Amiga 2000 with GVP 030

[videofx]

Just found my Amiga 2000 in the basement after more than 20 years, ad it even boots!!!!

It has a GVP 030 40mhz and SCSI controller and the DKB 2mb chip upgrade and ICD flicker Fixer 2. Will I need to remove all my addins in order to play games? It has 3.1 ROM , do I need to lower the version? WB 3.1, do I need to lower that as well? I want to play all the amiga games I can find

Thanks!

[mark_k]

You could use WHDLoad to play the many games for which installers exist. You can use a program like Degrader to persuade some floppy-based games to work with the 68030.

You can use the GVP Boot68000 program to reset to 68000 mode for games which fail on faster CPUs. For games which require Kickstart 1.x you could investigate making a boot disk which uses SKick or similar to boot Kickstart 1.3. But note that in 68000 mode the RAM and SCSI controller on the GVP card won't work, so that might not be a possibility.

Or you could just replace your 3.1 Kickstart ROM with a 1.3 ROM. With a little adjustment you can still use Workbench 3.1 by soft-loading Kickstart 3.1 (I used ReKick to do that on my A2000). Then you get very good game compatibility in 68000 mode.

[videofx]

Thanks Mark. Since I will only use the 2000 for games can I just install 1.3 ROM and WB 1.3? Do I need KS 2 or 3?

[ptyerman]

The first thing you need to do is check the battery hasn't leaked on the motherboard, and if it's still on the board chop it off and replace with a modern one.

[videofx]

Yup the battery is still there. I will cut it off and see if it did any damage

Thanks

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by videofx

Thanks Mark. Since I will only use the 2000 for games can I just install 1.3 ROM and WB 1.3? Do I need KS 2 or 3?

Don't do that. Use WHDLoad.

[mark_k]

WHDLoad requires at least Kickstart 2.0, however you can soft-load that (or better, Kickstart 3.1) if you have 1.3 in ROM.

Whether it's worth your installing a 1.3 ROM, either to replace 3.1 or in conjunction with a Kickstart switcher, depends on how much you're likely to need 1.3. For booting games and demos from disk in 68000 mode it would be more compatible. However there are WHDLoad installers for many games and demos now, so in most cases you'd probably find it better to use WHDLoad; then you can run installed games/demos from Workbench in 68030 mode. Maybe see how many titles you can't get to work in 68000 mode with Kickstart 3.1 + Degrader, before considering replacing the Kickstart ROM?

My A2000 came with Kickstart 1.3 but I used ReKick to load Kickstart 3.1 for general Workbench usage. I set the startup-sequence on my HD boot partition to run ReKick. There are a couple of reasons why I preferred that to fitting an actual 3.1 ROM:
- ReKick loads the new Kickstart data to 32-bit fast RAM on the GVP card which is much faster than 16-bit ROM.
- With a 3.1 ROM, I could have used SetCPU or similar to remap it to 32-bit RAM, but that would use the MMU (which I don't think your 40MHz 68030 has) so other MMU-using software can't be used at the same time. Plus I seem to remember SetCPU disables the instruction cache in chip RAM when it sets up the MMU.
- Having 1.3 in ROM gives better compatibility with games and demos.

[videofx]

Good thoughts thanks. I will clean up the motherboard and install a CD drive and burn all the WHDload games and I will try your suggestions first with 3.1 ROM then we will go from there.