Multistart II Rom Switcher

[THX1138]

I have been trying to install this into my Amiga 2000 with kickstart 1.3 & 3.1.

I have got it so that the default kick start is 3.1,but whenever i hold the reset keys down for more than 5 seconds to enable 1.3 nothing happens apart from a grey screen !

I have the connector attached to the 41 pin of Gary........

Maybe Multistart cannot use 3.1 roms with older roms properly ?

Any ideas ?

[Chuckles]

I've got a Multistart II in my A2000 with a 2.04 rom, and it works fine for me, but I wasn't sure if it supported the 3.1 rom. But since you say that you have that as the default and it works, then I would suspect that the switcher should work. The only thing I can think of is that there is a 3 pin jumper on the board. My docs say that it should normally be on the left 2 pins for an A2000 (when the jumper is oriented at the top left as you look at the board), but it also mentions that in some older A2000's, it needs to be on the right 2 pins. Maybe changing the jumper would fix the problem, but no guarantees.

[THX1138]

Thanks for reply,the manual says that you might have to jumper it on
the upper to pins if you are installing in a 500 or if your A2000 motherboard is Rev 3.xx,but mine is Rev 6.xx ?

Although kickstart 3.1 is working fine and booting up into workbench fine,
what would happen if kickstart 1.3 was enabled ?

It obviously wouldn't boot would it ?......because only workbench 3.1 is installed on the hardrive !

Would it just come up with kickstart 1.3 hand icon instead,asking you for a disk ?

[Chuckles]

I don't have 3.1 myself, so I can't say for sure how that would work. In my A2000 with 1.3 and 2.04 roms in the switcher, if I boot with the 1.3, it tries to boot but then gives an error due to the fact that I've installed Workbench 2.1 with the partition being formatted for FFS, which the 1.3 rom doesn't understand. If you have a floppy in DF0: though, it should boot from that instead, as it does in mine. Of course if you're running 3.1, then that's what you're probably wanting to switch to 1.3 for, in order to be able to run some of the older stuff easily.

[THX1138]

Ok........I have got the Multistart working........only problem was that i had
to take out my Blizzard 2060 Accelerator card to do this !

Seems that the Multistart conflicts with this card......hmmmm,

[OddbOd]

According to the 2060 manual the accelerator also uses timing of the Ctrl+Amiga+Amiga combo to disable the board hence the signal is probably never reaching the kickswitcher. There are at least two ways to overcome this, you could either remove the switcher completely and use only the 3.1 ROM (this is recommended by Blizzard due to compatibility issues with older ROM versions), softkick older ROMs if you really need to use them. The other alternative is to convert the multistart board to manual switching though this could be risky if you don't know what you're doing.

Originally Posted by THX1138

Although kickstart 3.1 is working fine and booting up into workbench fine,
what would happen if kickstart 1.3 was enabled ?

This depends on your exact kickstart version, an older 1.3 ROM will fail to work at all with the Blizzard board whereas a later one will start to boot (as long as the hard disk is formatted with OFS/FFS), it will then fail part way through the startup-sequence. This can be fixed by rewriting the startup-sequence to detect the ROM version (using the AmigaDOS version command to set the WARN flag) and run an alternate startup if 1.3 is detected.

[THX1138]

Everything seems to be working fine........

What i have to do is hold down the reset keys for 5 seconds,and this will put the Multistart into 1.3 mode,but hand don't come up,just get grey screen.

Then if i do quick soft reset whilst holding down the number '0' key,this will disable the 2060 board and Voila !.....the 1.3 hand comes up !!

Thanks for all the info guys !