's (rev9), and they don't take
automaticly 0,5MB FastRam from the system).

Now I want to put other(newer) 2.04(37.175) ROMs on the MoBo.
Where do I put Them? On the empty U180 & U181 sockets,
or do I switch them with the older ROMs on U182&U183? Because I don't want the system boot into FastRom.
Any help please.

 :-?

[sdyates]

I wish I had your hardware

I can only tell you about the ROMs. To change the roms, just swtich out the old fo rthe new. I have changed 2.04 to 3.1 recently and had no trouble switching them out. However, mine does not use superkickstart.

[alexh]

1) Some A3000 have KS1.4 Boot-Roms which load KS2.04 or KS1.3 from hard drive into RAM. Make sure you dont have BootROMS. If you do... you could change the files on your hard drive so that it boots to KS3.1!
 
2) There is no MAPROM jumper on the regular A3000 (If you have an accelerator there may be a jumper on that). If you dont have BootROMS, the loading of the ROMS into fastram must be part of your startup-sequence on your hard drive.

Check your startup sequence on your hard drive and look for anything that might be it. (Print it here and we'll tell you).

3) You have to remove and replace the ROMS that are fitted.
There are several types of A3000 motherboard, several different pinouts of A3000 kickstart ROMS. Get the wrong ones and it wont work (without a device called a ROM tower)

4) Remember they have to be A3000 ROMS for the SCSI to work.

[AmiDude]

The loading of the ROMs into fastram isn't part
of my startup-sequence, so I guess I have the
KS1.4 Boot-Roms then? They are the same as the
ones pictured on the link.
I want to put in this other ROMs:

"V2.04(37.175) ROM0"
"390629-03 9204 D"

and

"V2.04(37.175) ROM1"
"390630-03 9204 D"

Is it OK to do so, and if yes, do I put
them on U180&U181 or U182&U183?
(Don't wanna make any mistake... My other A3000's
 have rev.9 and 3.1ROMs and I'm not familiar with this
 rev.6.1 MoBo and KS1.4 Boot-Roms or ROM Tower.)

[Matt_H]

Check your startup-sequence and C: directory for a command called MapROM. It's automatically installed by the system installation under some conditions, but I don't know which ones. It's a tool to provide software remapping of the kickstart with certain hardware.

And the quick check for 1.4 ROMs: Does a dark grey screen with yellow text appear on a cold boot that says "Loading Kickstart 2.x..." and then "Rebooting system"?

[AmiDude]

There's no MapRom command in C: or in the startup-sequence,
but a grey screen does appear upon boot with
"Loading Kickstart 2.x" printed and then rebooting.
 

[Matt_H]

Okay. You've got the 1.4 Boot ROMs. You can hold down both mouse buttons on bootup and get a little boot menu that allows you to boot into 1.3 as well (if you've got the appropriate ROM image on a partition named WB_1.3:)

My 3000 (which I think is rev 6.2) also has the 1.4 ROMs, but it needs the ROM Tower. Since you're already running without one, you can probably just drop your new ROMs into the same sockets the current ones are occupying. I'd recommend going up to 3.1, though - my thought is that if you're going to be replacing ROMs, you might as well put in the best possible ones available.

[AmiDude]

OK, thanks! I think I'm gonna change the ROMs
with the other 2.04 ROMs (don't have 3.1),
and see what happens.

 :-)

[AmiDude]

The 2.04 ROMs won't work. Tried them on U182&U183
and U180&U181. I replaced them with the original
1.4 Boot ROMs.

[Matt_H]

Damn. Unfortunately, I'm out of ideas. My only other suggestion would be to examine motherboard photos at the BBoAHW or http://amiga.resource.cx and see how they're configured.

[AmiDude]

I've seen all the pics on BBoAHW but that's no help.
Now I've got another question about the J180&J181
A2000 Compatibility jumpers. I've started another
thread about that...